Yes, I know you could find uninformed morons on both sides of the political spectrum, but this is still just sad:
Thanks Mark for the link.
Time Killers For The Evening
Stay indoors, and stay warm: Play some of these to kill off some time:
- Sniper Assassin 4 gets tougher than its earlier versions.
- Company Of Myself is a great (but sometimes sad) game where you use copies of yourself to make it through the game.
- Can you drive and text at the same time? I doubt it.
- Rushback Jack is a simple premise — run as far as you can to the right and then run back, all in 60 seconds.
Enjoy!
It’s Like A Heat Wave!
Yes, I know you’re probably sick of me saying how cold it is in Central Oregon. It was only -6°F this morning at my house (though it did get into the minus-teens overnight, apparently). I do geek work for several property management companies in Sunriver, and I’m hearing a very similar story: frozen pipes all over the place. I’ve heard stories of failing furnaces in more than a dozen homes, causing really cold homes. Some have been caught and fixed before it got too cold, but there are still many homes that have frozen pipes (including my boss’).
I heard of one homeowner here in Sunriver who refused to have his property management company blow out his sprinkler system — “I can do it myself, I don’t want to pay you to do it.” There are lots of homeowners in this area like that, sadly. He never did (he lives hundreds of miles from here, as do most of the homeowners out here), nor did he turn off his sprinkler system timer. It somehow managed to not freeze and sprayed a nice sheet of water all over his back yard, where it then froze, and then the water that was coming out of the sprinklers just ran down the street instead, creating a nice little skating rink.
Stay warm, folks. More links later today.
22 Below
It was only -13°F this morning at my house, but it was a balmy -22° at my co-worker’s house in Sunriver this morning. The SROA weather station had the low at its office at -19°F overnight (it’s gotten up to -5°F at my office — here comes the heat wave!). La Pine and Sunriver-area schools were cancelled and there were power outages in some areas. Thank goodness I don’t rely on electric heat in my home.
In other words, it’s frackin’ cold out. You whiners in Portland who are complaining about the cold up there (it’s currently 24°F up there), you got nothing on us.
There’s no sense in leaving the house if you don’t have to. This will help to keep you indoors today.
- There’s a Woot Off on the main woot, kids woot and wine woot for all your holiday shopping needs.
- Somebody with far too much time on their hands has achieved (nearly) everything in World of Warcraft.
- This would explain a lot about Tetris.
- Parenting is making me dumb.
- Only linking to this SFGate story because it mentions a friend of mine and his wife who I went to high school with.
- Banning cookies is a really bad idea.
- Political correctness has gone too far.
- Why Your IT Sucks.
- Comcast Acquires Majority of NBC Universal, launches Data Usage Meter in Portland (their cap of 250GB is still quite a bit higher than the 100GB BendBroadband offers).
- Millions of tax dollars are going to dead farmers.
- Twilight Fans get Punked.
Stay warm!
I Can’t Feel My Toes
I got up this morning and it was 1°F on our front porch (that’s -17°C to the rest of the world), and in the last few hours, it’s gained a total of two degrees. It’s just bitter, bitter cold out. I just got my hair cut, so it’s especially nippy on my newly thinned head. My house has actually has more snow than my office, though it is about the same temperature out here. The wind-chill is supposed to bring the temps down even more tonight, into the minus-teens range. Thank goodness we have plenty of firewood.
I do want to personally thank the folks who made it out to our band concert yesterday. The weather was really awful with snow blowing sideways because of really stiff winds. The parking lot at Summit High School was well-buried to the point where you couldn’t even see the curbs, causing many folks to drive over curbs as they were the same level as the pavement in some spots. We had a pretty good turn out considering, and I could only imagine what kind of turn out we’d have if the weather would have cooperated. Those of you who didn’t make the trek, you missed a helluva show — though with the weather the way it was, I honestly don’t blame you. Many of the band members had trouble getting there, too, but as they say, the show must go on.
Pre-game Reading Material
OK, this has nothing to do with the upcoming game, but it will get some of these links off my desktop.
- Google introduces Public DNS, which is perfect if you don’t want/need the filterting/redirecting of OpenDNS.
- Speaking of Google, they’ve introduced asynchronous tracking with Google Analytics — which basically means faster load time for the Analytics code.
