Posted inSports

Oregon State football, thanks for a great season

It felt wonderful to watch Oregon State play Florida in today's Las Vegas Bowl and have the most worrisome part of the game be whether the Beavers would hold the Gators scoreless, thereby ending Florida's NCAA-record 435 game scoring streak. I was rooting for this to happen, but Florida kicked a 40 yard field goal with 37 seconds left. Oh, well, that was about the only thing that didn't go right in Oregon State's 30-3 victory. A missed extra point was no big deal. I've got to admit that early in this year's football season I was more of an…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Elon Musk’s Twitter antics are hurting Tesla’s image

Until Elon Musk bought Twitter and started acting like a right-wing maniac, I had a favorable opinion of Musk. Sure, he had some annoying quirks. That comes with being one of the richest people on the planet. But overall I viewed Musk as an eccentric genius who was doing good things for the world. He made Tesla into a great company, jumpstarting the electric car revolution sorely needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  And his SpaceX company has made great strides in developing innovative advances in rockets, including booster stages that can land themselves and be reused. SpaceX also is…
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Posted inSalem

Salem City Club examines struggles of local journalism

Today's Salem City Club program featured two local journalists, Les Zaitz, editor of the Salem Reporter, and Dick Hughes, who used to be the editorial page editor for the Statesman Journal and now is a freelance journalist. The title of the program was "The Truth -- An Endangered Species?" But since journalists deal in the truth, and local journalism is struggling, Zaitz and Hughes made clear that the question really is whether local newspapers and other news sources are endangered. Hughes started off by sharing some disturbing statistics. (Hopefully I've got them mostly right, since I'm just a blogger with…
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Posted inSalem

Saffron Supply Company lives on in new location

A few days ago the Salem Reporter had a story about demolition beginning on the building that used to house the Saffron Supply Company and Union Gospel Mission.  That saddened me. At the time I'd forgotten that Saffron Supply wasn't going out of business, but had moved to 1450 Front Street NE. Indeed, the Saffron Supply web site now shows their new location.  That makes me happy.  I first started going to Saffron Supply after my wife and I moved in 1990 to a house in rural south Salem. It needed a lot of work, including drainage from the gutter…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Web/Tech

I love Twitter. Elon Musk, not so much.

When people ask if I'm going to cancel my Twitter account now that Elon Musk is in charge of the company, I say, Absolutely not. Then I explain why. I love Twitter. It's one of the first things I check on my iPhone when I wake up in the morning. It's one of the last things I check before I go to bed.  But I rarely use Twitter directly. I use a third-party app (Tweetbot) that collects tweets from the individuals and organizations that I follow, then presents them in a clean easy-to-use format. I never see tweets from anyone…
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Posted inSports

Oregon’s football loss to Oregon State hurt a lot

In sports, as in other aspects of life, there are losses that sting more than others. When a team you want to have win loses, the pain of that loss depends on various factors. For me, it has much to do with the familiar adage, "They left everything on the field." Meaning, the team did all that it could to win. Maximum effort. Minimum mistakes. Playing hard. Playing smart. If both teams leave everything on the field, I view that as a great game, one that neither side deserved to lose, but one team had to (unless the game is…
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Posted inEntertainment

My liberal defense of Yellowstone, the Paramount show

When it comes to my TV watching, I care a lot more about entertainment than political correctness. This explains why liberal me, who was unalterably opposed to the Bush administration's use of torture during the so-called War on Terror, could cheer on Jack Bauer in the 24 series when he'd use the cord of a table lamp to shock a suspected terrorist into divulging details of a dirty bomb threat. It also explains why I'm a huge fan of Yellowstone, the Paramount series now in Season 5, even though a TIME magazine story asked a pertinent question in its title:…
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Posted inSports

Yesterday Oregon’s Bo Nix inspired everyone hobbled by a problem

My wife doesn't like watching sports. I've tried to explain to her that what makes a game especially interesting to me isn't what's happening on the field, but what's going on in the lives of certain key players. So a football game, say, isn't just a bunch of guys running around bashing each other. It can also be a drama of sorts if you follow the teams closely enough to understand the main characters. Yesterday's game between Oregon and Utah was a great example of this. Sure, I was pleased that Oregon pulled out a 20-17 victory. But it was…
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Posted inWeblogs

If you can’t read this blog post, it’s Typepad’s fault

I was one of the first people to start blogging with Typepad, way back in 2003 or 2004. Definitely 2004, but I sort of remember using a different blogging service in 2003, and that I copied those first posts into my HinesSight blog on Typepad when I switched to it. Now I'm super-frustrated with Typepad for the first time in those 19 or 18 years. Until now Typepad has been quite reliable. There have been brief outages when it was offline, none lasting more than half a day or so to my best recollection. However, at the moment Typepad has…
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Posted inMiscellany

Why this blog didn’t show up for 36 hours

From about 9 pm my time last Saturday night to around 9 am today (Monday) Typepad, my blogging service, was offline due to scheduled maintenance that had problems. Typepad has undone the changes, but some images and the name of this blog still aren't showing up. Hopefully things will be completely back to normal soon.
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Posted inHome life Humor

