My Los Banos Opinion Pieces and Blogging From the
OurLosBanos.com Staff
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Welcome to the Our Los Banos Blog and Soapbox ARCHIVE. This is older material that was originally posted on the current Our Los Banos Blog site. My Los Banos Opinion Archive contains old editorial content. You are invited to visit the current page for more timely pieces.
| Our Los Banos Blog ARCHIVES -
4-8-2007: Just a quick note to wish everyone a Happy Easter!
3-19-2007 Greetings Everyone, I am rreally sorry I have not kept up with the Our Los Banos
Blog as much as I should... It has been a very very very busy month here and a
lot of the things I post here I have been posting on the forums
. Speaking of the site it does take money to keep it on the air and we are looking for advertisers. If you or anyone you know wants some very focused publicity you might consider advertising with us for the next six months. We are very pleased that though we JUST sent out renewal letters that we are getting a good response from previous advertisers who are re-contracting for the next six month block. Still we can really use more. Site improvements and publicity will be what we spend that money on. Just a little of what we have done in the past several weeks follows: We added a bunch of information to the shopping page for The Frame Shop in downtown. They now offer digital photo restoration and a whole lot more than just picture framing. We retrofitted 715 site pages of the site for the new advertising scheme. We added a new advertiser - Mount Bullion Game Birds always nice to have new advertisers onboard. We sent out renewal offers to current advertisers and offers to those on the waiting list. We created new buttons for placement in the advertising section including one for open enrollment for new advertisers. We will remove that one when we sell the last open ad space. I have revamped the advertising page since new types of advertising slots are now open! New additions were made to to the Shopping in Los Banos section including Connell's Stationery and Serano's Furniture. Wrote a new Restaurant Review: Eddie's Restaurant Built a ew Section - Government & Politics of Los Banos Put together a section on Moving To Los Banos which will give new residents a central place to find resources they need when they first come to Los Banos Ca. Until
next time, 2-21-2007 Greetings Everyone, Well there are several new things to see on the site. In the last week or two we have added all sorts of new goodies. First and foremost there is a new section on Moving To Los Banos which will give new residents a great place to find resources on relocating to our town. We encourage them to use the forums to ask questions as well because we know there are numerous people that would be happy to help answer questions there. Tangentially related to the above is our new Government & Politics of Los Banos California section which actually started as part of the moving in section. I decided to split them in two however. The government section has contact points for your elected officials in Los Banos and should serve as a good resource for those needing to bend a political ear now and then. We have also posted a new restaurant review: Eddie's Restaurant aka: Famous Cafe has been reviewed for the dining section of the OurLosBanos.com site. Please have a look and share your opinions of the review or of Eddie's on our forums. Finally I have made a couple of additions to the Shopping in Los Banos section. If you have not been to that section in a while you might have a look. Our small businesses in Los Banos could use your patronage and you will be rewarded with good service and people that really know their products. I hope that everyone is getting ready for spring! It's time to get out there and dig up the stuff the frost killed this winter and plant your annuals and vegetable gardens, neaten up the front yard and prepare for the wonderful weather that is coming just around the corner! Until
next time, 2-21-2007 Greetings Everyone, I have posted an opinion piece on how I believe the Superintendent of Schools should be chosen for Los Banos. Please click here to read my opinions on this critical issue and then come share your opinions on our forums. Until next time, 2-10-2007 Greetings Everyone, I am pleased to post our latest Los Banos restaurant review. Please have a look at our opinion piece on Island Grinds Hawaiian Barbecue. Until next time,
2-07-2007 Greetings Everyone, It has been kind of busy behind the scenes here at Our Los Banos .com. Lots going on just keeping things together! I am pleased to report that we have paid for web hosting and domain name registration for the year so this resource is going to be available for at least a while longer! he he he! Today I am happy to announce that I have finally added a search capability to this website! You can search for keywords and phrases on OurLosBanos.com by clicking here! Do be warned however that this function is not perfect. The newest things on the site are not listed as this search relies on Google functionality and how long it takes them to 'spider' the website. It is amazing how popular this site has become. We do not release hit counts (pageviews) but let's just say that this has become more than I dreamed and I really do appreciate all of you coming to OurLosBanos.com and taking part in what we have created both on the main site and particularly on the forums! Speaking of which the Los Banos forums have grown quite nicely. We are coming close to having 200 members and have seen over 10,500 articles and notes posted by participants there. If you have not already done so PLEASE do come and participate. It is free and every voice and opinion we add to the forums makes them a better and more interesting resource for everyone! You do not have to participate to enjoy reading them however! You are welcome to read the opinions of the participants and just "lurk" a bit if you like! Either way have a look! Speaking of opinions... We have a new restaurant review posted! We have just reviewed Ming's Chinese Restaurant. Please click here to read our opinions. As always we'd love to hear your comments on this review or any of the OTHER reviews we have written! Just post your opinions on the forums or send us Until next time, 1-20-2007 Greetings Everyone, I am pleased to announce that the Los Banos Christian Church Directory is finally complete ....or as complete as I can make it without direct involvement from each church! Today we finished photographing all of the Christian Churches in town and then rendering the photos for web presentation. We have placed photos of each church in town on their respective pages along with any information we had about that particular church. You
can find the church directory here: Each church page has a place for a blurb on the church depicted. To be perfect this directory needs input from the pastors, elders, priests, or leaders of each church in town. Many have already given us information on their place of worship. Roughly 1/3 of the churches that are represented have sent us a blurb. The rest we would love to hear from. This 'blurb' can be a welcome message, a listing of church or worship hours, a description of the church and it's programs or anything else the leadership would like us to post here. If your church does not have a blurb please feel free to have your pastor or church leaders contact me and I'll be very happy to put whatever information they like on the page about their church. Until next time, 1-20-2007 I am pleased to report that we have posted a new restaurant review. This time we put forth our opinions on the Jesus Mexican Restaurant restaurant. As always we'd love to hear your comments on this review or any of the OTHER reviews we have written! Just post your opinions on the forums or send us Until next time, 1-19-2007 I am pleased to report that we have posted a new restaurant review. This time we put forth our opinions on the Taqueria El Rodeo restaurant on Pacheco. As always we'd love to hear your comments on this review or any of the OTHER reviews we have written! Just post your opinions on the forums or send us an email! We have been pretty quiet lately on the blog chiefly because
