Joined on Oct 10, 2005
7.8k
total contributions
1.7k
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202
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Regions followed

Note 2: I have returned to Chico.

Note: Hello. While it may seem like I "own" this wiki, I really don't (technically, wikispot does!). This is a community effort thus no one owns any given page. If you have a problem with something written on this wiki, please create a user account and make a comment on that page. Then everyone in the Wiki Community can discuss your problem and reach consensus. Only e-mail me if there is a technical problem with this wiki. Otherwise, it is a sure bet you can talk it out by using the comments feature on most pages. Note that deleting content without a good reason is usually not appropriate and will be added back in. Also, if you notice a detail on a page is wrong, it is very easy to fix it by clicking the Edit button and changing the text and saving it. This is a community-correction feature and makes a wiki... well, a wiki!

My role: I make sure this wiki is maintained in such a way that it won't degenerate into uselessness.

Surveying a stream 7/30/2008 Email: [email protected] (if you really want my attention, comment below, or take your chances with email :-) Homepage: http://www.distortions.net

Launching Chico Wiki

I began this Wiki in July of 2006, just prior moving into Chico. For many reasons, I left the Air Force after six long years. It wasn't hard to choose Chico with its lively downtown, mass transit, and local culture. Besides, Butte Community College seemed to be the perfect place to begin my education. But the problem was that it didn't have a wiki like Davis! In fact, DavisWiki nearly convinced me to live near Davis and go to school at Sacramento City College with the intention of transferring to UC Davis. But economic considerations ruled, and Chico won out. I'll likely remain in Chico until the mid-summer 2009. I hope by then this wiki will be sustained by the community of Chico. I don't want to be seen as its "leader" but I'll step in when necessary to keep things on the right track.

Leaving Chico

Even though I have left Chico this summer for Davis, I will still have a major role to play in Chico Wiki. Primarily as a wiki gnome. However my time is very limited in that my summer job requires camping three nights a week and I don't do Internet on cell phones. That all being said I am trying to get the word out on the street about the wiki but honestly I'm not very good at that. Please help.

Just to make clear: I've poured three years of my life into Chico Wiki. I will not give it up in any way.

Photography

I used to have a fondness for SLR Cameras (and to a point I still do) but my <s>trusty Canon -A70</s> Canon A570 is the workhorse. My A70 died in mid-2007. It had been through an amazing, and at times, rough 3 years. May it rest in peace waiting to be properly disposed of.

Education

Trona Pinnacles. Tufa! I attended Butte Community College from August 2006 to Spring 2009 — I had a lot of catching up to do. Beginning Fall 2009, I will be studying Geology at UC Davis. I may be minoring in Geographical Information Systems. I'm very interested in using GIS and statistical software in any future research.

Current Mapping Projects on Chico Wiki

  • Working with StaceyEllis to create a "reference" map that shows what North, East, South, West, Central, and Downtown Chico means geographically. This is more difficult than you think. Chicoans seem to have very different ideas of what constitutes those areas of Chico. So we're trying to do it in a very general way that includes uncertainty. This way debate on what is north or central Chico can hopefully be avoided ;-)
  • I was processing data from the City of Chico to make better maps for Bidwell Park. However, the data isn't perfect so I must manually fix trail and road line data. Might be a while or never...

Favorite Haunts

These are places that I couldn't live without. So I visit them frequently and tend to spend more time writing about them. There is certainly a coffee house theme!

Other Wikis

To Write About

Note to Self

Gnoming

Comments

Cool tinylogo! —PhilipNeustrom

2007-06-01 17:11:05   Thanks! Maybe it'll be adopted as the Chico Wiki symbol. There is a larger version of course. —RyanMikulovsky

2007-12-16 13:10:46   Hey, as of last month, all of the pictures weren't personally taken by you anymore. Trying to take credit for my photos, eh? Ha! —StaceyEllis

  • My how things have changed!! Thanks for reminding me —RyanMikulovsky

2007-12-24 22:23:08   Nifty tree for the holidays! —JabberWokky

2008-03-04 09:37:03   Good thing I write everything down. Yes, that was the plan, well done! Eventually the goal is to fix the links and get rid of all the redirects created through renaming to keep the page count more accurate. Thanks for getting started on it. —StaceyEllis

2008-03-25 14:05:47   Hey Ryan, its Ash, its rather ironic that the first time I checked out this site, I saw your picture of the satellites at Chico. Gotta love ironies like that. See you in class. —205.155.133.70

