Michael Martinez

The new Blogger sucks

2007-01-28T14:37:00.000-06:00

Today, without warning, Google forced me to upgrade my Blogger account to use their new out-of-beta absolutely stupid interface.

I'm done with Blogger and will figure out what to do with this blog over the next few days. The SEO Theory blog, I suppose, will have to be moved to the 1st Query Web site sooner than planned.

There was absolutely no compelling business reason for Google to force me to create a new account, much less to force me to use a horribly designed "upgrade".

Good-bye Blogger.

On global warming and 'An Inconvenient Truth'

2007-01-25T00:56:00.000-06:00

Stever has submitted some comments for publication that I have not published or rejected as I write this. I'm not impressed enough with the "new" Blogger service to upgrade this account and I don't have the ability to edit comments. I will post part of Stever's latest submission here and reply to that portion. The portion I am leaving out is a reference to Ickipedia, a source of disinformation I neither trust nor endorse.

I don't buy this partial data rebutal. have read it other places too.

Sure it's only a blip out of the 4.5 billion year age of the earth. But it is not a blip to the human race and all other forms of life on this planet today.

And just saying that 600k years does not matter is simply brushing it off. 600k years matters plenty. We don't know what the pattern was before those 600k, or how long we have been in that pattern. At some time in the past it was certainly different.

If it only shows us a cycle we have been in, for the past 5 or 6 cycles we can measure, and now shows us the cycle has drastically changed, and the timing of the change coincides with our petro burning, forest clearing, ocean raping, blah, blah, blah, etc. activities, then 600k years is more than enough data to show a significant change.

And what do you mean by "the current ice age is older that 600k years old"? What are you calling an ice age? The entire period that there has been ice at the poles? I think that what we typically like to call an ice age is that 100k cycle we see in the chart. At all the other peaks there is still ice at the poles, just much less than there was during the cold periods when the ice cap reached all the way to Florida.

I am not pretending to be a climatologist, but you somehow got the erroneous impression from my previous post on global warming that I somehow don't believe in it.

I conceded the whole global warming point on a personal level after surviving Crazy Ivan, but in my post I specifically wrote: "Okay, folks, we get it. It's going to get hot, it's going to get wet, and a lot of people will be displaced for any number of environmental reasons."

Now, does the data from 600,000 years of recent geological climactic history matter with respect to analyzing the current climatological trends?

Yes and No.

Yes, it matters in the sense that if we have indeed accelerated the process (as I wrote in my previous post) of climatological change, then current temperature trends will conflict with the recent historical temperature trends.

So Al Gore and I do, in fact, agree on the point that human activity has accelerated the process of global warming.

As far as the Earth's natural processes are concerned, what does 600,000 years' worth of data mean? Not a whole lot. Things were once much hotter and wetter in places (and drier in other places) than it's about to become in the next few hundred years of human experience. Life on Earth has survived a lot of changes far more dramatic than we're about to experience.

If you could go back in time to the age of the dinosaurs, you would have to wear an environmental suit because you would have trouble breathing the atmosphere. I loved the "Jurassic Park" movies but without some genetic modification I'm not sure reconstituted dino DNA could actually help us rebreed long-dead species that simply were not adapted to our current environment. What would an oxygen-rich atmosphere do to them? Maybe they would burn out. I don't know. Maybe a biologist would say, "Eh. Wouldn't matter as much to them as it might to us if we swapped atmospheric conditions".

Still, there was once far more CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere than there is today, than there will be in 100 years, and maybe -- just maybe -- the fact that we humans have accelerated the process doesn't mean we're about to push the Earth's climactic changes past any records set in previous geological epochs. After all, during the periods of great volacnism, the atmosphere was extremely toxic by today's standards. Somehow Mama Earth managed to change things out and here we are.

My previous post was not written in opposition to taking action about global warming. I'm not sure how anyone could possibly get that idea from what I wrote. But obviously at least one person is concerned I'm not taking the issue seriously.

Personally, I feel I am taking it as seriously as anyone else who has written on the topic lately. But I'm also proposing that we do something useful with all the additional water that is coming from the melting ice caps. We can eventually stop flooding our atmosphere with pollution and I'm all for that, but in the meantime a geologic process has begun which cannot be stopped in an instant.

So despite the fact that we can expect more ecological threats and disasters in the near future, we really do have an opportunity to change some of the desert conditions that make life extremely inhospitable to people. Furthermore, undertaking such massive ecological transformation projects would cost less than we are spending on foreign wars and would most likely win us more friends and respect around the globe than using the most powerful army in modern history to spread "democracy" at gunpoint.

We can accomplish a lot if we find the collective will to take action now.

That's all I'm saying.

Global warming: The ocean is rising! The ocean is rising!

2007-01-24T00:42:00.000-06:00

1200 scientists and innumerable government-appointed editors are in the process of telling us that human-induced global warming has begun.

Let's get real for a moment. This has happened before. It has happened more than once before. Regardless of whether dinosaur flatulence contributed to any periods of global warming during their period of ascendancy, scientists are acting like humanity is on a self-destructive path that is altering the natural state of the universe.

I have to roll my eyes every time that card is played because it's just so false and deceptive.

Now, that doesn't mean we aren't on the verge of a long period of seeing massive environmental changes. We've seen monster storms come up and knock away whole towns and cities. Flooding has apparently increased in some areas of the world and droughts have increased in other areas of the world.

And the oceans should rise between 4 and 35 inches over the next 100 years.

Okay, folks, we get it. It's going to get hot, it's going to get wet, and a lot of people will be displaced for any number of environmental reasons.

What shames the scientific community at this point in the process, however, is their failure to suggest any practical applications that take advantage of global warming while we look for ways to reduce the amount of our industrial influence on the phenomenon. We cannot hope to stop what remains a natural process, but we can possibly reduce the amount of acceleration we put into that process through our pollution.