of the high participation going on on the forums has been distracting us! :-)
I hope to change that this next week but there is also a lot going on behind the
scenes. We are recoding pages and writing a couple more restaurant reviews. Until
next time, 12-31-2006 Happy
New Year 2007 Until next time, 12-25-2006 I am going to keep this very short and sweet. Merry
Christmas Until next time,
12-18-2006 Well Christmas is almost here and I am happy to say that we practiced what we preached and spend most of our Shopping time and money here in town. As always I was struck with the good service and superb product knowledge of the folks that run the small retail establishments in town. We did not do ALL of our shopping there but we did thoroughly scour downtown and found not a few of our gifts and all of our Christmas cards there. Remember to attend the meeting at city hall this Wednesday! The council is going to vote on who will fill the next seat. Before then however DO call up or email or participate on the forums and let the city council know how you feel! Until next time, What a l 12-10-2006 What a lousy week. I have been sick for way too long now and have not had a chance to do too many improvements to the site. I apologize. I have been able to update the Downtown Shopping Guide just a little bit with new photos of The Frame Shop, Angelo's Shoes, and a new entry for Universal Plumbing. The Los Banos FORUMS have slowed down a bit this weekend. Doubtless everyone is out Christmas Shopping. Now would be a good time to come onboard and introduce yourself if you have anything to contribute we'd love to have you post your opinions! One really cool thing - The operators of a new restaurant in town, Carlie's announced on the forums that they will be opening soon! It was also very nice to see that they solicited YOUR opinions for what could make them a better place to dine even before they opened their doors by posting salient questions on the forum. Great work Carlie's. Until next time,
12-01-2006 Well today is December First and it seems fitting that we should post the OurLosBanos.com Guide to Christmas In Los Banos today! The Guide to Christmas In Los Banos includes sections on shopping, where to find a Christmas Tree, a Christmas Calendar, and some information about a city wide decorating contest offered by 2 of our Los Banos Forum members. This section of the website is expected to expand during the next few weeks all through the Christmas Season so please take a look at it every so often. Remember the Los Banos Christmas Parade is tonight! Until next
time, 11-27-2006 Flash: We have posted a new pictorial of the Swearing In Ceremony at City Hall this morning. The City of Los Banos has sworn in the newly elected officials today. Details can be found on the OurLosBanos.com Political Forum! Until
next time,
November 26, 2006 Greetings Everyone! Back in August when this site opened we posted a section called "WHAT THIS TOWN NEEDS". These opinion piece articles (which are regularly added to) detail what I believe to be unmet needs of the people of Los Banos. http://www.ourlosbanos.com/wttnarchive.html On of those articles was titled A Facelift for A Couple Existing Parks. In that article I detail three Los Banos parks that are in less than adequate shape. In fact one, Catholic Park could be called downright crummy.
Catholic park has been renovated. New equipment was put in and a wonderful tribute to Mrs. Spevak has appeared along with two new trees on either side of the tribute. I have updated the What
This Town Needs article with some new photographs of Catholic Park so you can
all see what it was like and the wonderful transformation that has occurred since
I wrote that piece. I wanted to share my absolute delight that the City of Los Banos and or the Parks and Rec department saw fit to deal with what was an eyesore not far from downtown. They did it in a wonderful way and they also provided a really special tribute to a woman who by all accounts made a difference in our community through her wonderful contributions to the Arbor Day and other tree planting programs and initiatives. Again I say.. GOOD JOB LOS BANOS! Until
next time,
November 23, 2006 The staff of OurLosBanos.com wants to wish everyone a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving. Take some time to be with your families and enjoy yourselves. HAPPY
November 21, 2006 Greetings Everyone Well with Thanksgiving only two days away I thought it would be interesting to start a thread to find out what all of you are thankful for this year. I suppose I will start. First, I am thankful for the continued love and support of my wife. Without her this site and my life would not be 1/2 as good as they are. Second, I am thankful for the health of my family and my father who has always given me love and support beyond what most dads do. If I can be half the father he was to me I will consider myself a success. A little closer to home I am thankful for the wonderful reception this city has given OurLosBanos.com. We were not sure when we started out how well this would be received but judging from our logs and also from the people that we have talked to at various events and in our travels around town we have heard pretty much only positive things. I am also VERY thankful for the folks on this forum. I truly mean that. I am flattered that the Mayor himself posts here and council members and candidates follow suit. I think that as a group we made a difference in the last election if only through the positive debate and interaction and I think this is a very positive thing. The folks that post on this forum tend to be active in the community and they tend to honestly care about our city. I am thankful for new friends and acquaintances that I have made through doing this board. People who I would have never met had I not gotten to know you here have become important parts of our lives and I enjoy the social interaction if only online with some of you. I am thankful for Tony Dutra and crew over at the paper who has been extremely supportive of this site and has even brought us onboard over there to give his paper some calendar information every week. Likewise I am thankful for caring members of the press like Diana Ingram and John Spevak who were kind enough to mention us in their columns. Both of those people are not only columnists but important members of our community in other ways as well. I am thankful for many many other things as well, some very small such as being able to find a copy place to do fliers for 4 cents each and some very large like the fact my Aunt made it through some pretty tough health issues this last year or so... Thanksgiving time should not be just about eating and football games if that is what you are into, but it is also the perfect time to reflect on all the blessings that we have been given as a nation, as a community, and within our families. What are YOU thankful for? Please share it with us on the Our Los Banos Forums. Until
next time, November 19, 2006 Greetings Everyone, I am pleased to announce that we have put up a new section of the OurLosBanos.com website.