  • Hey, it's great to see you on the wiki! Be sure to tell your friends — and feel free to edit. See you! —RyanMikulovsky

2008-04-03 22:34:59   You better get ready to bake me a cake because I have 200 pages created and nearly 900 edits! I'll be at 1000 edits (and surpass your created pages) before you know it... Hahaha!!! —StaceyEllis

2008-04-11 11:40:40   Hey, so I put up the public domain aerial photo of Dayton to spare you some work. If you have a better version of it (more or less zoomed or whatever) feel free to swap it out. This is nearly as good as the Google one (wish it was color!) but much more legal. —StaceyEllis

2008-05-11 17:59:42   Ryan, get a writeup together for me for the Featured Wiki page on Chico Wiki. You're up next! —BrentLaabs

2008-05-11 20:54:23   My 1000th edit on Chico Wiki is reserved for your page. I hope you feel privileged. Now go bake my cake! —StaceyEllis

2008-05-17 22:31:17   Oh! You're only one edit away from 2500! Way to go! I suppose that means I owe you a cake or something. I had to go and set that whole reward for edits precedent, didn't I? —StaceyEllis

2008-06-21 16:27:21   Greetings Ryan, I have been experimenting with the macros. Try as I might, I cannot get over the absence of categories like they have on wikipedia. I think I have found a way to make it work. Take a look at Big Al's Drive In and The Graduate. Let me know what you think. Be well, —GregBard

2008-07-27 12:31:10   Thanks for the warm welcome! I'm still just learning the ropes of this wiki think, but I'll add what I can. Keep up the good work! —jonodavis

2008-08-21 20:57:13   Hey man, have you thought about promoting ChicoWiki as the Chico State year begins? —GeoffJohnson

2008-10-10 14:25:12   Ryan, I think my website was editted off the locally owned sites page. I assume this was a mistake by someone doing some editing but I just wanted to make sure the link was welcomed. It is intended to be a free resource for the local community to engage in social networking/ interaction. I think it compliments the wiki application extraordinarily because the user tools are better for communication while lacking in terms of content organization. I have linked back to this site and was hoping to copromote both together as I feature Chico. www.arealight.ning.com if you want to check it out or relist it for me. I know I was a little worried about mistakenly deleting someone's work. I can understand how it could happen. —AnthonyReardon

2008-11-07 11:58:04   Hey, Ryan... as you copy over the Welcome to the Wikis, please give them a look over before you do. They are intended to be a starting point for new editors and visitors, and they need as much love as we can give them. —JabberWokky

2008-11-13 00:19:11   Hey, don't talk down about our bagels. They are tasty. —BrentLaabs

2008-11-20 15:10:13   jefflcine is recommending his insurance site all over Wiki Spot. And it's car insurance that he recommended on the health page. I believe it's just spam. —JabberWokky

2008-11-20 15:15:50   The reason I watch so many wikis is to catch that kind of intra-wiki abuse. It's less important on Chico (there's a community here), but some wiki communities only have a trickle of positive editing (or are clubs or such that meet once a month and only see periodic flurries of updates) and can miss spam like that. —JabberWokky

2008-11-20 20:10:02   Oh yeah? Well, bagels from Boca Raton are better than bagels from Chico. ;) —JabberWokky

2009-02-04 08:23:12   Say Ryan, if there are two then it should be "University President (CSUC)", and "University President (other)." I don't really think there is a second person with any of those titles at all. They don't like to use "Chico State" usually. It's either "Cal State Chico" (which nobody in Chico really uses, but the university uses it in their promotions) and there is "California State University, Chico" or just "CSUC". —GregBard

  • I find this to be a very interesting topic, and I see sort of two different questions that are being addressed. While I agree that there is only one "University President" in Chico (the other would be president of Butte College, which is a community college and not a university), I think what Ryan is trying to do is make the page titles explicitly say which school they are referencing. Because there is only one president of one university, I am really not worried about it being ambiguous, although I see Ryan's side too. So I am not really 100% behind one side or the other. As for the use of "Chico State" vs. "Cal State Chico" (or any other permutations), I would say that the university can use whichever suits them and we can use whatever suits the community as a whole. A local wiki is about the community, and in Chico, no one says "Cal State Chico" or the formal "California State University, Chico." The university has their own website where they put up their official promotional materials and use the name that they prefer. I feel that the wiki should reflect what the community experience is, which is not formality. —StaceyEllis