Meanwhile, people are dying of drought-induced famine as the oceans rise.

Has anyone considered the fact that we actually have the technology to convert salt water to fresh water?

Has anyone considered the fact that we have the technology to create huge pipelines to carry liquids across thousands of miles?

Has anyone considered the fact that if you built ten, twenty, thirty, one hundred desalination plants across north Africa and a network of pipelines to carry the fresh water you could create huge resevoirs across the desert (which was once a well-watered plain)?

Has anyone considered how many jobs would created by such a project?

Has anyone considered how many farms could be supported by such a project?

Has anyone considered how much supporting infrastructure would additionally be required by such a project, increasing the number of jobs and resources available to impoverished nations?

The north and east African nations could reinvent themselves, feed their peoples, improve their economies, and reduce their populations' sympathies for militant groups that really have no goals other than to enslave and murder as many people as they can.

And Africa is not the only continent that could benefit from this relatively simple, low-cost technology. We could rebuild depleted water reserves throughout North America's western plains and deserts, where growing cities have drained rivers dry and lowered the water levels of huge underground aquifers by hundreds of feet in some places.

Even Australia could open up its massive arid interior to channels of development that would spur growth and, most importantly, help funnel water out of the oceans into regions that haven't seen water for hundreds, thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of years.

Now, environmentalists will be quick to say, "Wait! We cannot simply go flooding existing ecosystems that have adapted to arid conditions! What about all the species that will die off?"

To which one can only reply, "What about all the coastal species and ecosystems already being destroyed by rising oceans and worsening storm systems?"

There are no perfect solutions, but our problems today extend well beyond global warming. Millions of people die from starvation and disease every year simply because they lack the basic resources to survive. How many desert rats and lizards are 1,000,000 babies worth?

Yes, we contributed to the problem but the truth of the matter is that global warming began more than 10,000 years ago. It didn't begin because of human activity and it's only in the past few hundred years that human activity has become capable of accelerating the process. We are currently living in what is called an Interglacial Period. That is, geologically, the Earth is passing through an Ice Age (a period of alternating cold and warm phases), but we're in the midst of a warming phase that has put the Ice Age on hold.

Eventually, despite global warming, the Earth will again cool down and we'll enter another glacial period such as the one that ended about 12,000 years ago. Glacial periods tend to last for tens of thousands of years. Interglacial Periods can last for similar lengths of time but they tend to be shorter. The current Interglacial Period may last another 10-15,000 years. We don't know.

The last Interglacial Period warmed the Earth past the point where its climate currently stands now. Europe and North America were like tropical paradises. So the peril represented by global warming is not one that threatens Earth's ecosystem. Micro-ecosystems have risen and died out endlessly as part of the natural process for as long as there has been life on Earth. Polish aristocrats cut down an entire forest several hundred years ago, created a desert, and many of the animals in the region adapted to that desert environment. Now that desert is threatened by development and reforestation.

Forests, jungles, deserts, lakes, rivers, wetlands, and plains have formed and vanished endlessly throughout the history of life on our planet. That natural process has led to the extinction of many species, as well as to the rise of many species. We have no idea of which species will adapt to the consequences of today's global warming, but we have more than just an environmental responsibility to respect the natural existence of other species. We also have a natural biological imperative to survive.

Our survival can be enhanced in many ways if we seize the opportunity to produce more fresh water, irrigate unused desert land, and create jobs, hope, stability, and improved security for many people in lands that are now depleted of natural resources. In the long run, if we do nothing with all that water flowing into the oceans, we'll see increasing population pressures and competition for safe, dry land lead to more warfare and strife between impoverished peoples.

Is the continued survival of desert turtle and lizard habitats worth the human misery and suffering that could otherwise be avoided?

Human genetic experiments take an odd twist

2007-01-21T13:19:00.000-06:00

By the time a story hits the front page of CNN's Web site, it's probably been digested many times over in smaller journalistic circles. And having seen what national/international media can do to the facts of various industries, I take whatever I read there with a huge grain of salt.

Still, it's curious to find that some people with genetic variations may want to propagate them through selective embryo screening.

Now, if blond-haired, blue-eyed people wearing Swastikas (btw -- did you know that most Nazis did not have blond hair?) were to put together a breeding program to create super-human beings or some such nonsense (which has been written about in science fiction for years), nearly everyone on the planet would be up in arms, looking for the secret laboratories. We don't need no stinkin' racist supermen.

But the CNN story looks at the angle from the other direction. Will people be as incensed and offended when they realize that couples with physical disadvantages -- such as dwarfism -- may want to have children who share the same disadvantages with them?

Every time I see an article about ancient human populations or modern human genetic control ethics, I wonder how it is that we have come to be who we are through what science calls "the evolutionary process". Now, before you start branding me a "genetic interventionist" or whatever, understand that I'm only looking at the scientific side of the issues.

For decades, scientists have struggled to explain how we became human. They have proposed speciation events must have occurred, where small, isolated populations of early hominids were cut off from other hominids for long periods of time (hundreds of thousands of years). For whatever reasons, one group of hominids surpassed all others during each speciation phase.

So one group of Australopithecines (the hobbit-sized "Lucy" who lived 3,000,000 years ago was an Australopithecine) was cut off from all others and this one group evolved into the early Homo Sapiens ancestors many scientists have called Homo Erectus or Homo Ergaster. The Erectus/Ergaster groups became divided across three broad regions: some remained in Africa, some went north to Europe, and some went east to Asia.

The Neanderthals are believed to have evolved from Homo Heidelbergensis families (descendants of African Homo Ergasters) who spread north in a later migration. But there remains the question of whether Neanderthals and Modern Humans intermingled. Two interspeciation points have been proposed (that I am aware of): the Middle East and western Europe.

