Stuff White People Like. You can see the full list of stuff here and the commentary is hilarious.
Dang You Daylight Savings Time
Am I the only one that didn’t set my clock forward today and was an hour late to wherever they needed to be (in my case, work)?
Welcome Bulletin Readers!
(Yes, I know I’m bit slow, after the article’s been mentioned dang near everywhere else already. I promise I’ll go and read all your posts, boys and girls, after I get some sleep.)
That’s not the first time that I’ve had that headline on this site, but this is the first time I’ve ever had my ugly mug on the front page of the paper (Julie makes Duncan and I look classier). I’ve now had my picture, name, and a quote on the front of every major section of the paper at point of my life (yes, even the sports section, when I was in high school). Naturally, I was out of town when the story broke, so I couldn’t post something earlier (I really need to setup my blog so I can post to it from my Blackberry — one of these days).
Any who, welcome to anybody who’s here because of that article (feel free to comment below and say “Hi.”). I think it was a pretty well-done article and covered the wide variety of bloggers in the area fairly well (hotlinks in the online version to the various blogs mentioned would help a bunch). It was better than the last article the Bulletin wrote about local bloggers which not only wasn’t even put online (which was silly) it only talked about three bloggers — Jon, Chris, and I. Nice job, Peter, as while I like Jon and Chris, I think all three of can agree that there is far more to blogging in this area outside of the three of us.
A few references from the article:
- That whole Baltazar mess that was mentioned was chronicled pretty well by bloggers here (my post got inadvertantly deleted from the BendBlogs.com database during a rebuild of my RSS feed, so here was my take on it).
- “Sally Heatherton” wrote the blog Marvelous Bend which can be found here (since the URL wasn’t mentioned).
- If you want to know anything about Trader Joes, if anybody will know about it, Jon will.
- Shannon’s right — you don’t need to be a “techie” (though I prefer “geek”, thankyouverymuch) like me to start a blog. Go here or here or even here to check out some free and easy-to-use commercial services to start up your own blog. And then pop me a note when you do and I’ll get it listed over at Bend Blogs.
- And if anybody’s wondering, my shirt says “No I will not fix your computer.” It was a gift from a cool co-worker and I have to think I look dang handsome in it (my co-worker will laugh when she reads this). You can buy one yourself here
It’s been a long day as we drove back from the coast today (the aviation museum was closed today for some wine and cheese festival, so we went to Lincoln City), so I’m buggered. Thanks for visiting and feel free to come back anytime (and feel free to join the NCAA Pick ’em).
Out Of Town, Traffic In Portland Sucks, and “The Art Office”
I’m actually posting this from a hotel room in Newberg right now. We decided to get out of town and take a quick overnighter and visit my wife’s sister over here at George Fox. We went out to dinner and wandering aimlessly around Washington Square where I had to visit the Apple Store and fondle some of the over-priced toys. I was actually looking for a case for my Nano, but couldn’t bring myself to pay $25-30 for one that I can get online for half.
I’ve also realized that traffic on some stretches of road around Portland (especially along the 217) between 5-6PM on a Friday really sucks. I-5 was at a dead stop (thankfully we weren’t on it, just going over it), as was 217 for a few miles before getting up to speed as we passed the 99W exit. But while traffic around here sucks, at least we were moving, albiet slowly. In Bend, it’d still take me just as long to go just as far.
The plan for tomorrow is to go see the Spruce Goose down the road before heading out of town.
It was a nice (and much needed) break from reality for a bit, even if I am driving nearly four hours two days in a row and have to go back to work on Sunday.
One thing my wife’s sis pointed out to me was some pretty funny “The Office” parodies some folks in her art department put together a while back, entitled “The Art Office”. The video series is in three parts here, here, and here and they’ re quite entertaining. Enjoy, and I’ll be back tomorrow.
It Makes For A Much Better Comic
I stopped reading the Garfield comic strip years ago. It just wasn’t funny or interesting to me anymore. But Garfield minus Garfield makes the strip a lot more interesting by taking that obnoxious orange cat completely out of the picture:
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.
Observe:
Save The Date
April 18 is Poop For Peace Day.
Play Nearly 800 Old-School NES Games In Your Browser
If you’re an old school NES gamer like me, you’ll enjoy this site. The controls are a bit weird and they don’t have River City Ransom, one of my favorite old-school NES games, but it’s still a great way to kill off an entire week.
