Ghost Town

Ever since Thomas Lauderdale and others sang with the Von Trapp great-grandchildren at the tree-lighting in Pioneer Square, I've wanted to write my own PDX-based "My Favorite Things". I finally wrote it and posted it to my blog. http://upsidedownonmars.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-favorite-things.html

I support going low-car as much as possible every day, but especially tonight, if you are going out. http://trimet.org/alerts/newyear.htm

My wife was sorting sheets and #clydethebeagle  decided the bin she was using was a new bed for him.

We just went up to Council Crest Park. Awesome view today, but everything's so bright it looks different and I keep getting lost.

Man, they have everything at City Liquidators.

Austin, entangled in Christmas lights.

It was too nice today to stay inside so we walked over the Hawthorne Bridge and around the Buckman neighborhood, through the Grand Avenue Historic District, up to Burnside, down the Eastbank Esplanade, and then crossed back to downtown over the Morrison bridge. We used another Christmas present, Portland City Walks , as a guide for part of our walk and learned some really interesting architectural and historical facts about some of the buildings.  We also got the same author's Portland Hill Walks and can't wait to do some of those as well. http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-9780881928853-2

Got a couple of books for Christmas and read them both already. (One was a comic book.) Portland in the 1960s: Stories from the Counterculture , a (mostly oral) history of this town in the 1960s. The 1970 riots in the South Park Blocks just downstairs from my building were pretty hair-raising, but the most mortifying picture in the book showed the parking lot where Pioneer Courthouse Square is today. The comic book was The Life and Death of the X-Ray Cafe , the story of the "hole-in-the-wall all-ages [music] venue" that flourished in the early 90s in Old Town when Old Town was pretty sketchy. I also got the catalog from the "Body Beautiful" Classical art exhibit at the Portland Art Museum that we went to a few weeks ago and have spent some time perusing that. I love reading about the history and culture of this town; recommendations are always welcome.

Going to this tonight. I can't wait! (My Masters thesis was on atomic culture.)  http://orhistory.com/archives/2140

I'm thinking we need a new fallacy: the Appeal to Silence by Internet Troll fallacy. I'd file it somewhere between Appeal to Authority and Slippery Slope.  It's when you don't have infinite time to argue with someone online, so they accuse you of being afraid to debate them and claim victory in the argument.

No farmers market downstairs in the park! Ack! Maybe the world really did end after all!

So, there it is. The final scheduled End-of-the-World of our lifetimes passes without event. Guess we're stuck with the same threescore-and-ten as every other human generation.

Looks like Clyde and Austin are not the only beagles who are escape artists! http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2012/12/21/something-good-actually-happened-on-the-bus-today

So the takeaway here is that apocalypse is not predictable, but the NRA is completely predictable.

I've developed the habit of just renaming things whatever I think they should be called.  For example, I refer to Portland Afoot as "Go by Foot." And I call Sellwood Dog Supply "Sellwoof." #RenamingPDX

When waiting for the MAX, does anyone else strategize about how to snag one of these seats? I like the seat on the far left or right, because my messenger bag fits very neatly in the space beside it.

Hopefully, Vice-President Joe Biden will tap XTC to help him out with the gun-control task force. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGc5h1yWHQ

So people are going to Russia now to escape socialism? This 21st-century world makes no freaking sense. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/20/entertainment-us-russia-depardieu-idUSBRE8BJ0UF20121220?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FoddlyEnoughNews+%28Reuters+Oddly+Enough%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

A huge flock murder of crows was just flapping around and cawing loudly outside my window.  That, at least, was mildly slightly less mildly apocalyptic.

When the #MayanApocalypse doesn't happen, everyone in the world should join a class-action lawsuit against TLC and the Discovery Channel.

I just discovered LiveJournal is "undergoing emergency maintenance." I wonder how many weeks/months/years that message has been up with no one noticing.

I need to stop letting #clydethebeagle  go down to the Hawthorne District by himself.  (Clyde was Portlandified at  http://goo.gl/fw7T0 )

Google Now keeps telling me to go to work. Semester's over, Google Now! Chill out.

Snow in the trees, up by the Zoo.

Cool tool to find your altitude by address.  This weather forecast by elevation is all new to me, having moved here from the flatlands. http://www.daftlogic.com/sandbox-google-maps-find-altitude.htm

Not sure it's making it to the ground, but outside my eighth-floor window some fat snowflakes are falling.

