| PR Charts — A cleanup Thursday along Percival Creek to improve fish habitat ended up showing the extent of the homelessness problem, too.
A day crew from Olympia Probation Services scrambled up and down the corridor, bagging garbage and debris that is mostly the result of encampments of homeless people drawn to the secluded canyon between Percival Cove and the Olympia Auto Mall.
About 250 bags of junk have been collected by several work parties involving the city, Tacoma Rail and Wild Fish Conservancy. Tacoma Rail operates a line through the canyon that connects to Mottman Industrial Park in Tumwater. Wild Fish Conservancy is a nonprofit group that works to protect and restore wild salmon populations and their habitat.
The conservancy got involved because the stream, also known as Black Lake Ditch and connecting Capitol Lake and Budd Inlet to the Black River, is prime spawning and rearing habitat for chum and coho salmon, sea-run cutthroat trout and strays from the Deschutes River chinook run, project manager Ted Labbe said.
The one-mile stretch of Percival Creek Canyon also has become a haven for the homeless, even though it’s illegal for people to walk up the railroad line.
Piles of trash were picked up beneath the Cooper Point Road bridge, much of it linked to people who camp in the canyon during warmer weather.
“We know they don’t have anywhere to go,” said work crew supervisor Michael Arch of Olympia Probation Services. “We just want them to keep the place clean.”
Lappe added: “We’re not breaking up active encampments. That’s why we’re doing the cleanup this time of year.”
It also is an opportunity to pick up trash washed into the canyon during December floods, he said.
Homeless advocate Rob Richards said the canyon is used by homeless people year-round, much like the city’s Grass Lake Park area, which also was cleaned by city crews in recent weeks.

tradingmarkets.com

Even before a national music festival announced it would host an event just up the road on a critical July 4 weekend, Muskegon Summer Celebration was being forced to change its game plan for 2008.
Muskegon’s iconic community festival faces a poor state and regional economy, tremendous competition for the entertainment dollar, inflated costs for national musical acts and a feeling among some that the 16-year event had become “stale.”
Organizers concluded that for 2008, Summer Celebration — which had lost money for two years running — needed to set a new direction to keep the festival at Heritage Landing sustainable into the future.
And then came ROTHBURY.
The new four-day, camp-in musical and environmental festival July 3-6 has booked 70 bands for the Double JJ Resort in southern Oceana County, with superstar headliner The Dave Matthews Band. The July 4 weekend is the traditional finish to the 11-day Summer Celebration, which will go head-to-head with ROTHBURY on the calendar.
But Summer Celebration officials say they target different customers. They just have to draw them downtown again.
“We have to get the excitement back … that’s what we hear from people,” said Summer Celebration Executive Director Joe Austin, who has presided over the festival since it began in 1993 as a nonprofit community organization.
“We are struggling to make tough decisions, as any business would in these times,” Austin said, adding that there are festivals and fairs across the state that will not survive the current economic climate.
“If we are not operated as a business, Summer Celebration won’t survive. We have to turn this (festival) around or we won’t be around,” he said.
The basics of Summer Celebration are not changing.
• Battle of the Q:Establish a new barbecue competition the first Friday and Saturday along West Western Avenue, so patrons can sample ribs from vendors while listening to regional jazz and blues acts. The event replaces the Pere Marquette beach party.

mlive.com

SAN JOSE, Calif. & NORWOOD, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–WYDE Voice, a new startup venture backed by Free Conferencing Corp. founder and CEO David Erickson, today announced that its new wideband audio conferencing technology appliances received top honors and were named “ Best in Show ” at the 2008 VON Magazine Innovators Award ceremony held last night at Spring 2008 VON.x. The VON Magazine Innovators Awards honor the most innovative companies that represent the future of the Internet Communications industry. VON Magazine recognized WYDE Voice for its VM1000 and VM3000 models which are the first real-time conferencing appliances that support 16-bit, 16 kHz voice quality, providing an unparalleled user experience.
“ The VON Magazine Innovator Awards recognize the Internet Communications industry ’ s best and brightest, and we are pleased to honor WYDE Voice as one of the ‘ Best in Show ’ from among the well over 100 pioneering applications submitted, ” said Bill Sell, Publisher and Editorial Director, VON Media Group. According to Mr. Sell, the VON Awards committee narrowed down the list of winners to 65 finalists and a special Editor ’ s Top 10 list, with WYDE Voice leading that list. “ Our judges reached a unanimous consensus on selecting WYDE Voice as the global choice for best product of the show and gave an assessment that these new conferencing appliances will make a significant impact on the marketplace. The ability to provide wideband audio with 16 kHz quality factored greatly into the judges decision to recognize WYDE Voice as a VON Innovator and the ‘ best of the best ’ within the large field of companies that participated in the nomination process, especially in the top 10. ”

