I’ve lived in Portland, Ore. for 19 years, North Portland for 8, but this is the first time I’ve seen a vessel leaving dry dock at Portland Shipyard.

This is a time lapse of the 627 ft. tanker Washington Voyager leaving dry dock 3. This is about 2 hours condensed into about 2 minutes, with music by Stan Freberg. Enjoy!

Sources have revealed that the Oregonian is preparing for a major round of cost-cutting, which will include closing all but two bureaus (south and west). Buyout offers are expected in the fall, with the goal of a cutting 50 positions company-wide, including 30 in the newsroom.

As the paper struggles with declining readership and ad revenue along with the rest of the daily print journalism industry, it is amazing that they still refuse to enter the digital media market in a serious way, as every other mainstream media outlet in Portland has. Blame it on their parent company, Newhouse, which has kept all of its papers at arms length from their family of sister companies (like OregonLive) that operate on the Web and publish selected content from the papers.

This kind of stodgy, tentative relationship to the changing media landscape is quickly making the O a living dinosaur.

Yesterday was a sad, sad day for our nation state. The Democratic-led Senate voted to completely cover up and excuse the Bush administration’s illegal wire tapping.

Leading the charge, voting for cloture (despite an earlier pledge to support a filibuster of such legislation) was Senator Obama of Illinois. Yes, that Obama.

Front-row seats — great view!

The opening act: personal fireworks all across Vancouver.

I never photographed fireworks before, so I experimented with shutter speeds of 1/4 to 20 seconds. The photo above was a 20 second exposure, which shows the drift of the barge (lights in the lower left-hand corner of the frame).

The finale, shot at 1/6 second.

We saw the touring version of the Tony winning “Avenue Q” in Portland Saturday.

Oh. My. God. Best Broadway show I’ve ever seen. Here’s a sample (poor video quality, but you get the idea).

Portland’s first Sunday Parkways event, which closed a six mile loop of North Portland streets to motor vehicle traffic, was a blast. Best of all, it was just a couple blocks from our house. We’re hoping this becomes a regular event!

The Portland Winter Hawks owners managed to survive their audit by the WHL, which means they’ll probably be playing in Salem by 2010.

In other WHL news, the city of Moose Jaw and the league have reached an agreement keeping their franchise in Moose Jaw, predicated on the city building a new arena to replace the “crushed can,” one of the smallest arenas in the league.

The prairie town I grew up in wasn’t exactly like Moose Jaw, but I can relate.

I’m a bad blogger. Bad, I tell you! But I’m not the only one. Tillman tagged me with this one.

A List of Fives

What were you doing five years ago?

Not worrying about the woeful state of our public schools.

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1. Indian pickle
2. fresh, seasonal fruit
3. carrots
4. chocolate chip oatmeal cookies
5. chili cheese Fritos

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1. Pay off all debt for all of my extended family.
2. Establish trust funds for my children and nieces.
3. Endow a foundation to promote real equity in public education.
4. Endow a foundation to promote electoral reform and educate US citizens on the benefits of proportional representation.
5. Quit my freakin’ job and hang out with my family.

What are five of your bad habits?

1. Procrastination.

What are five places where you have lived?

1. Pittsburgh
2. Iowa City
3. Some summers and school vacations in Littleton, Colorado
4. Cedar Bluff, Iowa
5. Portland, Oregon

What are five jobs you’ve had?

1. Seed corn detassler.
2. Produce clerk.
3. Band instrument repairman.
4. Sheet music sales clerk.
5. Software engineer.

This past winter, I had a little falling out with Metblogs. I’d been writing for them for a while, when BOOM! Metblogs central decided to relaunch the site with a plethora of technical issues. As a technologist, I found that annoying.

But what really got to me (and a bunch of other writers) was the new registration requirement for comments. A couple of us were summarily “fired” by Metblogs honcho Sean Bonner (I subsequently had my account re-enabled) for complaining about this, and a bunch of others quit in disgust.

Ugly words were exchanged between the rump of the Portland Metblogs crew and those publicly critical of the changes. Talk immediately began of starting up something to replace Portland Metblogs, with total local autonomy, to replace what was once a lively discussion forum.

As I suspected it would, Portland Metblogs has been dying a long, slow public death ever since. New posts are rare. Comments even rarer. Portland Metblogs has long since faded into irrelevance in the Portland blogosphere.

I made one attempt to spark things up, and proposed positioning the site as one of public journalism. Though respondents to my poll overwhelmingly supported the idea of public journalism, the idea went over like a lead balloon with a couple MB stalwarts. They clearly didn’t understand the idea of public journalism vs. social networking, and certainly didn’t appreciate me rocking their little boat.

It was pretty much at that point that I decided I wasn’t doing myself any favors by continuing to contribute to the site. And it’s only gone downhill since then.

Now, just over three months later, it looks like a group of former Portland Metblogs contributors (including “captains” Betsy Richter and dieselboi) have started their own site. With open comments.

There could still be hope for Metblogs. My suggestions of public journalism, open comments and revenue sharing to attract quality writers were met with hostility when I floated them before. Metblogs could be a voice in the Portland digital media milieu. But most likely it will quietly fade further into irrelevance.

One of the great things about Iowa City is its strong (and long) literary tradition. When it came to saving books at the University of Iowa’s main library, volunteers turned out in droves.