In East Asia, the descendants of Homo Erectus supposedly lasted about 1,000,000 years before dying out. They were ultimately replaced by Modern Humans.

Modern Humans are believed to have evolved in Africa (which means that all blond-haired, blue-eyed people are descended from dark-skinned people -- so much for the "pure Nordic race"). Every few tens of thousands of years, new waves genetically more advanced people swarmed out from Africa to expand into other regions of the world.

The statistical implication is that the human evolutionary process occurs fastest in small, isolated populations that must adapt to radical changes in environment. If a population can expand into wider and wider territory, there is no evolutionary impetus for advantageous genes to cluster together and produce a "leap forward" (as the voiceovers in the "X-Men" movies indicate).

So where does that leave modern humanity? Science fiction writers have often suggested or argued that a population which achieves a state of civilizaion stops evolving. Recent genetic evidence suggests that is not so. In fact, as recently as a few thousand years ago we acquired the ability to digest milk in adulthood (a genetic trait which is still not found in some parts of the world).

Recent research suggests that humanity's most recent common ancestor lived about 60,000 years ago. Some people are already suggesting that genetic mutations occur at a much faster pace in human experience than previously believed.

But in order for a new species to appear, more than one genetic mutation must become fixed (dominant) in a population. Despite a wide array of genetic variations in modern humans, we are still the same species. The question of whether we can spin off a new species in a world of highly interconnected sub-groups is both scientifically intriguing and ethically confusing.

The process would have to begin with intentional human genetic breeding. That is, even something as relatively simple as prescreening embryos constitutes a breeding process, in the sense that we are selecting offspring for a specific outcome. We breed dogs, cats, horses, cattle, and many other animals. Have we now come down to breeding ourselves?

And if we achieve the ability to create a species on demand, should we use it?

Bill Richardson to bring New Mexico corruption to Washington?

2007-01-21T13:15:00.000-06:00

As both Republican and Democratic Presidential hopefuls launch their 2008 campaigns, Bill Richardson, governor of the corrupt State of New Mexico, has declared: "Our reputation in the world is diminished".

Bill, are you talking about New Mexico or the United States? I've lived in New Mexico. I've dealt with your corrupt court system. I've been threatened and coerced by your corrupt officers of the court with respect to cases where I was neither the plaintiff nor the defendent.

You have serious problems in your state, dude. Why don't you fix them before you drag your sorry gang of cronies to Washington and make everyone else's lives miserable?

What this country does NOT need is New Mexico's "good ole boy" syndrome thrust upon all fifty states.

No interesting movies this weekend

2007-01-20T15:12:00.000-06:00

The dearth of good movies continues. I may go back and see "Night at the Museum" again. Haven't made up my mind. "Arthur and the Invisibles" was certainly fun, but I was hoping something new and interesting would come out.

Although I have to admit that I am tempted to go see "Stomp the Yard" after reading a synopsis of the story. I've never heard of "stepping" or any fraternity competitions. I should probably do some research and see what I can find. Regardless of whether the story would be well written, directed, or acted, the dancing alone should be interesting.

Then again, I've got a lot of stuff I need to be doing that I'm putting off. For example, people keep sending pictures, links, and information about Mizuo Peck. I'll try to get the page updated tomorrow (January 21). I'll try, I promise. There's loads of interesting factums about her. Mizuo has apparently made a great impression on a lot of people who have known her.

But maybe all the interest in Mizuo underscores just how boring the current crop of movies actually is. I think the film industry took a nose dive with "Borat". In the meantime, I'm waiting for "Spider-man 3", "The Fantastic Four 2", "Indiana Jones 4", "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", "Pirates of the Caribbean 3", and "The Hobbit".

Oh, wait. There won't be any "Hobbit" movie just yet. My bad.

Well, maybe we'll get another "Incredibles" or "Superman Returns Again" or something.

Democrats doom U.S. with Clinton, Obama candidacies

2007-01-20T14:59:00.000-06:00

We need some new leadership from real leaders, not from tired party hacks and people who have failed to demonstrate any real leadership qualities.

Leaders don't stand around whining about who is charge. They take charge.

Leaders don't place blame for failure on others. They take responsibility for their actions and accept responsibility for failure.

Leaders don't follow political party agendas. They set their own agendas.

Leaders don't rush in whenever there's a disaster and take credit for any small success. They deal with the problem and move on.

The inveitable flood of U.S. Senators and Representatives who are going to stand before the cameras over the next year and tell us "we need new leadership, blah, blah, blah" won't produce one single leader. None of them are qualified. Out of 535 people serving in the U.S. Congress today, none are leaders.

And we don't just need a leader. We need a strong leader. Historians will tell you quickly that, throughout history, strong leaders usually introduce themselves very simply, sometimes even gracefully. In their correspondence, their treaties, their declarations, they basically say, "I so-and-so set forth on this day blah-blah-blah."

Weak leaders, on the other hand, are the ones who toot their horns, who form "exploratory committees", who rely upon press conferences to influence the real leaders, who extol their own virtues.

If the people of the United States really wanted Barack O'Bama or Hilary Clinton as the President, you'd see hundreds, thousands of bloggers every day suggesting that these people need to be in the white house.

Once you zoom past the hard-core Democratic bloggers, you get nothing. No grass-roots demand for press conferencing exploratory committeeing leaders.

The Republican Party, being just as corrupt and pathetic as the Democratic Party, at least has had the good sense not to signal its intent for 2008 Presidential campaigns. We can enjoy bashing the Democrats for their ludicrous self-bleating for a while before the Republicans return to show us that there ain't no intelligent life in Congress.

Scotty, 300 million to beam up. Be sure to leave the Democrats and Republicans behind so they can pick new "leaders".

