Richard & Stephanie Sipe

Do your part to save Joe the plumber, visit http://savejoetheplumber.net and donate NOW! He needs our help to stave off the Obama attack machine.

UPDATE: Joe has been saved! Thank You! $1,826 was raised to pay Joe’s taxes and help send him on the Campaign Trail!

              

Stephanie and I have owned our Eagle Crest Chalet for three years now and it has been a great experience. Everything was going along very smoothly with lots of happy renters and great success until we got a little too successful for the Eagle Crest Resort to handle. Seems we made it to the top spot for a few search terms in Google and Eagle Crest got jealous. As large companies do when they can’t win playing fair they resort to lawyers.

We have been forced to change our domain name and then of course our business name because they felt Eagle Crest Getaway violated their trademark. Not noticing the fact that there are tens of other Eagle Crests out there including eaglecrest.com and eaglecrestgc.com which are neither owned by the Eagle Crest Resort! We felt that the name Eagle Crest was merely a location and that location was where we owned our home and ran our Vacation Rental. We never pretended to be the resort and made it VERY clear on our home page that we owned and operated a single vacation rental that was located in the resort. But alas we have neither the time nor the money for a legal battle and when trademarks are concerned the big companies always win (can I get a Sam Buck’s Coffee please? … Not Any Longer).

Long story short now for the big reveal …. the new name of our Vacation Rental is …. Central Oregon Getaway! We wanted to keep the Getaway in the name and not have any more lawyers breathing down our backs so Central Oregon Getaway is the new name!

If any of my readers want to help feel free to paste any of the links below somewhere on your site to help get us back the three years we are loosing by switching domains.

<a href="http://www.centraloregongetaway.com" title="Eagle Crest">Eagle Crest</a>
<a href="http://www.centraloregongetaway.com" title="Eagle Crest Getaway">Eagle Crest Getaway</a>
<a href="http://www.centraloregongetaway.com" title="Eagle Crest Vacation Rental">Eagle Crest Vacation Rental</a>
<a href="http://www.centraloregongetaway.com" title="Eagle Crest Oregon">Eagle Crest Oregon</a>

If you do link send me a comment so I can return the favor

Technorati Tags: Eagle Crest, Eagle Crest Getaway, Eagle Crest Resort

              

Never being able to pass up a generous offer of free beer and 4-square in a parking lot I stopped by the Portland Mercury building for some fun before the KATU sponsored Portland Blogger Meet-Up. The beautiful weather and promise of beer led to an above expected turnout of 3 bloggers and I think 6 Mercury staff and friends.

The PBR (Thats Pabst Blue Ribbon for you not in the know) in the case with ice on top and chips on the pavement was a classy touch that really set the mood. The Spider Man ball was rockin’ the 4-square court and things just were starting to get crazy as the time arrived for us to head across the street to the KATU studios. I did have time to give Matt Davis from the Mercury an impromptu Photoshop lesson where he created an awesome animated gif of the 4-square action. An experience he said was:

I should also mention that creating a gif image is about as satisfying as I imagine it must be to actually give birth to a real life, human child.

Check out my PDXMeetup Picts on Flickr

              

Seems like the folks at KATU are reaching out to the blogger community. They are sponsoring a meetup at their studios in downtown.

Channel 2 is hosting a meet-up of Portland-area bloggers and you’re invited!

KATU wants to get to know the blogging community and is interested in joining the conversation. There’s no agenda, other than to enjoy some food and beverages courtesy of our hosts. Meet fellow bloggers, view (and photograph!) the television studios and have some fun!

The free food has me interested as well as seeing the TV studio. A little interesting that it is right in the middle of the evening newscast. I would think they would be worried about a new media VS old media throwdown in the parking lot!

Technorati Tags: KATUmeetup, blog

              

After their marketing stunt in Boston the two Aqua Teen Hunger Force gorilla advertisers were arrested and charged with nasty nasty things. During their press conference they refused to answer any questions that were NOT HAIR RELATED. The press did not find this funny at all.

The full Boston Mooninites news story on the press conference is here and you can see the infamous Hair Press Conference video here. An expert of the Fox news story is below:

Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, ignored a barrage of reporters’ questions about their role in the botched scheme and talked, instead, about mohawks, dreadlocks, Beatle cuts and Afros as their attorney, Michael Rich, stood by with an incredulous look on his face.

View The Boston Terrorist Press Conference | digg story

Technorati Tags: Boston Mooninites, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Press

              

Geocaching is our favorite hobby and is great fun for the whole family! We started geocaching a year ago after a friend introduced it to us. Geocaching involves finding hidden caches using GPS coordinates posted to the Geocacing.com website. Inside the caches is a log and usually something to trade. Geocacing.com provides a utility where you can click a check box and download selected geocaches to a Geocaching specific .loc file. Usually this file is used by a Geocaching provided program that allows you to download the waypoints to your GPS unit if you have the necessary cords and software (which we don’t of course) but if provides all the necessary information about the location of the cache. If you look at the file you will notice that it is an XML formatted file which means it is very easy to transfer the file between different programs.

To Download Geocache Waypoints from .loc file to Microsoft Streets & Trips 2004:
1) Go to Geocaching.com and click the check box(es) next to all the caches you wish to upload to Streets & Trips.
2) Click on Download Waypoints
3) When prompted save the file somewhere you will be able to find again
4) Browse to where that file is located and open it with Microsoft Excel
– To do this select “Open With” or if prompted select “Choose from program list”
– Select Microsoft Excel
5) Now that you have the file open delete the first row (Select from the File Menu: Edit – Delete)
6) Save this file as a .xls Excel file
7) Open up Microsoft Streets & Trips
Click on Data from the File Menu and Select “Import Data Wizard”
9) Now you are going to set up the import with the correct columns
10) You want to Set the Latitude (Column Header = /waypoint/coord/@lat) and Longitude (Column Header = /waypoint/coord/@lon) columns to the correct ones
11) I also set the GC#### (Column Name = /waypoint/name/@id) as Name and the Cache Name (Column Header = /waypoint/name) as Name2 so they will appear on the Streets & Trips Thumbtack
12) Set all of the other columns as
13) Click Finish and thats it now you have all your Geocaches marked on Streets & Trips as named thumbtacks on your map

Note: My wife really considers this Geo-Cheating but sometimes it is nice to get an idea of your surrounding caches and find a way to those really hard to find ones. Just make sure you keep your caching maps hidden if your Geocaching partner(s) feel the same way.

Keep on Caching!

              

I LOVE FREE WIFI! There I have said it, I feel better. No matter where I go or what I am doing it always seems like I need internet access. Working as a Software Engineer on mainly internet applications doesn’t help. Anyways when in Long Beach check out the Long Beach Coffee Roasters of 811 Pacific Ave. It is a little hard to find, so as you are driving through Long Beach it is about 100 yards on the left after the light in a little strip mall. The sign is not that great but never fear if you pass it there is a huge sign on the back If you are ever on the North Shore of Hawaii Turtle Bay resort has free WIFI in their lobby and at the beach! Yes have your adult beverage and do some coding…hmmm not a good idea maybe just check your email.

              

Merry Christmas …. I know I am wild to say such a potentially dangerous thing but since I am feeling wild …. Merry Christmas If you are offended by this greating of joy and hope, I am sorry that you don’t yet know the joy of CHRIST.