The OurLosBanos.com Downtown Shopping Guide is a work in progress, but it is getting there! We are focusing on the Mom and Pop type stores in Los Banos starting with those in the downtown area. As you do your Christmas Shopping this year it might be well worth your time to take a look at all that downtown Los Banos has to offer. The Los Banos businesses listed in the guide at this time are mostly located in the downtown area of Los Banos. Each of these establishments presents shoppers with the opportunity to purchase unique or specialty items and gifts from retailers who provide a warm small town community atmosphere. We intend to broaden this guide as time goes on and we are soliciting your feedback, suggestions and requests for inclusion in this guide! Many if not most of the retailers listed here will have product knowledge that makes a visit to their shop worthwhile from an educational standpoint - because they REALLY know their product. Not only that but many of the owner/operators that we talked to when we put this section of OurLosBanos.com together had a real drive for true customer service. Many will go above and beyond your expectations with prices that might surprise even the most adept big-box shopper. We hope you enjoy a look at our local retailers and that you will take the time to get to know and patronize the local "Mom and Pop" shops here in Los Banos. The dollars you spend when shopping with with them not only stay in Los Banos (for the most part) but they also go a long way to preserving the atmosphere of "community" that makes Los Banos a wonderful place to live. Please DO check this out and let us know what you think. We want to improve it any way we can and if there are places that need to be listed we need to know! Point those browsers here: There are a few businesses downtown that were not included because they were closed when we went by. We are going to try to pick those up but PLEASE do not hesitate to suggest ANY business that you feel should be included. Until
next time,
November 16, 2006 We Need A Craft & Fabric Store Greetings Everyone, Well we are coming into the end of the week. It's been awfully busy here as we round the corner into the Christmas season. We have some interesting ideas for the site and for the community in celebration Christmas. Stay tuned! Until
next time,
November 11, 2006 Greetings Everyone, I have posted a new What This Town Needs opinion piece. This time I put forth the opinion that we could user a large scale craft and fabric store. As always your opinions on this are welcome - come join us on the Our Los Banos forums and share your opinion of this piece. Until next
time, November 11, 2006 Greetings Everyone, I have several little things to speak about today, none of tremendous gravity, but all that I feel are important in their own way. The
Election: It is important to note that not only the participants and registered users benefited. There were also thousands of hits from what we call 'lurkers' which is a NON-derrisive terms for people who just look at the forums and never log on or participate. So-called lurkers make up a vast majority of the hits we get on the forums. I hope that the lurkers will now come out of their shells and register and participate on the forums but if not we are still very happy to have you visit the bulletin boards. I
would like to congratulate ALL of the winners of the 2006 election here in Los
Banos. It was a hard fought win for most of you and there were some upsets
that I frankly did not expect! My sincere congratulations go out to: I also want to to thank everyone who participated in the election both as candidates, or as voters. You should all be proud of yourselves because you are what keeps this democratic republic alive. Post Election Forum Thoughts: I do note that the discussion about the Holidays is starting to rev up a little bit. Of particular note is that a pair of members on the OurLosBanos.com Community Forums are offering quite a number of pretty darn nice prizes and awards for Christmas yard decorating this year. I have verification that what they are doing is real and legitimate. You'll want to check under the EVENTS board in the Forums for more details on this. I expect soon the forum will heat up again when people start to talk about the fact that the council is going to have to find a way to select another new council member to take the seat vacated by Mr. Jones as he ascends into the "BIG leather chair". Rain & Mosquitoes: With the coming of winter rains it is time to get out in your yards and look around for standing water. Cans, tires, unused flower pots, and all manner of other things of this nature are a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. I think we'd all like to see the mosquito count go down in 2007 so I would like to gently suggest that everyone start looking around now and making sure that all of the standing water in your yards is dealt with. Bring the containers in or invert them so they will not collect water. Do not neglect the kids plastic toys or play sets either. I drilled a couple of small drain holes in several pieces of play equipment and kids toys so as to alleviate accumulated water. Check with the manufacturer first before you do anything like this for safety reasons. Also do not forget to have your gutters cleaned. Not only is it safer for the structure of your dwelling from a potential water intrusion standpoint, but gutters that are clogged can also breed mosquitoes. Fill In The Economic Development
Survey! This survey is VERY important for the City of Los Banos as it will enable our leaders to understand the demographics of our population and hopefully be able to use this material to bring more companies into our town. Companies mean JOBS. It is important for our commuter friends to also make sure they fill this in. Wouldn't you like to be able to lower your insurance rates and your gasoline costs? Well if we can bring some high tech to Los Banos you may just be able to do that. However to do this our leaders MUST be able to 'sell the town' and part of that means explaining that we have a lot of silicon valley commuters here who would rather use their brains at home than have to commute 4 hours a day. So fill it in and send it in! Until next time, November 8, 2006 Greetings Everyone, I have posted the results of the 2006 Election in Los banos on the OurLosBanos.com Community Forums. Please click here to view the results of our election process in action. Until
next time, November 7, 2006 Greetings Everyone, Tonight will be a turning point for Los Banos. For good or for ill we are making some big changes. A new mayor has not been elected in over a decade, and there are 2 City Council seats that open for selection as well. It is conceivable also that a third council seat could be filled if the returns for mayor break a certain way.