Way behind schedule

2007-01-18T02:01:00.000-06:00

I've fallen behind schedule again. That's about the way things go every year.

I've yet to return to the articles on the Compuserve IMPs, although the Web site is designed and partially installed.

I've got to come up with an alternative to the Battlestar Galactica Essay Contest because, apparently, the rules were too tough and the prizes not compelling enough.

I've been uploading newly updated Xenite.Org Forum Archives to SF-Fandom. So far I think I've updated the Andre Norton Message Board Archive, the H. P. Lovecraft Message Board Archive, the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World Message Board Archive (which includes messages from Michael Sinelnikoff, who played Professor Summerlee), the Farscape Message Board Archive (and that was the first fan-run message board or forum for the show), and the White Council Archive.

The White Council was the first Web forum dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien (and the first devoted to all of the Inklings). It's been succeeded by our Tolkien and the Inklings Forum and our Lord of the Rings movies forum. I renamed the forum when we split it up because other people were starting to call their Tolkien forums "the White Council" and I didn't feel like getting into a branding war with them.

And I've got other projects I have been and need to work on, such as the Tolkien Studies Web site and its new Tolkien Studies Blog.

So if I seem a bit off the radar every now and then, it's because I'm just way too swamped to deal with everything. I have two requests for permission to translate...Tolkien essays. I'm not sure which group. I've been changing my email subscriptions, preferences in profiles/accounts, and such too. I'm almost done with the transfer of everything into my new email address (which remains thankfully spam-free).

Anyway, that's partly where I've been for the past few weeks. I know people read this blog so I try to update it a few times a week, but it's tough to get back here very often. I appreciate your patience.

Boldly going where we've gone before

2007-01-16T01:43:00.000-06:00

I've been watching the reruns of Enterprise that SciFi has moved to its Monday night lineup. I did enjoy watching the first season of Enterprise but after a few months my schedule became too busy and I lost track of the show.

I know many hard-core Star Trek fans disliked the show but every Star Trek show has been greated with equal hostility by fans of the previous show. When Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted, many of my friends gagged. I could barely watch the show during the first season. I was completely unable to watch it in the second season. I tried again in the third season and found that it had improved vastly.

When Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered, it was Deja Vu all over again. Dedicated fans of ST:TNG hated the show. In fact, some people claim the show was only saved by the arrival of Worf. I'm not so sure it was as simple as that, but DS9 did get more interesting about that time.

When Star Trek: Voyager came on the scene, people thought it was pretty mundane and boring. How the show survived as long as it did, I don't know. They do say that Jeri Ryan turned things around. Was it Jeri Ryan or the Borg? I don't know. I watched more of Voyager in rerun syndication than I ever did while it was in its first run.

So when Enterprise debuted, I was prepared for the inevitable fannish whining. Sadly, they failed to disappoint me. The complaints rang throughout fandom. Enterprise was not as good as Voyager. Archer is no Janeway. What were they thinking? All you have to do is change the names and I'd already been through this three times before.

So now Enterprise has entered life in the rerun zone and there it will be doomed to forever remain, one must suppose. I'm curious about what the franchise will do next. The Federation has tamed the entire galaxy. About all that remains to be played out is the inevitable civil war and then maybe, if the civil war doesn't do it, the final collapse and demise of the corrupt, decadent Federation.

Those would actually make for two very interesting television series. And some people might argue that the Temporal Cold War we saw in Enterprise might constitute a civil war phase in Federation history, but I don't think so. Time Travel is a tool that Star Trek has come to rely upon often (they used it at least twice in the original series that I can think of) but Voyager showed us in its "Year of Hell" episode (I think that was the name) that using time technology to wage a war results in endless and hopeless paradoxes and counter-intuitive results.

Somehow the Federation has to get past its love affair with time travel and become divided into two political camps that are so diametrically opposed they feel the only way to resolve their differences is war. I would guess one camp would have to be the Eradicators, people who believe the galaxy can only have peace if all the violent, war-like civilizations are totally humbled or destroyed. The other camp would have to be the Embracers, people who believe that all civilizations in the galaxy should be absorbed into the Federation, even at phaser-point if necessary, but once absorbed allowed some leeway.

The Eradicators would use the Borg as an example of a species that threatens the safety and individuality of every other species in the galaxy. But the Embracers would equally use the Borg as an example of what total domination costs galactic social evolution. As long as cultures enter the Federation peacefully, or with some shreds of their individual heritages intact, the Federation should be able to repair all fences.

These two points of view would represent Gene Roddenberry's classic moral dilemma: can we use the power we obtain responsibly? Of course, a civil war between Federation factions bent on galactic conquest would depict such a perversion of Roddenberry's hopeful future that people might argue it's not really what Roddenberry' intended. Perhaps he would never intend to show such a hardline future, but it would represent a logical progression in the sequence of cultural evolutionary phases that Star Trek has explored.

And more importantly, it would permit us to continue the morality play format Roddenberry practiced. There could easily be a pacifist faction within the divided Federartion that strives to restore peace and harmony. But there could also be a reactionary faction that wants to return the Federation's priorities to its roots.

Ultimately, the solution to the moral dilemma would have to be found in a compromise between the principles of all the factions. I can easily see this kind of speculative story-telling last 10-12 seasons, if done properly.

And when the dust has settled and the old Federation is gone, we'd be able to look upon a new frontier for the descendants of the Federation's citizens to explore. Hope would be reborn from the ashes, and humanity with all its brethren across the stars would have learned a valuable lesson: that we cannot force each to be what we are not, that we cannot destroy each other without destroying ourselves.

So what do you think? Where would you like to see Star Trek go? Why not share your thoughts in SF-Fandom's Star Trek Forum? I'd like to know what other people hope to see in future Trek shows.

