But I’m not sure if I like the Muppets doing Rick Astley…
Does Your Penis Have A Name?
Then go to Name Your Wang and get yourself a “Certificate of Authenticity of ownership of your wang name.”
UtterlyBoring.com at Wrigley Field
Remember for the dummy prize for the pick ’em? Fighting Yoopers won the prize, but never claimed it, and per the rules, I gave the prizes to the next people on the list (in this case, the second-to-last). The Dren was the next worst, and he was happy as heck to have the shirt, even wearing it proudly on a trip to Chicago (much to his wife’s dismay). He tells me that the folks at Wrigley got a kick out of it (when it was warm enough to take his coat off — Dren’s from Texas, so he needs a coat for anything less than 60 degrees). Here he is watching the game:
I seriously doubt I’ll get too many visitors from Chicago because of the shirt, but thanks Dren for wearing your inability to pick winners proudly.
Finally
Spent the weekend (and lost far too much sleep) getting my new laptop all setup to do what I need and want it to do so I (hopefully) won’t have to be carrying two laptops around anymore (I need to find a new laptop bag for this one — any suggestions on a good, well-padded bag for a 17″ laptop?). It’s been really annoying having a nice new toy to play with, but never being able to really use it.
I still need to do a few more system-level tweaks, and clean up my Start menu a bit, but we’re mostly there. I really need to redo my applications list to include some other utilities I installed during all this and remove ones I didn’t need any more (as there were a bunch of redundant ones on there) Then maybe (after I catch up on some sleep) I get back to blogging on a more regular basis.
Happy Mother’s Day everybody!
Eastern Oregon: the 51st state?
Some Hood River residents are getting fed up on how the Oregon legislature is treating rural communities, sothey’re seriously wanting to create a 51st state (More from KVAL in Eugene). While their division for east versus west is the Cascade mountains, Bend and Deschutes County (which are both east of the Cascades) are apparently not included in the running for the new state’s capital or even included in the new state at all:
Koch said the booming tourist town simply isn’t rural enough anymore.
“The Bend area doesn’t fit as a rural community,” said Koch.
The border would run right down the Cascades but go around Deschutes County. One thing Koch is sure of is that the new state would have fewer regulations.
While I agree that Bend is probably more like Portland than Klamath Falls, I don’t think I could say the same about the rest of the County.
While this will probably never, even, happen, it is an interesting conversation topic: How would the state be funded (especially if Bend weren’t part of it)? Where would the capital be? How about we just create a state with rural Eastern Washington, which pretty much is in the same boat as us with east-versus-west?
This also isn’t the first time that a 51st state discussion has happened around here, as I remember some groups back in the day discussing making a state out of Southern Oregon and Northern California.
Having Trouble Dialing With Your Cell Phone Today?
That’s probably because you need to dial the area code today. I remember reading somewhere (don’t remember where — will see if I can find it when I get some free time) that US Cellular is requiring 10-digit dialing for local calls starting today (Unicel already does). Since our company has 15 lines with US Cellular, people are having a bit of issues adjusting.
So if you’re having trouble dialing a 7-digit (non area-code) local number here in Bend, try it with the 541 area code on the front. If it works, then you know you’re having the issue. You should probably just get in the habit of dialing 10 digits all the time anyway.
Even Comcast Gives More Bandwidth Than BendBroadband
(If you haven’t been following the BendBroadband bandwidth cap news, read up here.)
Comcast, the nationwide cable company everybody loves to hate, is mulling over putting caps on their monthly bandwidth — at a level 25x higher than BendBroadband’s base plan (and still 2.5x higher than their high-end plan).
My biggest gripe about this whole mess: Their usage graphs still don’t work and probably their biggest PR blunder in all this (in my opinion): they still haven’t released their new uncapped Business plans, which would be an option for some folks. Then if folks still wanted uncapped access, they could then point to the business plans.
My sources at BendBroadband say they’re working on it, as they are with fine-tuning the details of the residential plans (they are listening, folks), so expect an annoucement from them at some point, but I couldn’t tell you when.
Time Killer For The Day
Still slammed, but slowly catching up. Just need another 12 hours in the day, and a super power that allows me to function without sleep. And it’d be nice to have an evening off, but I still have one more concert tonight (hope to see some of you there).
Anywho, when I was able to take a breather today, this game killed off what time I had: How fast can you type in this little time-killer? I was averaging about 55 words-per-minute, though I could probably do better as I’m tired as heck. How’d you do?
Bend Bulletin Debuts New Site (and New Print Features)
And I have to say, upon first glance, it looks much nicer than before and actually works on a widescreen setup. It has much larger photos, comments on the articles (only for subscribers, however, which is silly), There are still a few broken links here and there, and the stupid paywall is still in place, despite research that shows open archives get about 50% more traffic from Google than those with paid archives. And traffic generally equals revenue.
I haven’t had a chance to look through the entire site quite yet to see how or if other things have changed, but it’s far easier on the eyes than what was there before.
Quick glancing at the print edition this morning, it appears that they’ve introduced some new design elements to the print edition as well which URL references for specific sections (not all of which work quite yet). But kudos to the online staff over there for putting out a much better design than before — now if you could just convince management to get rid of the damn paywall and allow non-subscribers to comment, than it’d be nicer.