businesswire.com

It’s time now to enter your selection in the 2008 TriCitiesSports.com March Madness contest. There are a number of way to enter.
1. BY FAX or BY MAIL - Download the printable .pdf file below or any other bracket file/picture, complete and either FAX [423-245-3203] or MAIL [153 Walton Court - Kingsport, TN 37663].
2. BY E-MAIL as follows:
Note: Contestants will receive one point for each correct pick. The tiebreaker will be as follows:
First Tiebreaker, National Champion.
Second Tiebreaker: Teams to Championship game.
Third Tiebreaker: Teams to Final Four
If still tied, Teams to Final Eight.
If submitting via written e-mail, your picks would look something like this:

tricitiessports.com

It seems that the problem-prone Easter Bunny is once again experiencingdifficulties. He’s spent so much time redecorating his warren that he hasn’tnoticed critters burrowing in and devouring his entire chocolate stockpile.
Now, devoid of cocoa stocks, the chocolate egg production has ground to a haltand the forecast for Easter celebrations looks bleak. No need to worry, though -the Easter Bunny is an inventive sort, and has come up with an eggs-emplary newidea: use a chocatrice! These fearsome creatures, incubated from achocolate-coated cockatrice egg, can turn their targets into chocolate with onelethal, chocifying gaze.
It falls to you, then, to create this curious creature. You’ll need to trackdown some of the lost chocolate to make a chocatrice egg and then carefullyincubate it. The critters who ate the chocolate supply are sealed in the EasterBunny’s tunnels and will prove a suitable target for your chocatrice.
So, this Easter, you will come to the aid of chocolate lovers everywhere,incubating your own chocatrice, guiding it around the Easter Bunny’s tunnels andturning the greedy rats into something altogether more delicious…
Where to start the Easter Event 2008:
Investigate the rabbit hole, between Falador’s southern gate and the Rimmingtonmine.
None - this update is available to members and F2P!
A new emote and Easter item!
In other news…
The music system now has a counter which keeps ‘track’ of how many songs you’veunlocked. You’ll have the Air Guitar emote in no time!
Players will now always receive a TzHaar fire cape and 8,000 TokKul afterdefeating TzTok-Jad. You can keep any extra fire capes you win as spares in caseyou lose them, or speak to TzHaar-Mej-Jal, master of the Fight Cave, who willpurchase spare fire capes from you for 8,000 TokKul a piece.
We’re constantly looking at item prices on the Grand Exchange and how they matchup with similar items and those that are unfinished versions of other items.Prices for some of these sorts of items have been adjusted following thispattern. For example, an unstrung necklace will more closely follow the price ofthe strung version.

mpogd.com

But for the second consecutive season, the Orange will not be playing in the N.C.A.A. tournament. And this time, there will not be much debate.
Eighth-seeded Villanova throttled the ninth-seeded Orange, 82-63, at Madison Square Garden before most people across the country had finished lunch. One year after Syracuse was snubbed from the N.C.A.A. tournament, its bubble has burst.
“We needed to win a lot of games,” Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said. “After last year, we probably needed to win two or three games to even get close to where we were last year.”
Syracuse’s season-long inconsistency manifested itself yet again. The Orange turned the ball over 18 times, settled for too many 3-point shots and played lackadaisical defense, which allowed the Wildcats to make 11 of 21 3-point shots. For stretches, Syracuse players lost track of Villanova guard Scottie Reynolds, who had 22 points and 6 assists, with no turnovers.
The Orange’s uninspired performance left the two locker rooms with drastically different moods. Villanova’s impressive performance, its third victory in a row, pushes the Wildcats (20-11) closer to securing an N.C.A.A. bid. But they will not be able to rest easy on the eve of selection Sunday, even if they can upset top-seeded Georgetown on Thursday in the quarterfinals.

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BracketBrains.com helps college basketball fans identify likely upsets, make better bracket pool picks for 2008 NCAA basketball tournament.
Palo Alto, CA (PRWEB) March 14, 2008 — TeamRankings.com today announced BracketBrains 2008, a web-based service that uses powerful statistical technology to help NCAA basketball fans make smarter 2008 March Madness bracket pool picks. A free demonstration of BracketBrains is available now at http://teamrankings.com/ncbtp/index.php?aff=100000005.
"Conventional wisdom regarding how to make good NCAA bracket picks is often disproved by analyzing historical data," said Mike Greenfield, a Stanford-trained computational scientist and co-founder of TeamRankings.com. "For example, sportscasters from media outlets such as ESPN and CBS Sportsline love to discuss how teams with strong end-of-season momentum are well positioned for success in the NCAA tournament. In fact, 'streaking' tournament teams have generally underperformed expectations when one considers the historical performance of similarly seeded teams."
"Unfortunately," adds Greenfield, "when it comes to making March Madness picks, very few college basketball fans have the technical aptitude, data, or free time to perform a detailed statistical analysis of every possible NCAA tournament bracket game."
To help NCAA basketball fans make more educated bracket choices, TeamRankings.com created BracketBrains. The web site touched a nerve with guessing-weary office pool entrants last year, attracting hundreds of thousands of March Madness fans in the days after the 2007 NCAA tournament bracket was announced by the NCAA Selection Committee.