Arthur and the Invisibles

2007-01-14T12:29:00.000-06:00

This was one of those movies I knew was coming down the pipeline but really had not paid much attention to. I guess it had "kiddie flick" written all over its promotional copy so I had no real expectations for it.

Well yesterday I was out spending money and stopped at one of the local malls right after it started snowing. I was cold and hungry and decided to splurge on lunch, so I went to Johnny Rockets. :)

After lunch I meandered over to the mall's theater and saw that "Arthur and the Inivisibles" was just about to start. I didn't feel like getting back out into the cold and the snow again so I bought a ticket.

The only real miscasting in the whole movie, in my opinion, is Freddie Highmore as Arthur. Don't misunderstand me. I think he's a great Arthur. He performed admirably and the role suits him. I first saw Freddie in last year's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and I thought he did a good job there, too.

The problem is that he was the only person in the movie who spoke with a British accent. So either the entire cast was miscast or the lead was miscast. His accent sticks out like a sore thumb and it detracts from the movie's vintage 1950s-era mystique. How many American farm boys really sounded like they grew up in London?

I was surprised to see how many big stars (or once big stars) were involved in the movie: Mia Farrow, Robert de Niro, Madonna(!), and Emilio Estevez (to name most). I realize doing voices for animated films usually doesn't take a lot of an actor's time, but it's nice to see so many big screen stars involve themselves in productions where they have to rely mostly on their voices. That's craft and skill. It's part of the movie magic.

The special effects in the film were pretty good. The sets intermingled live action shots of an actual farmhouse setting with CGI. The transitions were almost seamless in a few scenes. Some of the transitions were a bit jarring but I think the movie mostly works.

It was a fun afternoon break and I'm glad I decided to see the movie on the spur of the moment. There have been way too few good, fun movies this fall and winter. I think Hollywood has dipped into the doldrums. Maybe they ran out of money for quality productions. I don't know, but it's almost been like a film drought this season.

I hope Freddie gets to make more fun movies before he moves on to the inevitable afterschool specials, sitcoms, and low-budget cameos. And I hope his film career doesn't mess him up. Child actors remind many people of what it's like to live in a world of imagination again, but they often pay a horrendous price in quality of life (and sometimes in brevity of life). Stay good, Freddie. Stay good.

I've also started a discussion of Arthur and the Invisibles at SF-Fandom's General Movies forum. Let me know what you think of the movie, either here or there.

Mizuo Peck

2007-01-12T05:10:00.000-06:00

On a much happier note, people are very, very interested in Mizuo Peck, the actress who plays the Sacagawea replica-come-to-life in "Night at the Museum".

Mizuo's name is currently the second most searched-for content on Xenite.Org (after Grace Park of Battlestar Galactica). I suspect that when our Mizuo Peck page achieves a more stable high ranking in Google's search results we'll see yet more traffic from her fans.

In the meantime, readers have been writing to share information about Mizuo's career and education and we have updated the page with the new information. The section on Sacagawea has also been moved to a more prominent position in the left hand margin. I hope that people who are curious about Mizuo also take the time to look at the Sacagawea information we have found and linked to.

Anyway, Mizuo, if you want to start a fan club, I think you'll find some interest out there. But let's get another movie or two under your belt. Keep up the good work!

U.S. Congress does not want to support our troops

2007-01-12T04:51:00.000-06:00

It's sad when the members of Congress, newly elected to office, put the needs of our soldiers aside and take up political grand-standing. American troops are no more enthusiastic about staying in Iraq than anyone else, but the soldiers want more help. So far, every comment from the new Congress has been about partisan politics. They put their political parties ahead of the needs and priorities of the American people. Who is willing to go to Washington to actually stand up for the people and not the parties?

And there remains considerable room for sending more troops in hearts here at home, especially among the families that bear this burden the hardest.

It's not that throwing more soldiers into harm's way is a solution in itself, but at a time when more and more generals are coming out of the woodwork, criticizing the administration they worked for, one must ask why they waited until now to say anything. On the one hand, working within the organization is considered to be a professional behavior.

On the other hand, we hung Nazis at Nuremburg for claiming they were only following orders. We expect our military leaders to stand up and say, "This is a fundamentally unsound military strategy" before we find ourselves embroiled in a controversy. Generals often take cushy jobs upon retirement and their motivations in criticizing the war now should be questioned.

Senators and Congressional Representatives are not capable of leading, much less winning a war. Wars are won only through perseverence and sound military strategy. Sound military strategy is not developed in front of television cameras or on campaign trails.

Right now, several Democratic and Republican party members are in the process of either consolidating their power in Washington or setting themselves up for the Presidential election in 2008. We can expect yet more anti-war rhetoric intended only to pleae the voters who are frustrated with the war. The leaders in Congress have not proposed any useful, meaningful solutions.

Whether President Bush is right is another matter. But we have already had to send miitary resources back to Somalia because this country allowed itself to be humiiated by Al Qaeda once before. If we leave Iraq before we achieve stability there, we will have to return in the future. We had to invade Iraq to begin with because we created Saddam Hussein and diplomacy had failed completely to resolve the international community's concerns about him.

He may not have been making weapons of mass destruction, but he was unwilling to prove that he wasn't making them, he continued to posture and pretend that he was making them, and he continued to inflict suffering on his own people. Most Americans continue to be ignorant of the fact that sanctions were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children because the aid that was permitted for Iraq during the sanction years was in many cases diverted by corrupt politicians from the United Nations and/or Hussein's government.

Members of Congress need to stop abusing their mandate for change. They are trying to use it as a mandate for cowardice and humiliation. It's way past time for the United States to accept responsibility for the fact tha we created this problem and we need to address it. Bullets are not the long-term solution. But neither is running and hiding.