- The Geek Squad’s Real Agenda Exposed.
- Brilliant traffic light design idea.
- 10 Alternatives to Mininova.
- In the spirit of FMyLife comes i’msobadatsex (needless to say, NSFW language).
- Another Google Wave Use: Manhunt (I have Google wave, really haven’t had time to play with it much, but this did intrigue me a bit).
- Who is the most dominate athlete ever?
- Can we say crazy? Mothers Against Nickelodeon. I’m going to start a group someday: “Parents against jackass parents who plant their kids in front of the TV instead of properly interacting and raising their children and then complain when the TV has potentially offensive content.” I think the name needs work, though.
- Robin Williams talks about videos games.
OK, that should be enough for a while. Go Ducks!
Beaver Fans Are Irrational People
You may not know this, as the press and promotion has been pretty quiet, with no hype or trash-talking whatsoever</sarcasm>, but there’s a relatively big football game tonight. While I’m rooting for the Ducks today (graduated UO class of ’00), I just want to see a good game, and will be happy knowing that Oregon (the state, not the schools) will be represented in the Rose Bowl no matter what happens and will hopefully smack Ohio State around. I just want to see a good game.
Unlike Beaver fans (at least all most of the ones I know), I’m actually capable of rooting for the Beavers when they’re not playing the Ducks. I root for the Ducks and the Beavers year round, and I want to see both schools succeed. The only time I’d root more for the Ducks is if they’re playing each other. Most Duck fans I know are capable of that kind of thought. However, all the Beaver fans I know are incapable of rooting for the Ducks. They’re incapable of rooting for anybody other than the Beavers, unless it’s a team that’s playing the Ducks — they’ll root for them all day long. I watched many of the Beaver’s games on TV this year, cheered them on. But I think the only time a Beaver fan watches a Duck game is to cheer on the opposing team.
The Ducks are favored in the game, but I think it’s going to be closer than the 10 points or so that folks say they’re going to win by. I see this coming down to a field goal or something equally as close.
(And yes, that headline was intentionally written to incite folks — just wanted to see who came out of the woodwork to comment.)
Free Family-Friendly Concert This Weekend
Many of you know that I’m a percussionist for both the Cascade Winds Symphonic Band and the Central Oregon Symphony (I’ve been a percussionist for the Cascade Chorale on a few occasions as well). While I love playing with all those groups for a variety of reasons, I really enjoy playing with the Cascade Winds (aka the COCC Concert Band) the most because of the large variety of music and (obviously) the variety and complexity of the percussion parts.
We have our first concert of the season this weekend. Feel free to click on the banner to the right or click here for all the details. The concert is Sunday, Dec. 6, at 2PM, at Summit High School. The concert is free (donations accepted), family-friendly, and refreshments will be served during intermission.
You can also find the event on Facebook.
Hope to see you there!
Post-Thanksgiving Reading Material
Hope everybody had a good holiday. Back to work. There will be a quiz tomorrow…
- Kid’s drawings reenacted using professional photography.
- Just some more Twilight bashing: Bella and Edward are in an abusive relationship.
- If you want them to RTFM, make a better FM (from this old but good talk).
- Google China vs the Rest Of The World.
- Tomboy is a simple little note-taking application for Linux, Unix, and Windows. Now I just need to convince my other (better) half to use this and to quit sticking Post-It notes all over the desk.
- Rotate a site. Like this one.
- Perl and C programmers like to swear a lot.
- Video Professor is a scammer.
- TypePad Micro is a great new option for new bloggers.
- What kind of cereal are you going to have in the morning? Here’s a handy flowchart to help you decide.
- Converting an old Xbox into a cool new hackintosh.
- GeoIP Weather: Just load the page, it’ll give you the weather based on your current location.
Have A Safe Thanksgiving
I’m going to by trying to avoid my computer as much as possible the next few days. I also plan on avoiding the malls and stores on Friday as it’s going to be a mess. If I can’t buy it online, I’m not going to buy it (speaking of buying stuff, feel free to click on the banner to the right if you plan on shopping at Amazon — as I’ll get a few pennies of you do). I’m going to spend some time with my family the next few days, and gorge myself stupid.
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving, everybody. I’ll rest easy knowing that this year I remembered the chips.