Photo Post - The Lewis and Clark Caverns, Montana August 2004

I didn't post any photos of the inside of the cave because most of them didn't turn out that well. These are basically just photos of the trip there and the trip home.

Photo Post - Big Sky Country

Photo Post - Butte, Montana August 2004

These are just random photos from Butte, Montana.

Photo Post - The Dumas Brothel, Butte, Montana August 2004

[Here is the link to the official Dumas Brothel website. Be forewarned, the music on the site is horrible and you can't shut it off.]

Here's what I wrote about the Dumas in another area of my site that didn't really get finished: We drove around taking photos (I'll have to upload these later) of the mine, the city, and the now defunct brothel there. I've been to a lot of museums and tours, but the Dumas Brothel is quite possibly the most interesting and authentic place I have ever seen for a tourist exhibit. Morgan pointed out the brothel on the local travel guide before I really knew what she was talking about because the downtown area was fairly small and by then we were already there. I figured it would be the typical completely refurbished Disneyland-style museum where everything is clean and perfect looking. It wasn't like that at all. In fact, aside from a few basic changes to turn it into a public exhibit, the building seems to be just like what it was when it was in operation. A few tidbits about the Dumas Brothel: it was the longest operational whorehouse in American history, running from 1890-1982. The owner claims that the building architecture is the last of it's kind in America, as the windows are all on the inside except in the front and a couple in the back, as it was a whorehouse. They wanted to keep the business private, but they had windows in the front so that girls could talk to people walking by. I didn't know what to expect from a brothel tour, but after going inside to look around for a minute, I immediately decided to take the tour. The interesting part isn't that it was a whorehouse or the architecture, but the fact that it had 3 stories. The top story, the ground level, and it had an underground tunnel. They called the sex rooms "cribs", which were fairly small with one window, a bed, a bedside table with a candle or light, and a few knickknacks around the room. The cribs on the ground level on the back of the house had been boarded up in 1943 by the government.

Also of note, parts of Lonesome Dove were filmed at the Dumas. If you type "brothel" into Google, the Dumas website is the first one to come up.



Above: This is the room where a lot of famous strippers/pornographers go to get their picture taken.

Above: This is the stairwell to the underground portion of the brothel.

Above: The refrigerator on the left was modified to look like a real refrigerator, but in reality it was a storage area for one of the whores that worked there in case she needed to hide from the police. When they would come, they would always announce it plenty of time in advance, so she never had to use it. However, if she did, the inside of the refrigerator was gutted and there were locks on the inside of the main door so that she could close it from the inside. The outside latch was broken intentionally so that if the cops ever did come, they would just think the handle was broken and continue looking elsewhere.

Above: This photo is from the Dumas website. It is a much better view of the refrigerator and how the inside was gutted, but the way it was positioned, it would have been hard for me to get a picture like this. Also notice the locks on the inside of the doors.


Above: This is where the women would come out so that when customers came through the door, they could choose a girl.

Above: Notice the ten minute timer. The men who went there had to get their money exchanged for a special kind of money that could only be used there. After the timer went off, most women would try to get the men to give them extra cash on the side in exchange for more time.

Above: This is the where people could come in through the underground from other areas of the city. This was mostly for politicians and businessmen who didn't want to be seen going into a brothel. The underground tunnels under the city have since been filled with sand, as you can see it starting to come in.



Above: This was by far the most interesting room in the whole house. The U.S. government boarded up the addition on to the back of the house in 1943. This room has stayed exactly the same since it was boarded up, except the owner tore the inner wall down (which is where I was taking the photo from) because the outer door and wall were boarded up with metal. The only person who has been in the room since 1943 is the owner when he went in to sweep it out. He also pointed out that there was a half of a stick of gum sitting on the window sill and there were still cigarette butts in the ashtray that had lipstick still on them. He also showed us the hole in the linoleum where the bed legs had worn through.



Above: Room #20 is supposedly haunted. In 1955 Eleanor Knott (one of the many madams) had killed herself because her lover didn't show up one night so they could go elope. She overdosed on pain killers and alcohol in room #20.

Above: As you can see, they had phones running from room to room, and they had buttons you could push to talk to a specific room.

Above: They were doing some remodeling when we were visiting.

Above: An antediluvian toilet.

Above: The shower area.

Above: The stairwell leading upstairs had started to fall through because of an earthquake in the '90's.


Above: Notice how there are no windows on the side of the building, only in the front.

Photo Post - The Berkley Pit in Butte, Montana, August 2004

Curb Your Enthusiasm Helps Innocent Man

This is an interesting article on how one man's innocence was proven in an accusation of murder and 5 1/2 months in jail. He was at a Dodger's game in LA, but apparently the cops didn't believe him. Eventually, someone figured out that his innocence could be proven from outtakes of the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm (one of my favorite shows on TV), as they were taping a show at the Dodger's game that night and this guy was proven innocent. He is now suing the LAPD.

Microsoft Possibly Acquiring Nintendo

I just found a post on Spymac about how Bill Gates has expressed interest in buying Nintendo.

Someone in the forums said this:

Wonderful... now I'll have to download the latest Nintendo security patch every week.

Apple on BusinessWeek

If that last post weren't enough, this Business Week special report on the state of Apple is a good sign that they are making a comeback, although it might take a few years to get where they need to be. All I know is despite whatever anyone has thought about Apple in the past, they are better than ever now.

I like how MacDailyNews recently put it as a response to a similar article where an analyst recommended a Mac: As we're fond of saying, if you're finally tired of downloading and installing patches to patch patches that patched patches issued to fix patches that broke while patching a patch that didn't patch the first patch, but broke the last patch you patched, you might want to try a Mac instead. More information about adding a Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal here.

Another Switch

If all the stuff I write on this website promoting Macintosh isn't enough, here's a good story (and a follow up post) from a 15-year Microsoft employee that switched completely to Mac over the past 3 years, excluding of course some Windows computers for work. This is a good story mostly for the fact that the guy is a Microsoft employee who can't stand Windows.

Some highlights:

Or maybe I have just had enough of the problems that come with Windows. Maybe I am sick and tired of the viruses, spyware, security holes, buggy software and device drivers, and all the other time wasting problems that seem to occur more on Windows than any other operating system.

His wife and son both hate Windows:

My wife and son won't even touch my Windows laptops. I gave one to my son, and he gave it back.

While I admit that there is quite a good reason why some people may have not liked Apple through the 90's, there is many, many reasons why one should switch to Apple now. This guys testament is proof. Apple is now better than ever, and in every category except possibly gaming, continues to exceed anything Windows could ever offer.

Perhaps this has something to do with the audiobook about Steve Jobs that I'm currently listening to (The Second Coming of Steve Jobs), and I'm learning what happened in the early days of Apple and Microsoft. It was just dumb luck that Microsoft made it to where it is today, and even more impressive that they continue to prosper with their hodge-podge patched together software that is riddled with vulnerabilities to spyware, viruses, and pop-ups. Apple computers deflect these problems out of the box. Every Apple computer is a symbol of Steve Jobs personal vision of what a computer should be: simple to use, intuitive, and elegant to look at. It's everything that Microsoft isn't and will probably never be.

Oh snap!

I just got a great photo of another bum digging through the garbage, not 15 minutes after posting that last one.

This is a different bum, but I see this guy every other day, all around the neighborhood. He's usually truckin' it down the sidewalk or street with his shopping cart caravan with organized bags of recycled goodies hanging off it. He snatched a few cans out of our dumpster, along with a couple of 24 ouncers. He's experienced because he rounded up a handful of cans in less than a minute. Damn, what a life.