November 15, 2007

The Effects of Getting Spanked by Google…

rmiles7721November 15, 20078Technology

Updated – Just got home from several hours of meetings this evening. What an enjoyable day off 🙂

All of my sites except for this one have been dropped to PR0 now, but it’s the same for some of the bigger guys such as Techcrunch as well, so whatever Google is doing has broken some serious shit. Hopefully whatever it is will get fixed soon.

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It’s interesting to see what’s happened with some of my visits since Google decided I am an asshole.

zextreme

This is a screenshot from one of the counters I use. Historically, compared to Sitemeter, Google Analytics and AWStats ZExtreme only seems to record about half of my actual visits, so the numbers themselves should be doubled but it should give you an idea of what I am talking about. I suppose since I have paid links links and don’t use the nofollow tag like they think I should, I have been bumped like 50 places on any and all searches that might bring people here. Joke ’em if they can’t take a fuck. The only searches they seem to let through are from images.Google.com and I am getting ready to block that shit.

I am torn about the whole thing anyway. Has the content gotten worse? No, not necessarily. I still post the same old crap except that I think maybe it’s improved slightly. I post more often and write longer. I am getting like ten times the amount of comments than I was prior to that, and THAT’s what blogging is all about for me anyway. The participation and communication between people.

The only part of the whole thing that sucks is that it DOES effect my income and I don’t like the fact that Google is basically telling us that the only relevant paid links or searches are those which IT performs and if all your base don’t belong to Google, then you are dogshit. So am I taking down my Google AdSense advertisements on the sidebar? Nope, they are still performing, although slowly. I am considering giving in though and adding nofollow back into all of the links that I can.

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Airport Screeners Missed Bomb Parts

rmiles7721November 15, 2007Site News

GAO investigators smuggle liquid explosives and detonators past airport security, exposing a dangerous hole in the nations ability to keep these forbidden items off of airplanes.

According to the TSA the investigators only got past one level of security out of eight. My questions why didn’t they try to get through the others, or what exactly are the other levels of security that would have caught them trying to sneak it in? I would be interested in hearing more details about the investigation as well as the security procedures myself.

The GAO has not detailed the weak points since it is sensitive information but says that they can be figured out from public information.

The TSA is spouting about new technologies and ways to detect more stuff. My main concern is whether it’s automated or human? Humans are certainly fallible and there are going to be mistakes. I see us heading toward the day where you have to be strip searched before you get on a plane, or maybe even given temporary disposable clothing for your trip. It’s not as far fetched as that might seem. Thank goodness I don’t have to fly often.

Reverb Syndicate…

rmiles7721November 15, 2007Entertainment

It’s funny how you can get sidetracked so easily.

By ‘YOU’ I mean ‘ME’ of course.

I was researching a keyword on Benjamin Stanford so that I could find more news stories and maybe write a bit more about him when I came across this video from the Reverb Syndicate over at Youtube. The name is ‘I Am The New Number Two’. The first thing that came to my mind was ‘The Prisoner’ with Patrick McGoohan from 1967. No, I am not that old. Actually I am, but I was still in diapers at that point in time, but back in the early seventies thanks to my mom and dad I fell in love with several different television shows. The Prisoner, The Saint, The Avengers, stuff like that. I still love them and if one is on TV I have to watch.

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“The Prisoner” is a unique piece of television. It addresses issues such as personal identity and freedom, democracy, education, scientific progress, art and technology, while still remaining an entertaining drama series. Over seventeen episodes we witness a war of attrition between the faceless forces behind ‘The Village’ (a Kafkaesque community somewhere between Butlins and Alcatraz) and its most strong willed inmate, No. 6. who struggles ceaselessly to assert his individuality while plotting to escape from his captors.

What’s all that got to do with the Reverb Syndicate? Not a god damned thing except that their music evokes that time period for me like certain smells bring back specific memories and times. Here’s the video I found at YouTube.

Damn good stuff.

So what do you do when you find something like this? You, I mean I, head your happy ass over to iTunes and see what their other stuff is like and buy the album that is there, The Jet Set!

image

Even the ‘album’ cover elicits memories of the ’60s and early ’70s, Ian Fleming, Roger Moore as the Saint and all of the other Spy movies and TV shows that were out at the time. The Reverb Syndicate has a web page (who doesn’t?) that you can visit here. Apparently Operation:Jet Set is their only album that’s out now but they have another coming soon. These guys are out of Canada and are sort of a mixture of blues/surf music. All instrumental from the couple of tunes I have heard so far.