How a single stink bug cost us $430 today

Bloggers like me have to choose our subjects to write about with care. Until noon today, I was pondering between a $300 million Salem bond measure, advice on who to vote for in the midterms, and the increased risk of nuclear war due to Putin's Ukraine threats. But after Tim Paquin of Precision Garage Door Service diagnosed what had caused our garage door opener to stop working, I realized that this was my chance to contribute to the accumulated store of knowledge regarding garage door opener repairs. In short, consider that a stink bug is the culprit. Here's what Paquin…
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Posted inSports

Deep thoughts about OSU’s last minute win over Stanford

My wife, Laurel, like lots of non-sports fans, can't understand the appeal of watching football games. Or any games, for that matter, aside from the Puppy Bowl that's held every Super Bowl day for those who are more interested in watching young dogs run around on a playing field than grown men. What I try to convey to Laurel, with decidedly mixed success, is that sports becomes as fascinating as a engrossing novel, movie, or TV show if you follow a team closely enough to know what a game means, and who the main characters in the drama are. Drama…
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Posted inHumor

Silvertongue Apple-peal is a delicious Silverton satire

If you're looking for humor in all the wrong places -- I sure am -- rejoice! For the 2022 edition of the highly entertaining Silvertongue Apple-peal has hit the streets of Silverton with a satirical nuclear bomb (tactical warfare variety, to avoid complete devastation of the populace due to excessive funny bone tickling). Fortunately for those of us who aren't anywhere near a Silverton street, the Apple-peal is available for download on the newsletter's web site. Or by clicking on this ever-so-handy PDF file.Download Apple-peal 2022 To whet your appetite for the Apple-peal, here's a screenshot of the front page…
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Posted inHome life Salem

I just chose Pfeifer Roofing and Leaf Blaster for gutter protection

Like me, probably you've seen ads for gutter protection systems. There are quite a few of them: Leaf Filter, Gutter Shutter, Leaf Guard -- to name a few.  I've looked into some of them over the years. Since we moved into our non-easy care house in rural south Salem that's surrounded by large oak and fir trees, for about thirty years I've been cleaning our gutters via a leaf blower. Even though parts of our house are two level and so quite a ways off the ground, I've been comfortable with using a backpack Stihl blower, walking judiciously along the…
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Posted inSports

“Pushing the pile” rule doomed Oregon State against USC

While yesterday's Oregon vs. Washington State football game had an emotional arc for Ducks fans like me that went pre-game optimism - most of second half despair -- last few minutes elation (amazing comeback by Oregon), the Oregon State vs. USC game was pretty much the opposite. John Canzano, the Oregonian sports columnist who now opines in a freelance manner, shared an email with his followers titled "Oregon State snatches defeat from the jaws of victory." Canzano singled out four interceptions thrown by OSU quarterback Chance Nolan as a key reason for this. But what grabbed my attention as the almost-end-of-game…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

I’m not an economist, but isn’t unemployment worse than inflation?

Usually my response to bad economic news is to ignore it as much as possible. After all, what goes up must come down, and what goes down must come up. So freaking out over short-term worries about inflation, unemployment, the stock market, gas prices, or whatever generally isn't justified. Typically, when things look to be the darkest, the economic sun is about to turn brighter. Thus even though I find it difficult to look at my iPhone's stock market app first thing in the morning, because I don't want to get depressed before I've had breakfast (might as well wait…
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Posted inFilm Sustainability

Elemental is a film with wildfire lessons for Oregon

It was purely coincidence, but there was still something wonderfully strange to have Ralph Bloemers, the Executive Producer of Elemental, a gripping documentary about wildfires, talking last Friday night in our living room with my wife and I about the film while we and other neighbors were worried about the Vitae Springs wildfire in south Salem that started that day and had led to a Level 2 (Get Set) evacuation order that extended almost to our neighborhood adjacent to the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge. Bloemers parked his camper van at our house Friday night since he had to be both at…
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Posted inEntertainment Humor

Taylor Tomlinson’s stand-up comedy heals my frazzled psyche

My big problem with life is... (drumroll please)... LIFE.  Meaning, insofar as I know what I mean, but now that I just wrote this blog's topic sentence, I'm stuck with explaining it, no matter how many problems get fixed in my life, new ones pop up like a perpetual motion machine designed by a sadist. I suspect most people feel this way. So what are we to do?  Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll only can take us so far, especially if we're (OK, me) so old, sex is starting to  look like the car that zipped by in the other lane…
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Posted inSalem

Russ & Delana Beaton’s 61st anniversary celebration

Tonight Russ and Delana Beaton celebrated 61 years of marriage at the Willamette Heritage Center's Dye House. Their children, Lynn, Alan, and Brenda, organized the event in a masterful fashion. Laurel, my wife, and I have known the Beatons for a long time, over 25 years. If there's one word that describes them, its nice. If you want two words, nice and caring. Going for three, nice and caring and competent.  After a moving slide show of their married life narrated in a poetic rhyming fashion by their children, other people spoke about Russ and Delana. When a microphone was…
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Posted inBooks

My unusual joy in reading a big thick novel, The Magus

A few days ago I felt the satisfaction of climbing a large mountain. Exhausted. Exhilarated. Satisfied. Except my mountain was a big thick book, The Magus by John Fowles. It isn't that I'm unacquainted with big thick books. They're just usually non-fiction. It'd been a long time since I'd tackled a literary novel like this one. I'm not sure how The Magus ended up on a shelf where my unread books resided. I recall hearing that it was a classic thriller of sorts. This is the Amazon description. Widely considered John Fowles's masterpiece, The Magus is "a dynamo of suspense…
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