Posted inCurrent affairs Web/Tech Weblogs

Social media reform is needed, but the market mainly should decide

Today NBC's Meet the Press devoted its Sunday morning hour entirely to a discussion of social media: what's wrong with the way things are now on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and such, along with what needs to be done to fix those problems. It's a complicated subject with no easy answers. Here's what stuck in my mind after watching the program. Algorithms. Social media sites typically use computer algorithms to determine what gets shown to users. (Twitter is an exception, at least if a third party app is used to access Twitter, which I do. I only see tweets from…
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Posted inSports

Oregon pulls out a nail-biter over North Carolina in Holiday Bowl

After Oregon lost to Oregon State in the last game of the regular season, dooming Oregon's chance to play USC for the Pac-12 championship and potentially earn a Rose Bowl berth, going to the Holiday Bowl in San Diego struck me as a crappy consolation prize. And for most of today's game against North Carolina in the Holiday Bowl, that assessment seemed right-on. I was totally prepared for Oregon to lose, end up 9-4 on the season, and look forward to better times next year, since this season would have ended in a disappointing fashion. Then the fourth quarter happened.…
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Posted inLiving with a catheter

I’m now quite confident that diet affects how easily I can insert a urinary catheter

A bit over six months ago I theorized in a blog post, "Diet could play a role when having a problem inserting a urinary catheter."  I asked my urologist if he thought diet could play a role in the difficulty I sometimes have inserting a catheter. His answer: "Maybe." Not very helpful, as that left it to me to figure out my own answer.  After a lot of experimenting with different foods (I'm a health-minded 73 year old vegetarian), I'm pretty confident that yes, at least for me, diet does affect how easy it is for me to insert a…
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Posted inHome life Salem

After Oregon’s great ice storm of 2021, I’m glad the 2022 version was milder

If I didn't know what post-traumatic stress felt like before, I sure do now. Because as soon as I heard that a significant freezing rain event was headed our way, I couldn't get thoughts and feelings of the Great Ice Storm of February 2021 out of my mind. Along with hundreds of thousands of other Oregonians, our home got about 5/8 of an inch of ice in that horrendous weather disaster. We lost lots of trees, including two big branches from an ancient white oak. And our electricity was out for 12 days. Not fun, obviously.  It's difficult to forecast…
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Posted inHome life

Our 2022 Christmas Letter has a theme of falling (not in love, on the ground)

Given our age, somewhere between 40 and 100, like almost equidistant, it becomes more difficult with every passing year to find a Christmas Letter theme that doesn't sound like it was written by a couple as old as we are. So in 2022 I embraced my inner geezer and chose to write about our unexciting senior citizen lives. A central theme is falling. But there's also a paragraph about our dog, Mooka. Something for everyone! Well, assuming you're somehow interested in the things we are. If this Christmas letter doesn't push a Wow button for you, click here for a…
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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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