Bill Gates wants to get 'Simply Connected'

2007-01-08T09:28:00.000-06:00

He must have read my story. Bill Gates wants to wire up everyone's houses. I'm all for that. "Computer. Turn on the television set." "Yes, master. The toaster is now in the bathtub." "Eeeek!" "Sorry honey!"

Actually, some years ago I wrote a short story called Simply Connected. It was the third in a series of stories (of which I only have copy for the first and the third) about a young programmer named Jim Curtis who constantly finds himself in the middle of unusually demanding technical glitches.

The first story, called Ill Logic, is about a mini-computer that goes on a rampage. It introduces Jim and a girl named Debbie (Deb). In "Simply Connected", they are dating steadily and go to spend the weekend with Deb's parents. Jim's anxieties about meeting the girlfriend's parents don't really live up to the experience.

Anyway, at least I know these older stories are still a bit on the cutting edge.

The Last Mimzy

2007-01-06T22:49:00.000-06:00

I've been seeing a trailer lately that has caught my attention. It's promoting a movie called "The Last Mimzy" and many of you have probably already seen it by now. I saw it, I believe, when I watched "Night at the Museum" (which introduced me to Mizuo Peck). I saw the trailer again last weekend when I went to see "Children of Men" (which I find is a very disturbing movie -- Alberto Cuarzon has a gift for turning hopeful outcomes into dark clouds). And today I saw the trailer again when I went to see "Happily Never After".

I'm not sure I would recommend either "Children of Men" or "Happily Never After", but at least HNA made me laugh in a few places. It was just kind of a very bizarre twist on the old fairy tale land gone amok story. All that was missing was Lord Farquhar from "Shrek".

So, anyway, "The Last Mimzy" appears to be some sort of time travel tale. At least, that is what the trailer implies. Some sort of "magical" toys transform two children, and it turns out one of the toys is a stuffed rabbit called Mimzy. Whether it's a future-comes-to-the-past story or maybe another variation on the old "dead ghosts are crossing over into our world" story, I don't know. The official Web site seems a bit too media-heavy for my tastes.

But this is a movie I'll probably try to see.

And while I'm discussing movies, I might as well ask what is up with all the penguin movies? I enjoyed "Happy Feet" but now we're being prepped for "Surf's Up" and last year I think there were a couple of other penguin movies.

Okay, film industry, I think we've hit the saturation point. PIXAR dudes, I'd rather see a sequel to "The Incredibles" or maybe even "Cars" (but I prefer "The Incredibles" -- Violet could offer some interesting conflict and drama).

New Tolkien Studies blog post

2007-01-06T22:47:00.000-06:00

I have now posted Broken Promises, Lost Lore, and Forgotten Flowers on the Tolkien Studies Blog.

While browsing the Web, I came across an old Tolkien site and thought it would be nice to show people how Tolkien fandom on the Web used to look. Before the Peter Jackson movies swept us all up in LoTRmania.

I tried to select some very interesting, useful, and informative sites. A few of them are still active today.

Democrats launch new initiative to humiliate U.S.

2007-01-06T20:37:00.000-06:00

Last July I pointed out how U.S. foreign policy implements a domino effect for Islamic fundamentalists. Now that the Democrats control Congress, they are wasting no time in proving they have absolutely no concern for the shame and defeat their policies are designed to bring upon the United States, not to mention the many hundreds or possibly thousands of additional lives lost their policies are about to cost us.

As U.S. Naval ships blockade Islamic militants in the fourth front of the war against Al Qaeda, our Democratic leaders are abusing their newly won majority in Congress to mislead the American people about what we have at stake. I certainly am no fan of President Bush's strategies, but "exit strategy" is a euphemism for "we have no will to win".

Al Qaeda will use a premature American exit to recruit yet more fundamentalist fighters to open up yet more fronts against the United States in their long-term strategic goal to bleed us dry.

We have forces fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia thanks in large part to the defeatist rhetoric the Democrats have used to encourage Al Qaeda and all militants who want to humiliate the United States.

When we had troops stationed in Mogadishu, President Clinton refused to give our troops the armored support they needed to achieve the capture of the Somali warlord they were sent to capture. When troops became pinned down, President Clinton again refused to commit sufficient forces to bring them out safely. And yet despite the losses we suffered, our troops achieved a significant military accomplishment over the Somali forces -- also despite the fact that the Somali militants were using their own women and children as human shields.

In the aftermath, President Clinton showed the world that a handful of militants can humiliate the United States and drive it out of any nation. That is what drives Al Qaeda's strategy today. Hundreds of Islamic Somali militants have indicated they will answer Al Qaeda's call and launch an Iraqi-style insurgency against the Somali government, the Ethiopian army, any African peacekeepers who are sent in by the United Nations, and undoubtedly the U.S. warships now patrolling the Somali coast.

And while we do not have troops stationed in Pakistan, the second front in the war against Al Qaeda, it is only a matter of time before we find ourselves embrolied in a fifth front. Al Qaeda is not merely seeking to open more fronts against the United States and its allies. It's also looking for a new home, a land were it can rebuild its headquarters and training facilities. Africa now looks like a more appealing neighborhood than Asia.

As long as the Democrats are willing to freely admit to the world that the United States has no will to defend itself against Al Qaeda, there will be an endless supply of volunteer and forced suicide bombers attacking the United States and other nations across the globe. The Democrats, like the Republicans, have offered absolutely no solutions for the problems that are the underlying causes of the support for Al Qaeda.

Instead of using their newfound political clout to engage in partisan politics and misrepresent the views and will of the American people, the Democrats need to take a long-term view and plan for a decisive, strategic victory against Al Qaeda, because Al Qaeda is most certainly taking that kind of long-term view against the United States. Let's see some initiatives come out of Washington for a change that address the realities of decades of Democrat and Republican abusive policies that have turned so many poor people around the world into prospective Al Qaeda martyrs.