2009-02-04 10:19:17   There is also the for-profit University of Phoenix. And who is to say that Chico won't get another major university? According to some, Chico, geographically, could be a fine place for a UC. —RyanMikulovsky

  • Sure enough. I totally forgot about that one. Yeah, with two universities, a distinction really should be made. The same confusion happens over at Davis Wiki since UCD is the major university that everyone thinks of, but DQU also deserves its place and recognition. Way to prove me wrong, Ryan... —StaceyEllis

2009-02-04 16:24:38   I'm just saying that the titles used were as formally listed. That is the type of title that, for instance, someone might make a link to in an email, a blog, etc. Given their dislike of "Chico State," I'm thinking that any of those people would cringe a little at seeing their own title like that (a stuffy bunch you know). I like the way Wikipedia handles it with the parentheses and most other format norms as well. So I guess I disagree about the whole formality issue. I like the whole encyclopedia aspect of it.

Anyway I'm not stuffy about it, so I'm not going to change it. I just think that, perhaps in the future, it will work itself out that way.

I agree about trying to get some attention by Google ranking. I have been meaning to write to some of the bloggers at, for instance, norcalblogs to encourage them to use links to CW in their writing as much as possible. However, that type of thing is learn by example.

Now that you mention it, this past week I printed some posters up and they have been going up at csuc. I have been handing small quarter size to people when I talk to them about it too. They aren't that great though. —GregBard

2009-04-29 21:51:22   Ryan, I am wondering if you are Vegan? —MaxLucas

2009-04-29 22:40:32   Thanks for the reply. I'm not vegetarian or vegan, but I like to avoid meat products as much as I can. —MaxLucas

2009-04-30 15:15:17   Wow! I also hate touching raw meat and cheese is the only animal product in my refrigerator right now. We must have been separated at birth. I was also a transfer student to UC Davis although I lived in the dorms(Primero Grove) my first year. Back then there was a transfer student program and all the transfer students got to live together. We had a lot of activities that guided us through our first year at Davis. It was a lot of fun with all the barbecues and theme nights. I made a lot of friends. We also had some older students who were entering college after serving in the military. One guy was from the Air Force. I later moved into the Primero Grove Apartments when they converted to a privately run apartment complex. —MaxLucas

2009-05-02 15:29:43   Thanks for your comment. Most of the pictures I posted were mine, such as the on the Sacramento Page and the one on the Photography page. Ill go through my edits again just to make sure what I have posted in there are appropriate to be used. —JohnNash

2009-05-03 12:10:32   I should have some pictures of Eastwood Court (I live there) as well as some of Orland that I can pull up. Ill grab one of degarmo park too that way we can get photos on all those pages. —JohnNash

2009-05-06 12:16:36   You beat me to that Panama's edit. I sat here for a minute wondering if I was being too sensitive, and you swooped right in. Well done! —StaceyEllis

2009-05-12 10:56:46   My current mission: get the events board back in shape. I just looked at it this morning, and it had a total of two things listed. Lame. I plan to do something about that, since there is a lot going on in town in the spring and summer. Wish me luck, or help me out, or something... —StaceyEllis

2009-05-13 08:20:03   Good call on the banner on top of the Silver Dollar Fair page! I think it's really interesting that we aren't a top hit for the fair, but people still find the page to sound off. I am taking it as an opportunity to hopefully educate people about the wiki. And hey, it made me realize I forgot to put the fair on the Events Board, hehe. Oh, my mom is planning to go to the SDF on Friday of fair week, so I'll ask her to take a camera and get some good pics for the wiki. —StaceyEllis

2009-05-14 17:49:17   Ill have to play around on photoshop and learn the wiki image code. I can do the sizing no problem, but as my page is evidence, I lose it a bit when trying to get it to look correct on wiki. It's a weird mix of photoshop and html but Ill get it :P —JohnNash

2009-05-14 18:43:28   Ive always found the geology of Northern California to be pretty amazing. I took 5 or 6 undergrad geology classes at Davis, some MUCH better then others. I took them for the units but I opted for geology for how interesting it is. You and I may have to talk about some of the professors once you end up there. I highly recommend checking out the lake during the week (it always seems busy during the weekend during good/hot weather). It's very full right now and since it looks like you do a bit of caching, there are some fun ones in the area. —JohnNash

2009-05-14 18:59:01   Almost exactly a year later I hit my 2000th Chico Wiki edit. Funny, I was here almost exactly six months when I hit 1000. Slowing down, it appears. At this rate, it'll be two more years before I hit 3000? —StaceyEllis