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NYU’s spring break always starts on St. Patrick’s Day, and I usually leave as soon as I can, so I’ve never been in the city for St. Patrick’s Day before. Like most of you, I thought the holiday was on Monday. I was wrong. It apparently starts today. And the entirety of Murray Hill — a neighborhood that amounts to Greek Row in Manhattan — and what appear to be large swaths of New Jersey and Long Island have descended upon my neighborhood.
I don’t resent people going out and having fun. I could really care less if frat boys want to drink beer. I do resent them having screaming drunken fights outside my window and puking on the street. I do resent trying to walk to the gym at 1 in the afternoon and being hollered at by loud-ass frat boys who can’t do any better than “Hey hottie!” — which they’re only yelling because I don’t look like I’m having St. Patty’s Day fun. I deeply dislike not being able to walk down my street because it’s swamped with people in green shirts yelling “Woo.” And yes, I am whatever the St. Patrick’s Day equivalent of a Scrooge is.

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St. Patrick’s Day officially begins tonight, here in the Spa City.
At least, that’s what the folks over at the Parting Glass would have you believe.
With the green-infused holiday landing on a Monday this year, the folks at Saratoga Springs’ only Irish pub have decided to stretch the holiday into a three-day affair.
Celtic singer Kevin McKrell kicks things off tonight at 8 p.m. with a show at the 40 Lake Ave. restaurant and bar. On Saturday, Hair of the Dog will play a pair of shows, one at 6:30 p.m. another at 9:30 p.m.  Sunday — the Parting Glass’ 28th anniversary — live music and step dancing are scheduled from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Then comes the big day: March 17, when the pub opens its doors in time for a liquid lunch – 11 a.m. McKrell is back at noon, step dancing begins at 4 p.m. and the Ballston Spa marching band (get ready to squeeze tight) begins at 6 p.m. Hope you’re not working on Tuesday, this party lasts until 1 in the a.m. Staff there told me today it’s likely to be one-in-one-out, despite the disappearance of all furniture inside.
In other words, don’t expect it to look like this:

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It’s the last one until until Dec. 20, 2010, you know, and realizing that we decided to show it to you.
Make sure to see “Overshadowed” today on your visit to CentreDaily.com and see Chris Weddle’s photo and John McGregor’s video. Taken from right here late last night in Happy Valley.
This tops the midday report on this sunny and cold Thursday. Thanks for joining us.
MAYBE you did a double take yesterday when you drove past the gas pumps.
Get our your wallet — it’ll be another 10 cents per gallon here in Happy Valley.
Gas prices jumped to $3.19 in Philipsburg and State College, up 10 cents.
Web readers are sharing what it’s costing them and telling what they think. Take a look.
CONGRATULATIONS to State College boys and girls hoops teams.
Just call them district champions.
Read Todd Ceisner’s coverage today and see the photos of champs, as the two State High teams beat Altoona in Tyrone.
Penns Valley teams weren’t as successful, and find our coverage today from Hollidaysburg.
And of course the Nittany Lions found reality at Michigan State, where the Spartans avenged an earlier upset at the Bryce Jordan Center.
CentreDaily.com is a home for hoops today. Enjoy it all.
“THON 2008: Hope finds a way” is the featured headline on our Blue Magazine cover.
Find Blue Magazine today and pick it up free at locations in State College, Bellefonte and Boalsburg. And if you’re reading from Penn State, you’ll get it in every copy of the Centre Daily Times picked up at racks on campus today.
Later today Blue Magazine content will be online, and you’ll read about Thon and more.
Best wishes to the Penn Staters involved in such a great event, which will start Friday at the Bryce Jordan Center.
TODAY’S featured blog is Ten Speed Racer by Joe Whitman, who gives you an update on his tour in Belize.
Not bad stuff, and be sure to visit the cyclist’s blog, linked here today, when you stop at our community blogs page.
Thanks for your great Web readership, as you’re among just short of 400,000 unique visitors to CentreDaily.com so far this February.
Have a great Thursday everyone.
Look for the midday report from the newsroom each weekday. Send questions, comments or suggestions to bheisse@centredaily.com.

centredaily.com