SELECT WISELY. With the election and the vitriol and hurt feelings that are likely a part of the sometimes painful process of keeping a democratic republic, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are all really supposed to be on the same team. I would like to believe that while many candidates appear to be 'out for themselves' that a large part of their motivation is indeed public SERVICE. That is what I'd LIKE to believe anyway. I truly hope that the office seekers are looking towards building "community" and doing what is best for Los Banos, and not building little fiefdoms or behaving in a cliquish manner. If not, they do not belong in office. Keep this in mind when you go to the polls today. It occurs to me that one thing that voters need to look for as the election time is making their selection based not on their personal feelings about a candidate, but upon how true the candidate is to the spirit of "community" as well as how honest and upstanding they are. Los Banos has some challenging times ahead and whoever we put into office MUST be a person of good character who will stand guard for all of us and keep in mind that their FIRST loyalty must be to the greater good of this city. We need servant leaders (as mr. Spevak calls them) not charismatic personalities or personal friends in local office. CHARACTER COUNTS this election. Do not cast a ballot for anyone that you feel has in any way misled or manipulated the process. Do not vote for anyone who you feel is not beyond reproach. While charisma and craftiness have their place (mostly in Hollywood), what Los Banos REALLY needs right now is honest brokers in office. People who are not manipulators, but doers. We do not need people that play with words, we need people that can put their shoulder to the wheel and honestly and straighforwardly LEAD our community, bring it closer together, and who will surround themselves with those who are willing to do the same in an honest and forthright manner. Until next time, November 2006 A
New Face On Our City Council Until next time,
November 1, 2006 Greetings Everyone, Tonight I was trying to use a new backup utility so as to make sure our forums had an extra level of safety. Sadly, this 'fix' created a massive problem which cascaded and caused the forums to go off the air for a period of about 6 hours. I want to apologize to everyone for the inconvenience this caused. I am pretty proud of our uptime and this failure was mine alone. In any event the OurLosBanos.com forum is back on the air. I have a brand new shiny backup (now working) and as near as I can tell there was no data lost. Again, I apologize to the OurLosBanos.com forum members. I should have set up a test site before I tried something like this on the live database. Rest assured I am setting up a mirror so this will not happen again. I invite you to come throw tomatoes at me. Thanks for either understanding or using your boot on the place I was using to think with. Take care, Until
next time,
October 29, 2006 I try to keep myself away from the politics that go with endorsement of individual politicians as much as I can. I tend to write articles and make known my opinions on ISSUES rather than people and personalities. In this case I am going to make an exception to my own self-imposed rules. The nice thing about disclosing my feelings about this particular City Council election is that there is more than one seat open and I am only going to endorse ONE candidate for ONE of those seats. If
you are interested please read my latest What This Town Needs Article:
WTTN - A New Face On Our City
Council Until next time, October 26, 2006 I must admit when we started this site we did not anticipate the absolutely wonderful reaction that we would get from the Los Banos Community. We knew it would be accepted but not embraced! I have gotten so many nice notes from you guys and we appreciate each and every one. We also did not know nearly how much work this would be particularly in the forums area... but your appreciation and participation makes it all worth it. Speaking of the forums we are very pleased with how those are going. We have made some minor adjustments and done some other tuning but we are very pleased at how things are rolling there. We are closing in on 100 registered participants and are well in excess of 1 THOUSAND postings. Much of the activity naturally enough has centered around the election and we hope that as the Our Los Banos Forum community continues to build that you guys will continue posting AFTER the election is over. This weekend be sure to make it to the Safety Fair over at WalMart it sounds like it is going to be a valuable way to spend the day. We plan to be there as well so stop by and say hello if you like! Politics Speaking of politics I have tried to stay on the sidelines for people (not issues) but I have decided to endorse ONE candidate this year. I will be announcing that here probably on Monday and will have an article written about my decision. Keep watchin! Until next time,
October
20, 2006 Hey Folks - Go out today and buy yourself a copy of the Friday October 20th edition of the Enterprise, (the one that has a cover story about a new Target store that will be opening in Los Banos) turn to the Sports section, open it to page B5, and have a look at Mr. Spevak's column! Try not to yell YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh! Like I did.... The folks in the next house over might not quite understand your gleeful outburst quite as well as they understood mine... The Los Banos Enterprise is blessed to have a community-centric columnist working for them. John Spevak's column in the Enterprise is always intriguing and time after time has a community building feel to it. Today's however is special. Very special. Mr. Spevak's column is entirely devoted to a discussion about OurLosBanos.com. Back in August/September when we first launched this website the Enterprise responded to me and wanted to do a story about OurLosBanos.com for their newspaper. A reporter by the name of Mr. Green interviewed me over the telephone for about 15 or 20 minutes and then as I understand it wrote an article about this site that was to appear in the Enterprise. My (possibly flawed) understanding is that for reasons that are internal to the Enterprise the story was spiked and so the OurLosBanos.com story never appeared. We were tremendously saddened by that, but booted ourselves back up and moved on. Within the last 2 weeks I have exchanged a couple of e-mails with Mr. Spevak who was asking me about OurLosBanos.com and asking about our motivations for putting it on the air etc. Mr. Spevak said that he would be featuring us in his column. Well, I had my secret doubts because of the previous story... still I answered all of his questions and hoped for the best. Well my hopes were not in vain this time. Today I was rewarded with a lovely surprise when I opened my paper and found that the Enterprise had reversed its earlier decision and allowed OurLosBanos.com to be featured in their news paper! I would like to thank the editors at the Enterprise for allowing this story to be printed and I would like to sincerely thank Mr. Spevak for taking the time and effort to do such a wonderful and positive story on us. Mr. Spevak if you read this, I hope that you can get a feel for just how appreciative we are that you have mentioned us. Likewise if the editors at the Enterprise see this I want them also to know how much we appreciate their allowing the column to run. Thank you all. The OurLosBanos.com FORUMS are Heating Up It is really nice to see so many new participants on the OurLosBanos forum section! With the coming election we are really enjoying the members of the community and not a few candidates coming to the OurLosBanos.com Community Forums and voicing their opinions on the election, commuting, measure G, the candidates, and any number of other things. We would love to have YOU there as well! Come aboard and let us know what YOU think of the issues, candidates, and anything else related to Los Banos. Until
