September 30, 2005
Miserable Failure
Taken directly from My Little Problem:SEO wizardry or Popular opinion?
Googlebombing 'failure'
9/16/2005 12:54:00 PM
Posted by Marissa Mayer, Director of Consumer Web Products
If you do a Google search on the word [failure] or the phrase [miserable failure], the top result is currently the White House’s official biographical page for President Bush. We've received some complaints recently from users who assume that this reflects a political bias on our part. I'd like to explain how these results come up in order to allay these concerns.
Google's search results are generated by computer programs that rank web pages in large part by examining the number and relative popularity of the sites that link to them. By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush's website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. We don't condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.
How many "Pranksters" does it take to cause a result like that?
Cary's response: I dunno but I'm certainly game!Posted by Bastique at 09:26 PM | (0) cared to comment
September 29, 2005
Day 32 Nicotine Free
So, give me another 58 days and I’ll mark this one thing Accomplished. I have two more months to go, but I’m already feeling confident that I can make this permanent. Anytime now I get the craving, I wait. It goes away. The tricky part at this point is operating under the misguided belief that I am now a non-smoker, so it won’t hurt to have one.
That is simply insanity.
Posted by Bastique at 11:56 PM | (2) cared to comment
September 28, 2005
What's up?
I'm actually not asking my readers that question, it's just the title of the song in my head by 4 Non Blondes
My last entry was on September 22. I haven't paid my blog any attention. You know; the last thing I want to do is let this get away from me again. Bad Cary!
Especially since I can always throw together a few words in just a few minutes. I have no excuse whatsoever!
So, what's going on? I haven't had a cigarette in 31 days. This is a truly amazing accomplishment! Last time I quit was April 2004, and it was easy, but I decided at my class reunion that I could pick up just one...and then one more. Let's just say that I will never be a social smoker, and I have to remember that one cigarette for me is the same as ten thousand cigarettes, and more.
If you're on my main page, look on the left column. As of this moment, I've saved $85.11 in not smoking the 486 cigarettes I haven't smoked. At 90 days, I'm taking that money and getting tattoo number 4.
For all you Michael lovers out there... thirteen days from now I'll be driving up to the beginning of the panhandle of Florida to go pick him up from Eglin. Wednesday morning of October 12, 2005, I had better have pulled up to the west entrance of Eglin Air Force Base or else they'll take him back. Keep your fingers crossed that I have no problems.
My softball team, the Tigers, have won a game, now! Our record is now 1-2. I didn't get to play for a second week because of a second injury I sustained during practice. This time I pulled my groin muscle. Coach wouldn't let me play. I hope I get out on the field one day! They said I made an exceptional good bat boy.
Cheer me on...
Posted by Bastique at 09:36 PM | (3) cared to comment
September 22, 2005
Day 26
What will make it easier to stay quit once it’s official is letting go of the reasons that I smoked and talking honestly about when I want to smoke. Today the desire to light up came with heightened stress at work. I’m grateful that my desire to stay smoke-free was stronger.
What I miss about smoking is being able to use a cigarette to get away and regroup. Now I need to find a new way of doing that.
Possibilities? Just going outside and taking a walk around my building is one idea. I know there’s some yoga things that might help too. Of course I still need to learn yoga.
Anyway, quitting smoking can be done, even by a die-hard like me! I’m going to do it!
Posted by Bastique at 10:43 PM | (0) cared to comment
September 20, 2005
Michael's impending homecoming
In case anyone is wondering, Michael has 21 days and one night to go in his stay at Camp Snoopy, aka Eglin Federal Work Camp just outside of Fort Walton Beach Florida. On October 12, at 8 in the morning, I'll be picking him just outside the main gate, driving ten to twelve hours back and dropping him off at the halfway house in Dania Beach.
It's been a long two and a half years.
The last weeks have been pretty screwed up too, and I've been so bummed out not being able to talk to him on the phone, because the prison phone system for the entire Southern Region of the Bureau of Prisons is located where? You guessed it: New Orleans. Why doesn't the BOP let the inmates direct dial for a few weeks until it's back up? You think our government could show just the tiniest bit of humanity.
Well, I'm sure the administration's response is "What did prisoners do before the invention of the telephone? They'll survive." Those bastards.
Posted by Bastique at 10:31 PM | (0) cared to comment
September 18, 2005
Baby store
I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but sometimes I'll look at a word I've read fifty thousand times before and suddenly it just seems wrong. In a book I recently read, I came to a stop at the word, infantry, and if it didn't jump off the page and slap me in the face. I had to go so far as open my spell checker in MS Word to be certain it was spelled right--and certainly enough, it was!
