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18-June-2008

20-February-2008

01-January-2009

09-January-2009

22-December-2008

01-November-2008

10-October-2008

22-September-2008

I also remember that on the same trip we stopped at store. It was the kind of small store that you used to find by any river where fishermen gathered. The kind that sold bait, bagged ice, and Jiffy Pop. I bought a bottle of root beer. Later when I took a drink I was instantly repulsed. It was diet root beer. Now, this was the late-seventies where diet sodas were experimental. The artificial sweetners had a robust taste that couldn't be washed out of your mouth but had to wear out, like paint off of your hands. I was thirsty and drank the whole thing.

Upon reflection, I would rather be covered with ticks than drink that soda again.

22-August-2008

11-August-2008

"Yeah, what is it?"

"Let me tell you what it is. It is the best thing ever and there's nothing like it anywhere else."

"What is it?"

"It's a cheese grater!"

"Doesn't look like one..."

"It's different than any you've ever seen. It's automatic! That means no more scraped knuckles and sliced fingers. You put the cheese in and it does all the work."

"Is it hard to clean?"

"Hell yeah! Cheese gets everywhere. In every nook and cranny. Downright nasty to clean."

"I'll take one!"

8-August-2008

Visual Studio
Visual Studio!
Visual Studio 2003!
Why, oh why, do you hate me?

You are so unwieldly
And a burdon to use
Whenever you crash
I blow a fuse

All my settings erased
And project changes lost
I loathe the day
That our paths crossed

But let's not forget
The reason you're here
The company I work for
Is stuck in yesteryear!

7-August-2008

Joe slurped several spoonfuls before looking up again.

"What's in it?"

"Radishes," I said. "And turtle eggs. And cinnamon."

"Oh."

Joe stared at the crimson liquid in his spoon and lowered it back down into the bowl.

1-August-2008

I love the used book store. There are so many things to be found, from rare and collectible to so deeply discounted that it's hard to convince yourself to say no. And, of course, everything in between; books that are as popular now as they were then. Today I had found one of each and was waiting to pay.

A fellow, who I smelled first because of the body odor that clung to his navy polo shirt, excused himself and proceeded past the head of the line to the cashier who was just finishing up with a customer. My eyes narrowed and that indignant feeling started to grow. When the customer had finished, the man in the navy shirt asked if a certain employee was in today. And the line waited.

The question turned into a small conversation. How weekends were less structured than weekdays and if someone worked depended on if someone couldn't or wouldn't work. How this employee should be in. How it was unusual that he wasn't.

This man, perhaps 45, perhaps more, aside from the stink, seemed to be a typical member of society, so I had to wonder how he could justify rude behavior such as this. Did he come from some pocket of civilization where the conventions of standing in line were slightly different than everywhere else? Where questions clearly outranked purchases, regardless of the length of the question and the brevity of the purchase?

I wanted to call him out on this. To let him know that his behavior wasn't acceptable and ideally, shame him into proper behavior the next time. I was periously close to doing so too. I turned it over in my head. There were three others in front of me, their faces grayed over, uncaring, unaware, waiting automatically for the line to move. There were two cashiers, one who was occupied with a different customer, and the one who was talking to the man. They all seemed unaware--the man, obviously--that any wrong-doing was being commited. The lack of outrage from all of these people could very well backfire. They didn't care about the man, but they might care about someone who calls attention to someone else. And all eyes would be on me and my rudeness.

I didn't do it. I stood in line and waited. The man eventually left and the line moved on. But I should have done something. I know I should have. Corner him and explain his social blunder to him quietly? No, without an audience, he'd probably get angry and miss the whole point. I think to have been effective I would have had to call him out in front of the others, despite the small risk to myself. He would've got the message and perhaps, just perhaps, would have been a slightly better human being because of it.

31-July-2008

I looked up from the screen and paused in the quiet office hum.

Three more knocks, faster and louder.

Behind the cubicle wall there was sudden movement and soft footsteps.

The door opened and closed, a friendly exchange inbetween.

And I thought: go around to the front, you lazy bastard.

25-July-2008

Their response was that all they wanted me to do was mark up some of the text on three of my pages IO.DLL, Ant Story, and iPod Shuffle Woes. If I did that and promised to keep the pages up for a year, $125 would be mine. From the context of the words they wanted linked, it seemed that they were looking to direct people to sites that related to laptops, personal loans, and credit cards, respectively.

It was the sort of thing that felt harmless and straightforward and almost had a pre-1995 charm to it. But, this isn't 1995 and there is almost always an ulterior motive for this sort of thing. Checking out the company, I saw that the webmatchers website was registered on July 8th, 2008, not even 20 days ago. I found it to be a contradiction that their FAQ mentions that they were founded in 2005. Asking about it, I was told that, yes, their website had just gone online but they've been around for much longer than that. They run their internet business by repeat business and word of mouth, apparently.

Google also failed to provide any meaningful information about the company. No glowing reviews, no scathing reviews, no reviews whatsoever. The names of the owner and the employees are rather generic, making searches for them difficult as well.

Browsing the websites that webmatchers wanted me to link to, I noticed that many of them had contact information. I figured that I would drop some of these owners a note and ask if they could say anything good or bad about the webmatchers. One fellow got back to me immediately and said that he never heard of them. This was the author of the page in question. If anyone was going to be promoting it, it would surely be him.

It seemed clear to me that traditional internet investigation methods were not going to provide any answers to this puzzle. I decided to step back and try to fit the pieces of the puzzle together using my head instead.