next time, October 18, 2006 Well I was very pleased to see that Tony Dutra's THE PAPER is back on the air this week. The previous week I understand that they went down because of some serious computer problems. I gotta hand it to the folks over there, they may not be a true news organization but they sure do print a lot of community-centric goodies that are worth a look. I think in the old days they called papers like that gossip papers, but really to my mind THE PAPER is more of a source of very personal community news. I do not think I have seen one issue that did not feature photos of just your regular folks from the town. Pick up a copy of the paper next time you are over on I street and have a look. Glad to see you back on the air Tony! Until next time, October 17, 2006 Since starting the Los Banos Forums a month or so ago we have had a chance to watch them develop and watch the trends on the bulletin board. We have kept an open ear and listened to what people who participate on the forms wanted as well as watching how posting was going and we have decided to make some very minor adjustments. First we have added a special bulletin board for the commuters in Los Banos. Most of you are SUPERcommuters but the board is open to folks driving near or far for the purposes of talking about whatever you guys like or need to. The challenges of long commutes in particularly and the commuting situation in general are anticipated discussion points, but hey it is YOUR board commuters so use it as is most appropriate for you! How we missed the idea of a commuter board in the beginning I will never know, but there are enough of you out there that all it took was a suggestion by one to get it rolling! So don't be shy! Let us know if you need something! Second, we have combined the education boards. Public Schooling and Homeschooling are now mixed in together and if traffic warrants it they can be separated later. Finally we have added something that we have had on the back burner for some time.. a Los Banos parenting board. This is a place to go to talk about the challenges and thrills of being a parent in Los Banos (or anywhere else for that matter)It is also a good place to set up play dates and whatever other kid-centric stuff you might want to talk about. As always we are open to suggestions. If you have other ideas for what might work well on the bulletin boards or for that matter ANYWHERE on the OurLosBanos.com website DO let us know! Don't be shy! Until
next time, October 15, 2006 I stopped over at the feed store yesterday and talked to them for a few minutes. This dog day in the park sounds like it is gonna be a lot of fun even if you do not have a mutt of your own! Everyone should take an hour or two and get over to Pacheco Park today.. get out have some fun! Until next time, October 12, 2006 I was just looking over the Calendar page this evening and was thinking about an earlier post I made tonight on the events section of the Los Banos forum. In that post I suggested people get out and meet the candidates and to become educated voters in the process. This weekend the Dog Day In The Park event is going to be a draw for lots of folks... I'm wondering if any of the candidates are planning to attend? If so it would be a great place for voters to shake hands and say hello.
Until
next time, October 9, 2006 There are a lot of really good people out there. I have had a challenging couple of days but have received a lot of very nice support from people. You all know who you are. I just want to say THANK YOU. I appreciate everything you are doing to support the idealistic community-centric goals of this site and to help us along. To those that have lent a hand and or sent in words of support, thank you very much. Hauntings in Los Banos? I am still trying to build a list of families or organizations that are doing haunted houses or having other Halloween events. If you know of one and would like it listed, please let me know. Until next time, October 7, 2006 We attended the Los Banos Street Fair and the Sportsman's Club event today. We're tuckered out now but it was a good day. We first went to the street fair. What a fun and interesting time that was! We met a tremendous number townspeople and talked to a good number of political candidates who may just come by the Our Los Banos Forums and post about this or that! Many office seekers had booths and I even tackled one who was on foot - each had an interesting perspective and the time we spent listening to them was well worth it. I encourage everyone to check the Los Banos Calendar of Events and watch the debates that are planned. The re-runs on TV 96 and online rebroadcasts (links here) are also a good place to hear the candidates speak for themselves. Speaking of politicians... I must say that though OurLosBanos.com is not planning to get too political during this election we found it very educational to meet many of the candidates for city offices face to face. I strongly encourage the community to seek these people out at any other similar venues and shake hands with them and take a few moments to TALK. In many cases the persona they present in face to face is far different than they have in front of a large audience and cameras and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting most of them. I must say the more I get to know this community the more I grow to love it. To be sure it is diverse, and there were competing businesses and political candidates attending but I did not see one unfriendly face in the crowd. Besides politics, the Street Fair itself had a lot to offer, lots of good community spirit, live music complete with one of the candidates singing love songs and gymnastic demonstrations from some of the youth in our town. There was also the chance to meet and get to know many of the local business owners and operators in the town and we tried to say hi to everyone that had a booth there. It's very nice to put faces to the names. We also attended the benefit at the Sportsmen's Club and had a chicken dinner, entered the raffle, and watched some of the shooting. I think that the money we spend there was for a great cause and I hope that other folks availed themselves of it. It was very nice to see the many many businesses in town that contributed prizes for the raffle. Kudos to you! Los Banos is truly blessed to have such a nice Trap and Skeet club and if you are at all inclined to scatter-gun sports you should drop by and visit their facility on Mercey Springs. Finally I would like to thank all of the people who had good things to say to us about OurLosBanos.com. We frankly were surprised at the number of people who had already seen the site and not one of them had anything negative to say. Not that we do not want constructive criticism, but it was heartening to hear people say such supportive comments today. Thank you all. Until next time, October
