rob’s blog

I checked out the 2006 Portland Car Show today with a friend and wow, how totally unimpressive. It was like a huge car lot you pay $10 to get into. No Ferraris! The best they could do was an underwhelming Bentley. I wasn’t even enticed to take pictures.

I do have some rather funny videos of a super sleezy guy talking up the Lexus brand, and a Ronald McDonald grabbing his ass in front of a crowd full of kids.

See the Ronald Video

Sleezy Car Show Guy

There has been nothing short of an uproar regarding the recent changes to Tribe.net’s design and interface. Longtime users of the site began viral reactionary content creation which is making effective use of community building to voice discord with the direction of a website.

The changes were rolled out on January 18th and the response was violent “Tribe: New and Unimproved,” “Revert Tribe Now,” and “I Hate the New Tribe Look” sprang up and garnered members rather than the offically sanctioned comment tribe, “Tribe’s New Look.”

Many users of the site reacted by flaming the changes. The more interesting comments were those that voiced dissapointment in the change and commented that they felt especially wronged because of their personal investment or personal equity which they had invested.

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I have been ordained as a minister! Yes! I now am qualified for the following:

1. Perform Baptisms
2. Performing Weddings
3. Performing and Speaking at Funerals
4. Visiting the sick
5. Counseling
6. Establishing New Congregations
7. Ordaining others

I have already done items two, three, four and five–which leaves baptisms, creating a congregation and ordaining my own clergymen and women.

So, to my friends and those I do not know, please let me sprinkle water on your child. I will say some nice words too. I haven’t decided what to name my church yet, but I expect all of you to show up on Sunday for the prayer and the basket passing.

A lot of people complain about Mondays. People say, “I have to go back to work!” and give this unhappy face that elicits pity from anyone else who has ever had to “go back to work.”

But I was just thinking–”Wow. Monday. I made it through the weekend. I’m still alive! That’s great!” Mondays should be celebrated.

I love the service, but Sirius Satellite Radio provides a bad experience for subscribers who listen over the internet. The reasons are, poor quality audio, restricted access to certain channels (i.e Howard 100) and lack of features such as playlists. The reason Siruis provides bad service is because they are concerned about subscription piracy. This entry will explain the three main problems with Sirius Satellite Radio’s internet service for subscribers and why they exist.

Problem: Sirius provides a poorly designed flash-based interface for listening on the web. The flash Sirius player lacks proper internet radio features such as playlists and links to artist information.

Solution: Abandon flash interface and use a database driven page that offers information about what is being broadcast along with multiple audio streams. An example of a station that has a great internet radio offering is Seattle’s KEXP.org. KEXP offers a fully archived song playlist along with DJ comments.

Problem: Sirius provides a very low quality, 32kb st

ream for internet listeners. This point is wholly unacceptable because bandwidth is very cheap, especially in bulk. Rather than provide their subscribers high quality internet streams you get the same low quality sound you get driving around in your

car.

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I’ve had some pretty awesome New Years Eve’s.  Last year I was with close friends at a great house party, the year before we were at Kells.  This year we decided to try out Pioneer Courthouse Square–big mistake!  It sucked.  Someone is to blame! 

Read this article to get a taste of exactly how lame our city commisioner’s office is.  Probably the worst part of the article is the author’s attempt to make it sound like the one arrest from last year justifies canceling the event.

I sent the following letter to the editors of the Portland Tribune, Oregonian and Portland Monthly:

UPDATE 1/ 11/05: The Portland Tribune published my letter in the 1/10/05 edition. 

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