2009-05-16 14:41:04   Gotcha, thanks. Couldnt remember what it was and I couldnt find it while playing on the wiki gnome spot. I knew you'd see it and fix me up ;)

There are some pretty fun spots to look at geology in Davis, though to the untrained eye, you never would have seen it. West of town, towards Winters, you can see how messed up the bike path the fault running through there. Pretty cool. —JohnNash

2009-05-18 10:40:53   Just an FYI, the Whiskey Fire was a totally different fire from the Orland Fires (though the Orland Fires may have a different name, but not one I could find). The Orland fires started just north of Orland and burned its way through a large chunk of the town —JohnNash

2009-05-18 10:51:46   The fires in Orland weren't as bad as the others but it effectively shut down Orland and Highway 32 for a while. They were actually two separate fires, separated by a day but connected because of flare up in a hot spot. I believe ~June 8-10 were the dates on it. It was the first major set of fires in the area, the ones in Chico started as or shortly after the fires in Orland were going. —JohnNash

2009-05-18 11:35:58   My GF lives in Orland and I was there visiting (not having yet moved to Chico from Davis) during the time of the fires. I had a lot of contacts in various fire departments so I was behind lines while it was happening. Ill try and upload some pictures I have from the various fires to the different pages today. —JohnNash

2009-05-19 10:01:13   Thanks for adding that little bit into winter. I had no idea that was called sycamore pool. I always just thought it was called One Mile or something, didn't realize it had a specific name. See people do learn stuff here ;) —JohnNash

2009-05-19 11:04:49   Ive noticed that too, though businesses tend to be the easiest to write about when it comes to knocking wanted pages off. That's why I have tried to keep up the geocaching pages and whatnot. I think I'm making a hike in upper park friday too, so I will try and update wanted and seeded pages for the park when I do. Thanks for backing up my pages with edits, links and corrections. God knows how this place would look if it weren't for your and stacey's efforts. —JohnNash

2009-05-19 21:36:39   Thanks for the welcome! Shouldn't you be studying? :) —MaryMo

2009-05-20 07:01:46   Hey Ryan, thanks for the greet. That's cool to see that you're heading down to Davis. It's a rad place. And yeah, the daviswiki is pretty damn good. Thanks to PhilipNeustrom and others. Speaking of which, it's a trip to see some of these familiar names from Davis.

What's up Davis dudes? Long time no see. —TaylorStreet

2009-05-20 18:14:25   You ever notice this guys comments - acnhoel? From Manilla, IP confirms. Pretty random to me, was he referred here or something? —JohnNash

2009-05-20 21:57:54   There was one where it had the psuedo scam language, I cant remember which, something about trying to give money to get him to come over, but I could have just misunderstood with such broken language. Who knows? —JohnNash

2009-06-12 10:40:43   I'm beginning to think it's time we require registering to edit. —JohnNash

2009-06-14 13:19:17   hehe I just bastardised your artist template —RobinMowery

2009-07-17 20:44:41   Haha thanks Ryan. I was getting a little annoyed seeing the link removed so many times and people (mainly Stacey) being forced to keep putting it back. I just hope the person understands the reason for it being there and lets it go. —JohnNash

2010-01-05 18:04:50   Is there any where to download an entire copy of the wiki? —DonovanG

2010-03-23 11:18:15   Ryan, Excellent wiki. The maps are a great, I just planned my weekend. Hi from the Mendocino Dispatch folks. TimS—166.5.81.97

2010-06-28 23:42:26   Ryan,

Just sent you an e-mail, but I'm going to follow your advice on here and leave a comment, too. —GeoffJohnson

2010-08-25 15:44:09   Ryan-would you be ok if I installed this Events Index page on Davis Wiki? Bradmandell started this on Rocwiki and I implemented it on BufWiki. I think it's a great way of categorizing events/openings by year in a way that people can just browse through and look at. I'll do the install and year-to-year setup entirely. —PeterBoulay

2011-06-07 11:56:50   Ryan—my pleasure. There's LOTS to do....if you are interested in another Admin let me know please. —PeterBoulay

2011-06-24 15:50:14   Welcome home, Ryan!!! If you're ever out to upstate NY, I'd like to buy you a drink! —PeterBoulay

2011-07-11 12:46:35   Sent an email to your chicowiki email, Ryan —PeterBoulay

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