New Book by Former County Commish Tom DeWolf

So what’s Tom Dewolf — former Deschutes County Commissioner and good friend of mine — been up to since leaving public office? He has written a book entitled Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. Quoting the Amazon.com description:

A trailblazing memoir about one family’s quest to face its slave-trading past, and an urgent call for reconciliation

In 2001, at age forty-seven, Thomas DeWolf was horrified to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in United States history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans. His most infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, Rhode Island, curried favor with Thomas Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed. When he died in 1837 he was reportedly the second-richest man in America.

When DeWolf’s cousin, Katrina Browne, learned about their family’s history, she was consumed with guilt. However, unlike others who might ignore their sordid legacy, she resolved to confront it head-on. Browne produced and directed a documentary feature film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, in which she, Tom, and eight other family members retraced the steps of their ancestors and uncovered the hidden history of New England and the other northern states. Inheriting the Trade is Thomas DeWolf’s powerful and disarmingly honest memoir of their journey.

It sounds like a fascinating book, as does the companion documentary Traces of the Trade which will be debuting at the Sundance Film Festival in January. More information on the book is available here.

December 18, 2007

Random Link Dump

Still recovering from my aforementioned cold and totally bogged down in a backlog of links (Newsgator needs to implement the Feeddemon panic button in Newsgator Inbox). So here are some random links of all varieties that have been sitting here for a while.

Cripes, that’s enough for now. I’m going to bed.

December 17, 2007

The Return of The Killer Christmas Light Display

A couple years back, I posted a video that nearly blew up this server because of the bandwidth it used. It even caused me to have to move Web hosts (500 connections per second on a six megabyte video would kill most barebones shared hosts like I had). It was an incredible Christmas light display set to music.

After hearing “Wizards of Winter” again on the radio today, the song in the background of that video, I thought of it again, and wanted to make sure the newcomers to this site who weren’t here during the German invasion (read the entry and you’ll understand) got a chance to see it during this holiday season. So enjoy the show, everybody (and if anybody has a higher-res version of the vid they can send me, by all means do).

December 17, 2007

Game For Web Coders

I named 45 HTML 4.0 elements in five minutes. I probably could’ve done more had my head not been stuffed up and my body full of DayQuil (as I forgot some really obvious ones that I use all the time). How did you do?

December 16, 2007

Rebuilding A Server Closet, Need Some Parts

I’m trying to find some good used parts locally for a long-term project I’m doing here at the office, and I’m looking to shop locally to save myself some shipping costs, if at all possible. But long story short, I’m looking to turn our mess of desks and servers at the office into a nicely rack-mounted server area. That involved moving some hardware into rack-mountable cases, expanding my KVM, buying rack-mount kits for some of my servers, and obviously buying a rack. So read on for my shopping list that I’ve budgeted for, and if anybody here can help me out, comment here or contact me at utterlyboring [at] gmail [dot] com.

(more…)

December 13, 2007

What Have I Done?

I never usually participate in memes at all, but since all it requires me is to quickly copy and paste and mark stuff as bold or not, I’ll play along since I was already working in my HTML editor anyway.

Dave, Jen, and Keeneye have all done it, so what the heck. Everything below that’s in bold is something I’ve done. If you have questions or are curious about any of them, comment below.

(more…)

December 13, 2007

How Are Super Models Discovered?

Unlike Ask.Metafilter, where the questions and answers have more of an intelligent theme to them, the conversations at Yahoo! Answers are a bit more juvenile. However, sometimes you find a gem in the oddest places, like this question (and this is exactly how it was asked): “HOW ARE MOST MODELS DISCOVERd?

ISN’T IT AT MALLS AND STUFF???” The best answer, in my opinion? “Most models are discovered with a magnifying glass. They are very small and hard to see.”

Genius material, that is.

December 13, 2007

Still Looking For That Gift For The Geek On Your List?

Here is a good collection of gift guides.

December 13, 2007

World Series Of Poker, Here I Come

So tonight our office had our annual staff holiday party. We always have two traditions at our parties: A white elephant gift exchange and a poker tourney. During the gift exchange, I got the dreaded coonskin cap that’s been passed around for the six years I’ve worked at the company — which I guess I deserve for wrapping up a paint mixer that you hook to your drill and giving that way.

Last year in the poker tourney, I was out in about four hands. This year, I was nearly out again in four hands, but got a lucky draw on the river in hold ’em to stay in. A couple hours later, I had won a few more big hands in a variety of games, I knocked off co-workers, and when the game was called, I had the most chips, which meant I got the first place prize of a cool $75.

I’m quite positive the reason I won was because I was the only one at the table that was still sober, as most of the folks at the table had put down a few beers already. But I’ll take what I can get. I was pretty proud of myself, though I’m sure that Chris could still very easily beat me since he got second in the Jake’s Diner tourney. But at least I can say I didn’t get beat by a pre-teen.

December 12, 2007

Nasty

Shopping at the local grocery store this evening, I noticed these items in a little pile on the shelf of the dog food aisle:

  • Empty Starbucks cup.
  • Opened pack of baby wipes.
  • Empty box of Monostat 7 Yeast Infection treatments.

I really don’t want to know.

December 11, 2007