6, 2006 Tonight we went to Friday at the Fairgrounds in Los Banos. If you have not heard of this before, Friday at the Fairgrounds is very much like a weekly flea market where different vendors and individuals set up plots to sell this or that - The feel is positive; a very cultural open-air market. I am told it happens every Friday night. I met two more of the Mayoral candidates there and was absolutely awestruck by the energy of one of them. Holy COW! Until next time, October 5, 2006 The Churches Directory has been updated and there is now a new Bible-In-A-Year feature available. Until
next time, October 2, 2006 Well it is October finally! The first rain of the season came yesterday and we noted a few people checked out our weather section. With October also comes Halloween and with Halloween in Los Banos also comes the neighborhood hauntings that we all so enjoy. If you are planning on having a haunted house either at your residence or business or if you hear of any other Halloween events please do let us know! We plan on posting a list of places people can go to have what we hope will be a good clean safe time this October 31st. So, if you are planning on any special Halloween events and would like to get the word out... you know whooooooo to ask! Until next time, October 2, 2006 We have just finished a review of the China Garden Restaurant. Please click here to read that review. We have now reviewed a total of 19 restaurants in Los Banos. Have a look in our Dining Section for a list of all of them. Until next time, September 24, 2006 Don't forget about the art show over at the Ted Falasco art center today! You can find more details on our September calendar page. Until
next time, September 24, 2006 OurLosBanos.com formally went "On the air" only about one month ago. In that time we have had a number of very interesting turns of events and almost all have been very positive. One of the things that I must admit I was not prepared for was the rapidity at which sponsors would jump onboard with us. I knew we were doing something groundbreaking here and something that was going to be exciting especially as more and more people found out about this site.... but I really did not expect that others would see this as early on as they did! In any event, we had commitments for ALL seven of the ad slots LONG before I had expected to and indeed we now have a small waiting list for future sponsors. I guess this would be natural... This Website has well over 500 pages of solid information that appeals to a very large spectrum of the public, we are very focused on a local target audience, and and I guess the businesses saw an opportunity here and took it. I would like to express our genuine appreciation and gratitude to each one of these sponsors for believing in OurLosBanos.com and supporting this website. The funds brought in by these community businesses will ensure that OurLosBanos stays on the air well into next year and beyond! I'd like to encourage you to take a look at each of their websites and to patronize them if you are in the market for what they offer.
If you are interested in advertising on Our Los Banos .com please do not despair that these seven slots have already been taken. We are putting together a waiting list for future advertisers and when the terms are up on these contracts perhaps a couple of slots will open up. We may also consider other website features in the future which would allow for some sort of special sponsorship. Just contact me and I will be happy to put you on the waiting list. Until
next time, September 24, 2006 Yesterday I spent the entire afternoon and into the evening passing out OurLosBanos.com leaflets / fliers all along Pacheco Blvd. This website is going to be made better and better by people sharing their thoughts with the community on our Forums and naturally enough people can only do this if they know we exist! (Speaking of which, did you see our new tutorial on how to use the forums?) Anyhow, I was struck (again) by how nice most of the shopkeepers were. Almost without exception the business owners were very supportive and found us a little space to put out our fliers. There was only one notably rude exception, a new place in town who you would think would be the most receptive as they too are starting up and trying to get the word out. I really did not anticipate the larger stores (corporate) to accept, but many of them were very happy to put out our fliers. To all of the businesses that were so very kind to us, THANK YOU. We TRULY appreciate the counter space you devoted to getting the word out about OurLosBanos.com. Your generosity and community spirit is what makes this town what it is and one of the reasons that I harp so much about the fact that people should look around closely at Los Banos, see what it has to offer, and spend their money HERE instead of over the hill or down the road. To everyone else reading this, thank you for being part of OurLosBanos.com. Please tell your friends about us and do not feel shy about posting on the forum section! If anyone would like some fliers to directly hand to friends or pass out at their establishment please let me know. The more people that know about this site, the better it can become! Again, a heartfelt thank you to all of the restaurants and businesses that let us leave some fliers for their customers. You rock! Until next time, September
23, 2006 I'd like to invite you to point your browsers at a new resource here on OurLosBanos.com. For those who have never used forums before this will be a great help.... I have just completed the main sections of a step by step tutorial on how to use the Los Banos Forums! This document covers how to navigate and read the forums, how to register for a free posting account, how to post your notes to the forum, and how to reply to other people's posts. The tutorial shows how to do this visually and in text with very easy to use (I hope) step by step instructions. Please join us on the Los Banos Forum and post your opinions and ideas! Until next time, September 22, 2006 Well
another week has come and gone... I expected to make far more entries in the blog