From the looks of this Japanese ad,
blond haired, blue eyed babies are a
big seller in Tokyo!But if you didn't know what infantry meant, it would seem to mean “childish behaviour” in the same sense as gallantry is the act of being gallant. Or worse yet, like you'll find baked goods at a bakery, infantry could mean a store that sells babies (The French could have, perhaps, an Enfenterie, commes la Poissonerie). Or, heaven forbid, like hosery and finery, infantry could literally mean “infants meant to be worn.”
English is certainly a weird language.
Posted by Bastique at 05:11 PM | (0) cared to comment
September 15, 2005
Day 18
One thing that gets easy to remember is that the craving will pass. Cravings always pass. Usually the craving passes within five minutes. As long as I don’t give in to it, I’m home free.
Someone once told me there are three big threes to quitting smoking. The first three days are the hardest. Then the first three weeks. Finally the first three months. I’m almost at the three week mark.
I’m pretty certain I’ve done it. But time will tell. I’ll keep you all informed.
Posted by Bastique at 05:23 PM | (3) cared to comment
September 13, 2005
Rush Limbaugh is a filthy pig
I've long felt that Rush Limbaugh was a deplorable, cretinous monster whose only purpose is to connive tens of millions of Americans into believing the propaganda meat grinder spewed out by the con wing of the Republican Party. There is no depth that he won't sink in order to vomit up his poisonous diatribe, no matter how farcical, slanderous or venomous, and completely without regard to those people who he might hurt.
I developed a brand new hatred for Rush when I heard his latest sickening and irrelevant diatribe wherein he says that liberals are jumping for joy because of the Katrina tragedy, because it offers them an opportunity to take Bush down. His vindictiveness is appalling—nobody is using the Katrina tragedy in this manner.
But I just think Rush is projecting...forgetting the way the cons twisted the 9/11 disaster, a tragedy that initially brought Americans together. The cons actually exploited this tragedy in order to start the war in Iraq, something that has financially benefited certain corporations helping to "rebuild." Someone was cheering then, all the way to the bank!
It's the cons who have no regard for human life—because as long as they can make money—Halliburton is getting contracts out of the New Orleans disaster?
The cons are abusing us over and over again, and Rush is banking on it. Rush has the same blood on his hands that the rest of them have.
He is a filthy pig.
I Photoshop'd the picture (obviously), but the original photograph, not too different, may be found at SPQR, a rather interesting blog.
Posted by Bastique at 09:18 PM | (1) cared to comment
September 12, 2005
Day 15
I won’t say that my lungs have improved terribly yet, but I do feel somewhat better, and the fact that I made it this long has made a serious impact on my well being. I have a lot of faith that when all is said and done, I will ultimately be a non-smoker.
I am already seeing myself as such.
Posted by Bastique at 08:53 PM | (1) cared to comment
September 10, 2005
Whose failure?
Who says there's plenty of blame to pass around? What a crock of BS.
The states are not responsible for coordinating this sort of effort because hurricanes almost alwasy affect multiple states. The city and state's responsibility is to request assistance from the Federal Agency. The city and state both met that portion of their responsibility responsibility. If you heard the governor of Louisiana didn't declare an emergency, she did on the Friday before the hurricane. It's documented. However, word got out among conservative pundits and columnists that she didn't and people have kept repeating it as the gospel truth, even though it was false. This kind of thing happens.
The state did all that it could. The city of New Orleans as well as the Governor of Louisiana begged the federal government for money to repair the levees and were turned down. Homeland Security said it was "pork barrel" spending. New Orleans couldn't possibly have done more than it did.
The blame goes entirely to the Federal government because the Federal Agency is responsible for coordinating efforts.
Michael Brown was never qualified (he was last employed as an Arabian horse show judge[?], a job from which he was fired). Neither was his predecessor Bush appointee, who is now a lobbyist for Halliburton (Dick Cheney's company). The current administration has regularly handed out positions to unqualified individuals as return on favors.
My question is how come we're just now finding out about these things? Well, today's media is either gutless or a part of the machine. The only way you get to find facts is by listening to left-wing radio or talk, which has its own share of slant, by searching on the internet, or listening to BBC or other foreign sources. You won't hear it on the evening news. (A white couple in deep water with groceries found groceries, a young black man in the same water with groceries looted his.)
I know it's hard to believe that the top level administration is fraught with corruption, graft and cronyism, because--well--we're talking about the PRESIDENT and his CABINET, right? Unimaginable. Mark my words. The wall is already beginning to come apart. Republican congressional members are quickly distancing themselves from the administration. To win reelection next year? Who knows, but it's evident that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Michael Brown is really the first to go. Let's hope that he's not the last.
Posted by Bastique at 02:31 PM | (0) cared to comment