FCC Okays Nudity On TV
But only with certain restrictions…
Getting Rid Of Games For Coworkers and Having Fun With It
So the boss man wants me to remove the pre-installed Windows XP games (solitaire, Minesweeper, etc…), but I was thinking instead of removing them, I should just overwrite the *.exe files with something obnoxious and leave the menus on the start menu, heck, maybe even put icons on the desktop to see how much time people are really trying to waste.
I know I’d have to work around Windows File Protection to overwrite some of the game files, but that’s easy enough.
Anybody have any ideas? I’d love to have some fun with this. Something that would track the clicks, keep a report on people trying to run the game, email management, offer a blackmail buyout option if said employee doesn’t want management to see that he or she have been trying to play, etc… .
Join The UtterlyBoring.com NCAA Tournament Pick ’em (2008 Edition)
Selection Sunday is coming up on March 16 and then it’s time for offices all over the country to create office pools for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. And it’s time for the readers of this site to compete for bragging rights (and a few cool prizes) in the annual UtterlyBoring.com Tournament Pick ‘Em. Last years contest info was here with final results here with Scott’s Mad Dribblerz taking the top prizes.
Sign Up Info: While the field for the tournament hasn’t been set yet, you can still get signed up in the group and be notified when the field has been set and you can start making your picks (usually about an hour or so after the picks have been announced). Sign up here or if that link doesn’t work, go here, click on the “Join Group” link and use the following info:
Group ID#: 450
Password: utterlyboring
The group’s page is here, which I think you can only see if you sign up.
Prizes: First off, here are the prizes we have so far (and if any local business or individual wants to throw a prize into the pot — for first or last or anywhere in between — contact me and you’ll receive credit and a link here, if you’d like):
- First Place: Meals for two (breakfast, lunch, or dinner, as it’s all served all day), plus a copy of a couple books: Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook and John Daly’s My Life In And Out of The Rough (The Truth Behind the Bull**** You Think You Know About Me) from Lyle at Jake’s Diner here in Bend. Plus (added on 3/20): A XXXL (that’s extra-extra-extra-large) lightweight University of Oregon jacket, made by Nike. It’s a couple different shades of green with yellow trim. It’s got a small Oregon “O” and Nike swoosh on the front and it says “Oregon” across the back. It’s a nice little jacket, I think it’s used, but looks brand new, but it’s frickin’ huge — like tent huge. Thanks to Larry at Discover Sunriver for that.
- Second Place: A baseball cap, stickers, and a women’s fitted t-shirt (size large) from Paizano’s Pizza over in Baker City (plus a free Large Specialty Pizza if you live within driving distance).
- Last Place (Yes, you read that right, see below for rules): You get a t-shirt from the UtterlyBoring.com shop that you can show off to all your friends your inability to pick winners. Wear it with pride.
Rules:
- Only one bracket per-person this year. While there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 ways a bracket could be broken down, since we have a dead-last prize this year, it wouldn’t be fair to allow more than a bracket-per-person.
- The entire bracket must be filled out if you want to be eligible for the last-place prize.
- Prizes: Unless otherwise stated, prizes must be picked up from prize providers in person, and prize providers are not eligible to win the prizes they provide (and I’m taking myself out of the running for any and all of the prizes, if I win/lose). Prizes may be added anytime during the tournament, so be sure to sign up.
- Scoring: Since I agree with Scott, Yahoo! puts far too much points into the final rounds, so we’re customizing the default scoring a bit, using some of the numbers from the Fibonacci Sequence. So this is how Yahoo! scored it last year:
- Round 1: 1 pt
- Round 2: 2 pts
- Round 3: 4 pts
- Round 4: 8 pts
- Round 5: 16 pts
- Championship: 32 pts
…we’re going to do it this way this year:
- Round 1: 1 pt
- Round 2: 2 pts
- Round 3: 3 pts
- Round 4: 5 pts
- Round 5: 8 pts
- Championship: 13 pts
That should make for a tighter race this year.
- These rules are subject to change, I’m the final say on everything, UtterlyBoring.com cannot and will not be held liable for anything, nor can Yahoo Sports, prize providers, my family, hamster or anybody else. Do not taunt happy fun ball. Batteries not included. Not for off-road use.
May cause oily discharge. This is casual fun, folks — let’s keep it that way.
That’s all for now, so get yourself signed up and good luck!