than I have but for some reason things have been a little nutty this week. THANK YOU EVERYONE! Now it is really time to get word out on this website. If you have any ideas about how to tell Los Banos let me know! either contact us directly or post something on the forums. Anyone wanting to help would be very appreciated. Anyone know a place that makes outdoor banners inexpensively? Until next time, September 15, 2006 OurLosBanos.com has made it through our second week! Additions and improvements have been non stop and we are working on the site on an almost daily basis. It is a lot of hard work but we are really enjoying this and more importantly people are getting something from the site... and that is what we built it for. I am very pleased about the reception that this site has received in the Los Banos community. It seems that people who see OurLosBanos.com almost always express really positive feelings about the site and are actively telling others. We really appreciate the community support. THANK YOU! We will be making a second set of fliers up - if you'd like to distribute some please let us know. ATTENTION CHURCHES - We have put together a church directory for Los Banos! What we are trying to get now is a paragraph or even a page of writing from each church that will tell visitors to the site about your house of worship. So... please have a look at the church directory and if you are one of the church leaders and can speak for your church contact us and let us know what you'd like said in the directory. Please also include a phone number for verification of legitimacy of your inclusion request. The forums are getting more active and in fact someone of some renown in this town has logged on and is helping to answer questions and express his opinions. I am very pleased about that! We are also getting more sponsors. You will see the buttons on the side are going to be populated with some new faces pretty soon. Once we sell all seven slots that's it! We will then start putting people on a waiting list for the next contract period. I'll write more on this later, but I truly want to express my appreciation to the folks who are helping us out and whose advertisements you see on nearly every page of this website. Please consider supporting these folks if you are enjoying our site. Growing.. Growing.. Growing... did you know that there are over 500 active informational pages on OurLosBanos.com not counting the multitude of forum page? The homeschooling section makes up a lot of this and our huge parks section makes up many more. About The September 10th blog entry... Once in a while you need to write a tongue in cheek article... September 10th was one of those days. For those who are not familiar with my writing style, I intended the following entry to be to be light hearted showing a bit of humorous incredulity... Until
next time, September 10th, 2006 I did not know that we had any enemies here at OurLosBanos.com. In fact I rather thought that (except for one unnamed business) that all of those who had heard of us were pretty thrilled with what we are all about! We see our mission as constructive and positive.. that of giving Los Banos a wonderful new resource for finding out about all sorts of things from upcoming events, to recreation information. We also give everyone in town a forum for expressing their opinions on equal ground. I like to think our entire site speaks to the idea of positive community building. OurLosBanos.com has not been open long enough to MAKE any enemies.. or have we? Saturday we had a couple of "kids" distributing fliers outside of a local store. Generally the reaction from people receiving the fliers was quite positive and friendly. There was one exception.... An adult man with brown hair with a younger blonde exited the store and when they were gently offered a flier they declared that ... and I quote, "We are your enemies!" Really? Enemies? Now pray tell what in the world would cause an adult man with his companion to tell a couple of "kids" passing out fliers that they were "enemies"? Whose toes could we have already stepped on so hard that they feel that we are either a threat or against them much less the need to try to make a couple of people handing out fliers feel bad? Well, it really did not have that affect. Our family has laughingly asked ourselves what THAT was all about for the last 24 hours now - and so far we can not come up with anything. So... If our TWO anonymous "enemies" in this town would be so kind as to step forward, we'd sure appreciate an email or a post to the forum disclosing the charges that you have against us. We are just itching to know how we have hurt your feelings. Did we take ugly park pictures when we did the rec page? Maybe you dislike one of our advertisers who was kind enough to support our community-centered site in this early stage with a little inexpensive advertising? Did the link to the Merced Health Department inspection reports from our restaurant reviews page make you nervous? Perhaps there is another more sinister reason... Perhaps we are seen by you as evil personified for some other infraction! Well whatever the case we feel for you. You are an example of why community building is SO important to this town and why we beat the drum so loudly for the politicians, citizens, and businesses in this town to come together to make something nice instead of everyone acting ONLY in their own selfish best interests. Hmm... maybe our "enemy" is political. I received an email this afternoon that said, "Your new website is innocently and refreshingly naive at this point, possibly due to your apparent lack of knowledge of local history and politics." This was preceded and followed by good wishes for us personally and nice compliments about our website. "Refreshingly naive".... Mea Culpa!! I plead GUILTY! We DO present a website that is just that - refreshing and naive. We do not see the town with cynicism borne of infighting and rivalries. In fact we really want no part of that. We have not yet been exposed to the politics and the 'old boy network' nor the 'out crowd', the 'in crowd' or the 'rebels, infidels, and pagans'. No we have met people. Just people and most of them so far we kinda like. Our starry eyed hopes for this town and for community building are not yet crowded out by petty squabbles and political disagreements and we are going to keep it that way. We take each encounter as it comes. We judge each person on their own merit and each position on our own litmus test... not that of a neighbor or a person we work for or some system of strange bedfellowing that is part and parcel of some small towns social makeup. If you call us "enemy" for that then you need more help with your cynicism than we do with our naiveté. We desire this site and this town to take the high road. We may not be "above" all of the political infighting but we are attempting to be self insulating from it while at the same time building relationships with people from all factions. As an example, one person mentioned to me today that I must be "very brave" to mention "The Enterprise" and Tony' Dutra's "The Paper" on the same website much less on the same page. He described it as mixing acid and water. Brave? Hardly. Foolish to some? I guess, but ya know what? I don't care to much about false perceptions of 'foolishness'. "The Paper" and "The Enterprise" each has something unique to offer this town and each has its place, its niche. So we can and do support both! If this sounds too much like an enhanced printed rendition of "kumba ya" or "We are the world" please forgive me... I am slipping into my "refreshing naïveté"e again... but I think that everyone in this town can make a positive contribution. So to our one faceless nameless self proclaimed enemy, (whoever you are), please, let us know how - in a period of only 10 days- we have so miserably injured you or hurt your feelings. Tell us how we have attacked Los Banos and how you have personally been hurt so badly as to say something like that to a pair of young teenagers passing out fliers. You might also call the police and let them know what an immanent threat we are to the peace and tranquility of this town for it is certain that we are a threat, an abomination of evil the likes of which are seen only once in a generation. The funny thing is I don't even have a nose-wide mustache... just a website where building a positive community is the only REAL agenda item... Oh and by the way, evildoers that we are, we put the bare bones version of our Los Banos Church directory on the air today. We hope to enhance that with photos and descriptions very soon. Until