 

Thursday Thirteen #7 – The Best Call-In Excuses I’ve Heard Recently

rmiles7721November 15, 20078Site News


Thirteen Lame Excuses I’ve Heard When People Call In To Work.

  1. Last Christmas one of my cooks and his wife, a waitress, called in on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Apparently he had gotten drunk and in a fight with his neighbors, so the police came and locked him up. Needless to say he was unemployed the next day. Christmas is by far one of the busiest days of the year for us and unless you are in the hospital or someone has died, EVERYONE works Christmas. I know, it sucks, but it’s just the nature of the business and I always make sure to tell people BEFORE they take the job that they will be expected to work ALL holidays and weekends.
  2. A couple of years ago I posted about this one. A waitress called in on me because her dog had died. Perhaps I am just an insensitive bastard but I feel like when you make a commitment to something like a job you take that commitment seriously.
  3. ‘My Chicken Died’ The same lady that hung me because her dog died, a few months later a chicken died and she called in as well. NOW you see why I was so pissed off about her missing work when the dog died.
  4. ‘I ran over a snake’. Guess who called in because of this. Yep, the SAME damn crazy lady.
  5. ‘I have a dentist’s appointment and I have to go to probation’. Now these are both darn good reasons to not go to work but since my managers hang their schedules up at least a week in advance one would think that the person referred to would have let their manager know well ahead of time what was going on. Nope, he waited until 30 minutes prior to his shift starting. Got this one yesterday!
  6. ‘I fell down the steps and broke two toes and have to keep my foot elevated for a week’. This was just a couple of months ago and was one of my managers.
  7. Ran out of gas. I hear this at least once a month. They don’t call and say they are going to be LATE, they run out of gas and I suppose it’s so traumatic that they have to miss an entire day of work.
  8. ‘I’m on my period’. No offense to all of the lovely ladies out there but I’ve been married for almost twenty years and when my wife is on her period she still goes to work. As a manager I kept a supply of multiple sizes of tampons in the office and you just didn’t call in with this excuse unless you wanted to be unemployed. My managers are a bit too nice and will believe anything.
  9. ‘My Clothes are Still Wet’. This happens when you are too damned stupid to do your laundry in a timely manner. My stock answer is generally that once you get to work if you walk real fast your clothes will dry faster.
  10. Too drunk to work. At least he was honest with me. I let him keep his job because he had the guts to at least tell me the truth unlike others that just show up drunk and have to be sent home. Been there, done that (on both accounts). I even slept under my cubicle at the office with the phone next to my head after one particularly drunk episode a few years back.
  11. ‘My husband stole my car and got arrested and they impounded my car’. Oh yeah, this was recently. Now that I have three times the number of employees I did as a manager I get three times the garbage.
  12. ‘I have to clean my house before Family and Children Services get here’. WTF? Apparently there are some other issues aside from your house being f’ing nasty.
  13. ‘I have a pimple’. ??? Not even an excuse like ‘My herpes sores are oozing’ but ‘I have a PIMPLE!’ You need to find a job where you do nothing but talk on a phone or speaker apparently.

    The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

San Francisco Oil Spill Photos

rmiles7721November 15, 2007Site News

Just a group of photos put into a slideshow concerning the oil spill in San Francisco.

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Vacation Coming

rmiles7721November 15, 2007Travel

I have to sit down this evening an write out a vacation plan for 2008. I have the requests from two of my managers and that should be fun to deal with. Two of their vacation requests overlap each other. I asked one of them yesterday which none was more important to her since they are both going to have to adjust the dates on one each. She has reservations for Disney for the first one so the second one will have to be moved and the other lady is going to have to adjust hers.

Still don’t know when I am going to be taking mine. All six of their vacation dates are right smack in the middle of when I normally take mine, so I am going to have to take mine at some other time. I thought about taking the first one in February. If the wife’s friend in Hilton Head still has not moved by then we may go visit her. That would be pretty cool. She lives in a really nice area of Bluffton, SC. The neighborhood she lives in is huge. There is a pool, and horse stables and some really beautiful luxury homes right around there I enjoy driving around just to look at.

I am still considering taking my ten day vacation at the beginning of June. That would work out very well and if we can ditch the girls for a few days, maybe go down to the keys. It will be the off season and a bit cheaper at that time. I can deal with a bit of heat in order to save some money..