Life Is Joyous; Life Is Cruel

When I included a photo of Smokey on my Christmas post last month, I knew he was sick, but I didn’t know how bad it was. In fact, beneath that gorgeous coat of his he had lost 20 percent of his body weight in two months. We were desperately trying to feed him anything he would eat but it turned out his digestive system had simply shut down and he died the day after New Years.

Smokey was born on April 1 2011 and saw his first snow in May 2011.

Having gone through this before, I thought it would be easier, but it’s not. I’m not religious, but the best way I can describe it is I feel like I’ve lost part of my soul. Continue reading

Pulling the Pin

I started this blog 17 years ago today and since then have put up nearly 4,000 posts. Today, I’m taking the next step towards retirement by ending my practice of posting nearly every weekday.

Is this the origin of the phrase “pulling the pin”? Maybe not but as a railfan it is nice to think so. Photo by Ben Franske.

I still have more posts planned. I’ve written two more major reports that I hope will be published soon and will post them here. I expect to continue monitoring new releases of transportation, housing, and census data and report on them here. I also need to write at least one more chapter in The Education of an Iconoclast. Continue reading

Smokey Wishes You a Safe & Happy Holiday

Smokey the Antiplanning dog joins the Antiplanner and other members of the Antiplanning family in wishing you a safe and happy holiday and a wonderful new year.

Smokey was born near Austin, Texas and was reliably judged to be the cutest dog in the world by some young girls I met in an Austin park in 2011. He is still pretty handsome and it is hard to believe he has been with us for 12 years. Continue reading

Have a Safe and Happy Holiday

This Fourth of July is a four-day weekend for many and a record 50 million Americans are expected to travel to celebrate, including more than 43 million by auto. Please keep in mind the latest highway accident data and drive carefully to wherever you are going.

Once you arrive, remember: only you can prevent forest fires, which means avoiding fireworks in dry areas. Fireworks start over 19,000 fires a year including a 47,000-acre fire in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge in 2017. The Forest Service urges people to use red, white, and blue silly string instead of fireworks, though even that is controversial.

With these cautions in mind, I hope you have a great holiday.

Happy Holidays

The Antiplanner and Smokey the Antiplanning Dog wish you a happy and safe holiday and a wonderful New Year. Please free to download my 2023 calendar (16.4-MB) featuring my favorite photos of Oregon wild areas taken in 2022.

I used to take it for granted that each year will be better than the previous one. That hasn’t been true for the last three years, but maybe 2023 will buck the trend.

The Antiplanner Has Been Hacked

Someone has inserted malicious code into some of the blog posts on the Antiplanner as well as my other blog, Streamliner Memories, plus a third blog that I haven’t posted to in several years. The code is mostly invisible to users, but I can find it in the WordPress editor. The code consists of some ramblings about cialis inserted into the middle of the post plus some random numbers — hexadecimal? — at the end of the post. So far, the code doesn’t seem to be dangerous to users, but that could change.

In the past, when this site was hacked, my web server would do a scan for malware and send me the results, allowing me to erase or replace malicious files. Now, my server says they won’t do anything unless I pay them $300 a year per web site. Various security companies on the web say they will scan the site for malicious files; when I do that, they all report there are no malicious files but if I pay them $300 to $500 a year they will guarantee to clean out the malicious file they couldn’t find.

I am uncertain what to do about this. Although I only plan to post to the Antiplanner once a week or so, I’d like to leave past posts for people who want access to the data and articles I’ve published. I’ve continued to post to Streamliner Memories every day and I’d hate to lose that.

So it seems I have to choose between paying someone hundreds of dollars to clean up the sites; shutting down the sites; moving the sites to a new web server that might not charge me as much to keep the site infection-free; or figuring out how to fix the sites myself. If any readers have any ideas or experience with this, please leave a note in the comments or send me an email.