next time,
September
8th, 2006 It has been a LONG week. We had a saddening turn of events earlier in the week, but things really turned around in the last couple of days and a bit of faith I was losing has been restored. Still, have had a lot of fun with the OurLosBanos site however. People are starting to find out about OurLosBanos.com and they are participating the forums! Keep it up folks! *** We are expanding content. We finally made contact with the folks at the Ted Falasco Arts Center and they are now posting to the Forums about upcoming events like their Art Show scheduled for the end of the month. They are going to supply us with a nice bit of documentation about themselves so that we can make a page up for the Falasco Center and fill what has been a gaping hole in our recreation section. The folks I spoke to there were very community centric and were just simply nice people. *** I would like to publicly and effusively thank Diana Ingram who writes a newspaper column called "Around Town". I have always found her style and the topics that she covers to be GREAT community building. I credit people like Ms. Ingram with helping to keep the small town flavor in an ever-growing city. One of the things that Ms. Ingram focused on in her September 5th column was this website. She had some very kind things to say and I am deeply indebted to her for telling the community of Los Banos about us... Dianna, thank you ma'am - you made my day when I found that. *** I also want to thank Mr. Tony Dutra and his crew over at Dutra's Enterprises. Tony, Cecelia, and Toni-Ann publish a tiny community newspaper with the ever-so-creative name of "The Paper" which is all about community and keeping the small town feel of Los Banos. They kind enough to run a longish story on OurLosBanos.com and even mentioned the story in their top-bar on the front page of their paper. Why "The Paper" does not market newspaper sales boxes where people can pick up single copies I do not know, but do yourself a favor and grab a copy. "The Paper" is available at their headquarters (830 I street here in Los Banos), at Los Banos Drugs on 6th, and at Fantasia Records. Or better yet call them and get a subscription! Phone Number: 209-827-0364 I had the opportunity to meet Tony Dutra this week and if there is a more 'colorful' person in this city I have yet to run into them. *** Mr. Dutra and Ms. Ingram - you have both comported yourselves like true 'information professionals' and I truly appreciate it. If I can do either of you a favor through this site please feel free to ask! Until next time, September 4th or is it the 5th It has been a LONG week. Daily updates to this site and expansions of pages... I could take up half this page listing it all but I think it has been worth it. We put together a bunch more of the homeschooling section, got a sitemap made, refurbished the links / resources page, and probably most importantly broke that ugly overlong recreation page into about 8 pages. Now, like the city parks, each of the wild areas surrounding Los Banos has its own webpage. Some of the new or refurbished pages:
I was told that OurLosBanos.com might make it into the [redacted] this week!!! If so that would sure be exciting. I know some of the registered members of the forum here were highlighted in the [redacted] last week. How cool is this?! Until
next time, August 25, 2006 Well we finally did it! We opened the OurLosBanos.com website! What a relief to finally be on the air with this thing! YAYYYYyyyy! We hope that our readers enjoy the Our Los Banos site and find what you read here interesting and thought provoking. More importantly however we hope that everyone will find it useful. The heart and sole of the Our Los Banos website is intended to be the Forum Section. In that section we offer all parties interested in Los Banos a number of bulletin boards where we encourage polite and respectful discourse. It is a great place to ask questions, post opinions, and exchange information. There is even a section for posting items for sale or to make note of an upcoming garage sale. We INSIST on posters being respectful and polite. The forums will be maintained as a safe clean place for polite discourse. Be one of the first to sign up and participate on the Los Banos Community Forums! We also have done extensive work on the Recreation section. While this section is still a work in progress, we think you will find that the portion of the recreation section dealing with Parks In Los Banos to be a particularly helpful and interesting resource. We have visited and photographed each park and written up a short description of each along with a list of each park's features such as barbecues, tennis courts, restroom facilities and more. Schools and education play an incredible role in any community and Los Banos is no exception. We think that you will find our Education section to be.. well... educational! (sorry, sorry yea I know) In particular those who are in the home education and or charter school communities will find the Homeschooling in Los Banos section of particular interest and benefit. Person's interested in supplementing their kids public education or thinking of homeschooling would also find a large number of resources in the homeschool section. Food. Everyone has an opinion on the restaurants in Los Banos and our Dining section has an ever-expanding set of Restaurant reviews in it. As with all other portions of this website the Los Banos Restaurant Reviews section is an ever-growing and evolving resource. We hope that you are as excited about the potential of this site as we are and we do encourage your feedback, participation, and suggestions. You can make those thoughts known to us either by contacting us directly or by posting your ideas, suggestions for improvement, or requests on the forums page. In the future we will use this blog section to post quick notes and opinions on things we find relevant or of interest to those who are reading about Los Banos and the issues that affect our city. Until next time, | |||||||||||||||||
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