"Karl, remove from Manifesto comments re: corporations using your images for ads w/out consent. That's just unrealistic." #Marx'sEditor

Portland is awesome, but that does not stop Portlanders from trying to make  it even more awesome . Here's another of my suggestions: When walking their dogs, PDXers should have to wear hoodies that communicate their dog politics.  For example, a green hoodie could express that your dog can both play and "say hello" to other dogs, a yellow could mean that your dog can say hello, but not play, and a red would mean that you don't want your dog to have anything to do with other dogs.  We could probably come up with others, but just these would make dogwalking much less stressful.

The spiking of the apple cider from the farmers market with Fireball cinnamon whiskey has been completed. All systems are go.

They're packing up the PSU Farmers Market. I already miss it.

If you are interested in Bike Share (I am), you should go here and add or like locations where you'd like to see Bike Share locations.  Myself, I'm interested in Bike Share locations that would allow me to take transit/bike to Forest Park and not have to drive. It's really difficult to do so. I added a pair at the Mt. Saint Helens / Saltzman entrance to the park at the 16 stop. I don't know the park super-well yet, though, so would appreciate advice on this. http://goo.gl/AVxED

Couldn't stand to be near news sources today, so I went for a walk in Forest Park and got lost. Although I hiked in the park this summer, this is the first time I've gotten lost.  Probably won't be the last, though.

The red tail-lights of the cars slowly snaking down the 405 outside my window look like holiday lights. I wish I could get a picture, but I don't have a good enough camera.

Oh, Texas. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/13/us-usa-crime-texas-idUSBRE8BB1TM20121213?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FoddlyEnoughNews+%28Reuters+Oddly+Enough%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Now the fog is coming in, but earlier this is how it looked out of my window. I also caught a glimpse of Mt. Hood up on Terwilliger. I'm posting it because yesterday a lady was complaining about the rain, and I said that I didn't think it had been all that bad, and we'd had some sun here and there, and she said,  "NO! The sun NEVER comes out."  So, she was wrong, because there's blue sky, right there in the picture.

Weren't we a finalist for this at one point....? http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/12/google-fiber-eric-schmidt/

One would think a simple gradebook program for educators would be one of the simplest programs in the world to write. But I have now used three different ones in my career and they have been uniformly terrible. I'm talking can't-trust-the-math terrible. What on Earth is the issue?

Last night I went to a holiday party thrown by my building by the South Park Blocks. I learned that there are people still living in this building who have lived here since the 1950s. Sadly, they were not at the party, but how much would I love to talk to them about what it was like here during this?  http://orhistory.com/archives/255

I heard a rumor that Have Trunk Will Travel is going to take ownership of Elephants Delicatessan, Elephants in the Park, Flying Elephants, and this baby elephant!

Off to Elephants in Northwest for my work Christmas party!

I have heard many frustrated Dallas Cowboys fans say "Man, the Cowboys can't get arrested!" The overwhelming weight of years of evidence shows this statement to be factually incorrect.

Why would you go to the dog park if you do not want your dog to play with other dogs? This keeps happening to us.  Dogs wrestle; that's how they play.  They are not fighting, and they are probably not going to get hurt.

The very words "Fiscal Cliff" are starting to make my eyes glaze over. Could we start calling it something else?  "Fiscal Velociraptor," maybe, or "Fiscal Cthulu."

I hope we get noise controls for Communities soon. I have the volume turned all the way down on all but a few of my circles; I only want a few in my main feed and use it for a very specific purpose. Communities will make it impossibly noisy there.

Re: Drew Wallner's post on "Portland" community. Maybe you could contact them about consolidating? Originally shared by Brian Matiash IMPORTANT NEWS!!! - COMMUNITY CONSOLIDATION! We've all seen a mass deluge of new communities sprout up in the past day, ever since Google opened this wonderful feature up publicly. And true to form, it has taken off blazingly fast. This is both a good and bad thing. On one hand, there have been a lot of communities with the goal of truly helping like-minded members. On the other hand, there has also been an inevitable overlap in such communities. So, Elia Locardi and I are taking the first step to remedy this in hope of inspiring others to do the same. We're consolidating our groups into one. Both groups aim to foster growth in photo post processing and stylization. Both are warm communities with caring moderators and members. There is no need for two groups. So, I've elected to close down this group and will move to Elia's ...

Austin at Wallace Dog Park, Portland, OR.

Latest update of Chrome wouldn't load web pages at all.  Had to dial it back a couple of months and turn off auto-update; now working fine.  Weird.