Any "exit stratgy" that plays into Al Qaeda's hands is an admission of weakness, defeat, and confusion -- all of which will only strengthen Al Qaeda's support and improve their ability to deliver further attacks against the United States and countries that have been weakened by our lack of support and confidence.

How many more troops and civilians do we have to sacrifice before we get rid of the lying idiots who run Congress (both Democrats and Republicans) and elect some people who will truly put the interests of the American people ahead of partisan politics?

Changing my email address again

2007-01-06T15:49:00.000-06:00

I don't like changing my email address because every time I do I lose contact with many people whom I only occasionally hear from. However, it became necessary to take action because the spam has overwhelmed my filters and I don't feel like paying for "better filters". The best filter is not having an email address the spammers know about.

The last time I went through this was the fall of 2003 when the SOBIG.F virus/trojan/whatever infected millions of computers around the world. So many people had my email address in their computers I was getting 3,000 infected emails a day, and that was the limit of what our server could handle (although Dixie was also getting hammered).

I've tried to be careful with the email address I set up because it took me a month to make the transition. Nonetheless, I've found myself on a few third-party marketers' lists and gradually the nonsense has built up. But what pushed me over the edge this time was that a blog I occasionally post to shared email addresses for about 2 weeks in November. The blogmaster apologized to me when I complained but it was too late. He had already fixed the problem by the time I found the leak, and there may have been more, but my spam had already overwhelmed my filters.

So I am once again changing my email address. I went through my outbound email for the past six months and sent out notices to nearly everyone I have been in touch with, except one group who will receive a separate notification. But there are many, many other people who have contacted me through the past few years who may have my old email addresses who perhaps have tried to contact me and cannot get through.

The most sure way to reach me is through the Xenite.Org Contact Us form. Of course, even though it's a custom form and script the spammers once managed to compromise that resource too. We had to implement some counter-measures.

I don't like spammers. I don't like the people who pay them money to spam. I don't like the people who click on the links in spam emails making it profitable for spammers to keep spamming. But what can I do, except change my email address 3 years or so?

The old one will soon stop working. I am presently using a quarantine mailbox to check for messages still being sent to that address. But in a few weeks, perhaps sooner, when I am satisfied that I have changed all my subscriptions and autonotifications (or at least the ones I care about), I will shut down the old address for good and move on.

Because I have my own server and domains I have that luxury. It's a shame not everyone else can do it. But at least now when I open up my regular email client and scan my 1200+ emails, I know they are spam-free.

Mizuo Peck

2007-01-05T02:40:00.000-06:00

Mizuo Peck has shot up in the referrals for Xenite.Org's search engine traffic. I cannot help but feel pleased that she has struck a chord with so many people who have seen "Night at the Museum". I wish I could create such a popular page every week. Xenite.Org would have to set up mirrored servers in about a year!

I'd like to point out though that as much fun as a the movie is, I hope people -- especially teachers and parents -- use interest in the film and Mizuo Peck to remind kids (and grownups) of the real contribution Sacagawea made to American history.

When I created our Mizuo Peck page I made sure to include a little information and links about Sacagawea.

One of the links goes to the Lemhi-Shoshone page. If you visit no other Native American sites because of "Night at the Museum", you should absolutely visit this one. Not only is the official Web page of the people who gave birth to Sacagawea, it provides a lot of neat information about Sacagawea and her people today. They have commissioned a memorial in her memory, and Sacagawea's courage and resourcefulness are characteristic of the great American spirit that has carried this nation forward despite all of its flaws and sins.

Tolkien essays

2007-01-04T02:00:00.000-06:00

I have been debating whether I should turn my attention fully back to writing Tolkien essays. I find myself in a unique position: for the first time in my adult life, I have all of one Tolkien book in my possession. How could I possibly do any reasonable research on the topic?

Of course, I have quoted so many passages on the Internet through the years I've often gotten by in new discussions -- and even occasionally in writing new Tolkien essays -- just on finding old citations on the Internet. But it's not easy to find just the right passage. And there is no guarantee that I quoted everything I need, or that my citations are indexed, or that I cited something properly (most often I find small typos in my citations).

It would be a challenge to rely just on those old archived discussions, but as the publication dates of The Children of Hurin and The History of the Hobbit approach I feel a sense of expectancy. People seem to want me to say something more.

Well, the occasional requests for new essays contribute something to that sense. I've been writing a series of Tolkien essays for the News From Bree newsletter (although so far I have only contributed 2 essays).

And I've begun writing mini-essays for the blog at Tolkien Studies on the Web. I'm not sure of where I'll go with that blog yet. I do need to get back to the Webliography and other resources, but there is so much work to do. I'm starting to feel a little like Niggle. I don't know if I'll ever finish the tree.

MERP wants more essays. People keep referring to Xenite.Org as a Tolkien essay archive, although there isn't all that much Tolkien content there. I have some essays on Xenite but not anything like the archives at Suite101 and MERP.

The new books will inspire some people to revisit old questions, debates that mostly matter to no one outside a handful of people. The Two Thrains issue is the most likely one to be resparked by The History of The Hobbit. The Balrog Wings Debate was not settled by The Lord of the Rings: A Readers' Companion, except that more and more people seem to be finding ways to agree that the "wings" were not fleshy, flappy, physical wings.

The problem with Tolkien Great Debates is that you often have people speaking entirely past each other. For example, I'm an ardent purist and I refuse to intermingle the various mythologies. Yet other people feel there is some relevance to be found in citing The Book of Lost Tales while analyzing, say, The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, neither of which is directly connected to The Book of Lost Tales in any way.

