I’ve posted a few Line Rider videos in the past and while they were pretty nifty, they have nothing on this guy:
A Pregnant Man In Bend
Yes you read that right. There’s a pregnant man here in Bend and his name is Thomas Beatie. And he’s all over the frickin’ news, and has made international headlines.
Since I know jack squat about transgendered people and sex changes, I’m not going to comment because I’ll undoubtedly say something offensive and/or stupid without intending to do so. So there you go — I report, you comment.
Thus far, nobody’s been able to confirm if the story is a hoax or not, which I guess is my only concern. If anybody knows the guy, feel free to comment here. The story was originally reported in the Advocate by Thomas himself, lending a bit more to the conspiracy theory. But as long as the parents are loving and caring parents to the child, that’s all that matters to me — he’d still be a far better parent than so many deadbeat parents out there whose kids are raised by MTV, MySpace and a nanny.
Update at 7:35: Somebody suggested I check the local phone book and property tax records to see if these people exist. Since I’m sitting here staring a progress bars on a server here at the office (I’m here doing some server software upgrades and repartitioning), I decided to look. He’s not listed in the phone bok, but there is a Thomas and Nancy Beatie that own a home here in south Bend and have owned it for about a year and had an address in southeast Bend, according to Deschutes County property records.
Eric Clapton Is All Thumbs
These are some of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a long time:
Late last year a Finnish media artist named Santeri Ojala got a lot of attention for a series of hilarious YouTube videos in which he lifted concert footage of various guitar heroes and overdubbed his own intentionally awful playing. The bad musicianship was funny enough, but the verisimilitude made it even funnier: Ojala was great at matching each player’s hand movements and timing, and he sprinkled lukewarm applause and other sound effects throughout. The videos were like alternate-universe versions of rock-god cliches.
Watch this Eric Clapton solo:
And be sure to watch Stevie Ray (and watch them here if they disappear from YouTube).
Just FYI
If you’re looking for a place to store your guns, the oven isn’t it.
Why I Prefer Google Over Everybody Else
It’s the little things, like a resizing search box.
The First Weekend Is Over…
…and it appears we have a three-way tie for first place in the pick ’em. Things should start seperating a bit more next week as the games start getting higher point values. It looks like the Tasmanian Devils and The Dren are duking it out for dead last and the t-shirt. “shlid” isn’t eligible for the prize as she’s sleeping with the organizer (’tis my wife, who picked totally randomly, too).
NCAA Tournament Pick ’em Round 2 Day 1 Scoring
It’s the third day of the pick ’em and we now have a four-way tie at the top with eight folks within two points of the lead. It’s close, but we still have a lot of games to be played before a winner is declared.
BendBroadband is Giving You More Speed…
…but at the price of bandwidth caps. It appears that starting in July, BendBroadband Internet customers are going to be saddled with bandwidth caps. For most people, not a big deal. But for bandwidth-heavy geeks like me (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), it is, even if I were on the highest plan.
While I’m sure they’ve always internally had these caps, and I applaud them for actually making them public, they don’t seem very generous and they’re forcing users into more expensive plans to make sure they have breathing room.
The biggest problem for me is my nightly online backups, not only to my house but from my house. I have software that backs up local data nightly to Mozy servers and I also have a 400GB file server in my home office that backs up data from the servers in my Sunriver office on a nightly basis. I also download large torrent files of DVD disk images, software patches, midget porn etc… . I can all but guarantee that I’d hit the bandwidth cap pretty much every month (probably every couple weeks).
But the reality is that most of my heavy bandwidth usage is in the middle of the night (between 10PM and 7AM, after which the connection to my server in Sunriver severs as the office is opening back up), where it’s not going to screw with the bulk majority of folks. So should I be penalized when I’m not going to be affecting 95% of folks?
As it stands right now, their page to check your usage doesn’t work, but let’s hope that’s up long before they roll this thing out.
I know Comcast, a major, national cable provider, has these sorts of caps, but I was hoping a local, home-grown company wouldn’t have to resort to this, especially without an option for an unlimited plan (depending on what source you read, Comcast’s cap is between 90-200gb, which is quite a bit more than BendBroadband’s limit, even on the high end).
While BendBroadband has been a long-time advertiser on this site (my agreement with them allows me to editorialize all I want about their service), and I’ve constantly recommended their Internet services, I might have to shop around for DSL services unless some clarification can be made for hardcore geeks (and long time customers) like me. It’s late, and I’m tired from watching all the basketball today, so maybe this has me more riled up than it should, but in this day and age where bandwidth should be getting cheaper and cheaper (and generally it is), it irks me when my ISP for nearly a decade decides to cap it on me.
Update on 4/4: Some good discussion below in the comments. Here is the spreadsheet that one of the commenters put together to show how this can really cost you.
Update on 4/7: Forgot to post this last week: BendTel doesn’t think putting caps on Internet use is moving people in the right direction for utilizing the Internet. I tend to agree (and I like the folks at BendTel, having used their services in the past at my office).
Update on 4/10: This story has now gone national. Feel free to digg this.
NCAA Tournament Pick ’em Day 2 Results
There were some good upsets today, and we have a new leader in the pick ’em. Fighting Yoopers has taken the lead, having picked 26 of the last 32 games correctly. The spreadsheet’s been updating — now with pretty graphs.
Tournament Pick ’em Day 1 Results
Looks like after having several folks in the lead most of the day, we end the day with a single leader in the tournament pick ’em (and figures that it’s my boss’ kid). If you’re signed up for the group, you can see live stats here, otherwise, I’ve published a public results spreadsheet here. I’ll update it daily during the tournament.
There were some close calls for upsets today that would’ve put me close to the top, but instead I’m tied for 20th (only three points behind). The Ducks play tomorrow, so as long as they win, I don’t give a rip how my bracket turns out.