What I knew was that webmatchers wanted me to put several links on three different pages. The links were such that they highlighted laptops, credit cards, and personal loans, even though the pages themselves did not pertain to these subjects whatsoever and mentioned them only in passing. It seemed unlikely that a person doing a search for one of the topics would land on my page and, if for some reason they did, that they would linger long enough to click on a link on the off chance that it would be what they were looking for. It was becoming obvious that these links were not meant for human consumption.

If not human than surely search engine. We've all seen sites, mostly long forgotten message boards and abused guest books that are loaded with links for various enhancers and whatnot. It's link after link to the same sort of sites with cheesy names and unsavory products. But, looking at the links that I was provided, this was not the case here. The links were on the up and up. I looked at several of them and even contacted people from them. They weren't deceitful or selling anything questionable. They were largely helpful, offering advice on what to look for in a laptop and how to responsibly manage your personal finances. They were mostly government and educational sites... Hang on a moment, government and education sites don't advertise like this!

Looking more carefully at the links that were provided for each of the three categories, there were two clean divisions: The bulk of the sites for a category were either a .gov or a .edu. For each category there was one site that stood out--a true commercial interest that was selling something and dearly wanted people to buy it.

The sites that I mentioned, the ones where its link after link of unsavory goods, the idea is to feed keywords to the search engines which raises the rank of the site as well as all of the sites it links to. But the combination of human intervention and clever search engine algorithms causes such sites to quickly drop off the search engine radar, thereby nullifying the very effect that was desired in the first place.

The trick to sucessful search engine placement is to be mentioned on a lot of useful and upstanding sites (or you can buy good placement, but that's a different discussion). But the site has to be mentioned in proper context. The search engines examine a page's text and the links in that text when they assign a ranking to a site. If the context isn't there, the relationship will a poor one.

I believe that including all of the .edu and .gov links in my web page, webmatchers was trying to achieve legitimacy for the commercial link that was also included. I also suspect that .edu and .gov links are scored a little higher by the search engines. If you were to search for laptops, credit cards, or personal loans, my site would be ever so higher in the search engines. As I pointed out, my site isn't going to attract people looking for these things, so there must have been something else to be gained by increasing my ranking.

It turns out that if the rank of what the search engines deem to be a useful page increases, so, in turn, do all of the pages it links to that are of the same topic. It's a scenario that makes me think of a dog chasing its tail: Site A links to Site B and Site B's rank increases. This, in turn, increases Site A's rank. And repeat

So this was it, the core of the matter. By linking to reputable sites, I was increasing the search engine ranking of webmatcher's customer's site. If you have enough people doing this, it undoubtedly will produce a more-than-tangible effect.

It's legal to do this, of course, but it's deviously manipulative and designed solely to fool search engines. It definitely gets a shaking head of disapproval from me.

July 17, 2008

Back in the 70s and 80s library books used to smell like vomit. I'm not sure why this was. Perhaps it was the glue that was used to bind in the card holder. Nowadays, while some do indeed smell like vomit but only because they've been vomited upon, they don't really have any smell at all.

Of course, to me, the best smelling book is one that smells of age and through that smell attains some additional character.

r

December 12, 2007

May 15, 2007

May 7, 2007

April 1, 2007

A couple of years back I replaced the battery in my first generation iPod. I didn't throw the original battery away, but instead I placed it in a drawer and promptly forgot about it. While digging through that drawer yesterday, I rediscovered the battery, as shown here. It used to less thick than a pencil, but over time it has swollen into the beast that you see.

Seeing this thing sitting in the drawer freaked me out a bit. I carefully picked it up by its connector and brought it outside to the trash can. Right before I was about to dispose of it, I thought that I should take some pictures first. I (stupidly, perhaps) brought it inside and snapped some pics. It was only then that I disposed of the battery.

And no, despite the date, this is not an April fool's joke.

Mar 15th, 2007

Sept 9th, 2006

Aug 30th, 2006

I'm watching your report on the San Marcos shooting right now. It raises a question that has come to my mind several times while watching the news (and listening to the news on the radio). Why are reporters sent on location after the news-worthy event has passed? It seems a bit silly and doesn't add to the credibility of the story.

Feb 21st, 2006

If you want to retire at 40 with just a hair less than 1 million dollars, put away $300 at 15% for the next 25 years and you're set.

Explore the power of compound interest using my new Compound Interest Calculator

December 7th, 2005

November 1st, 2005

October 9th, 2005

October 6th, 2005

September 30th, 2005

September 23rd, 2005

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

September 21st, 2005

July 27th, 2005

July 23rd, 2005

July 19th, 2005

July 5, 2005

June 24, 2005

For example, someone wished me a happy birthday the other day. I never shared my birthdate with this person and so I can only assume it was gathered through some other means. I'm aware this doesn't bother most others in the slightest, but it's just the way I'm wired.

Since I can't control conversations that take place when I'm not around (nor would I wish to do such a thing), I sometimes employ my spam technique.

Spam technique, you ask? What does spam have to do with people? A lot, actually. When I provide an email address to a company, I will make it unique for that company, for example sears(a)geekhideout.com if I am dealing with Sears. If I start receiving spam at that address, I know that Sears provided my email address to a spammer.

In a similar vein, when dealing with someone whom I suspect might not be discrete with information that I provide, I will plant unique or slightly inaccurate information. If this is returned to me from a different source, I know exactly who was responsible for the leak.

June 20, 2005

And now, go ahead, Tell Me a Secret.