If after more than ten years some people refuse to give up their hope of creating a Unified Tolkien Theory, why should I feel compelled to continue correcting their nonsense on the Internet? Tolkien's "mythology for England" was set in England, not Middle-earth. Give it up. The books aren't changing no matter how many times we clap our hands.

So the question remains: to go forward or to close a chapter of my life? But can I really end it just like that? Would I be able to walk away and never feel compelled to say something again?

To be honest, after I wrote my last essay for MERP which looks into the truth about Balrogs, I really didn't want to write any more Tolkien stuff at all. But then News From Bree came calling. And every now and then Matt Tinaglia suggests there are a few topics I may have missed, or I didn't cover to his satisfaction.

And other people ask me questions continually. Just today (yesterday) someone at worked asked me, "Michael, was Gollum really a hobbit?"

Yeah. I think I'll just get up and walk away right now. I see four Dwarves are waiting for me by the garden gate. All I need now is for Gandalf to persuade me to leave my Ring with my Heir....

Tolkien's Underground Cities

2007-01-03T01:36:00.000-06:00

I find myself in the curious position of writing three blogs. And soon, if my boss has his way, I'll be contributing to a fourth blog.

In the meantime, let me direct your Tolkien attention to Tolkien's Underground Cities, which is part of the Tolkien Studies Blog.

I cannot promise that I'll post something every day, but I'll try to do 2-3 posts per week for as long as possible.

I'm also hoping to include some little-known trivia items at the end of occasional posts. As many as possible.

Getting pages out of Google's Supplemental Results Index

2007-01-02T20:54:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note for Webmasters who are concerned about what is happening with their sites on Google. Read Why you now have Supplemental Results pages on Google for a little history and the explanation of what is going on.

Short answer (for those who don't like to read long-winded essays): get more trusted links from within the Main Index.

My most popular posts for 2006

2007-01-01T00:48:00.000-06:00

It seems like a common New Year's tradition in the Blogosphere is for people to recap their blog successes.

The most popular page for this blog is the front page. Since people can read several blog posts on one page, nearly half of you stay here for a few minutes, catch up on my ramblings, and then move on. I don't know how many of you are regular readers but the readership has increased month over month and about 1500 people stopped by in December (technically, the number is most likely far higher).

It's hard to be sure if there is a trend in popular posts but it does look like my dancing and body language related posts from last Spring (before I had my surgery -- which was one of the more popular topics, too) were very popular. So, here is the list of most popular posts from 2006. It will be interesting to see if any of them make the list for 2007. Thanks for dropping by.

Salsa Music and Cha Cha Songs

Body language: Reading body language

Stop Heartburn: Fix That Hiatal Hernia

Girls, Girls Gone Wild, And Girls, Girls, Girls

My Chemical Romance: Stop and smell the orange perfume

I am a Nielsen family!

The other side of body language tips

Seattle Transition

Hercules on Coke in Gone With The Wind

Lies, damned lies, and Matt Cutts

There were more posts about body language and Salsa dancing in the top 24. Guys, take what I say with a grain of salt. I write for effect. I don't deliberately or intentionally misrepresent or elaborate, but my memory of events may differ from the memories of other people who were there.

My personal life aside, other topics that interested people included: When you ring my bell... (about Roman history and adultery), When the truth is known, won't you want somebody ... (humor and marketing techniques used in commercials), I stumped Ms. Dewey (about Microsoft's marketing gimmick for the Live search engine), When the solders come home (in support of an organization called Wounded Warriors), Ask not on Google, nor Google on Ask (about the Google/Ask trademark verbiology tiff), More trivia concerning Pixar/Disney's 'Cars' (great movie, btw), and Romantic songs for guys who like...fluffy bears.

What an eclectic readership you are. Some of you spent the Spring and Summer peeking over my shoulder as I courted Miss Cute Reluctant (yes, I pulled some of the details from my posts to protect her privacy). We just broke up, but this is all I'm going to write about it. It was a terrific relationship but she is in Texas and I am in Seattle and that is the way it has gone.

Some of you followed my marketing anecdotes. In fact, at least one marketing research company took a deep interest in my Nielsen story. When I spoke to their president, he told me that media companies all over the country were reading my perspective on the Nielsen television rating experience.

I was a little surprised to see some of the search engine-related posts made the top of the list (I wrote over 200 posts in the past year). Of course, I'm not completely unpopular in the search engine optimization community. There are many people who drop me the occasional email or who, when they meet me in person, say, "Michael, I really enjoy your articles." So I shouldn't be surprised that they have found my personal anecdotes. Even Matt Cutts read my article on Matt Cutts (of course, he had a personal interest in the controversy).

The Tolkien-related posts (of which there are only a handful) didn't make the top-25. What's up with that, Tolkien fans? I used to have a readership who followed my Suite101 articles in the thousands. Oh well. I've now officially launched a new Tolkien blog so they'll have an opportunity to catch up on my Tolkien thoughts again, if they want to.

I don't know what 2007 will bring. I'm up to my eyeballs in projects right now and I'm beginning to wonder what I'll be able to accomplish by March 14, which is Xenite.Org's 10th anniversary. Through all the years, all the issues and events that have driven my life decisions, Xenite has been there. I cannot imagine life without it.

I hope you will all hang around for at least a few more months, regardless of what happens.

Happy new year!

Just a little bit older, but are we wiser?

2006-12-31T21:45:00.000-06:00

Scientists have announced that their estimates of the universe's age were just a little off. So the hydrogen that comprises about half a typical human's body mass is not 13 billion years old, it's 13.7 billion years old.

Doesn't that make you feel young as an Elf?

I've always wondered, though, how scientists can live with the idea that Earth is at the center of the universe. They claim it's not, but every measurement of the size of the universe (which is correlated to its age) is expressed in terms of how far light has had to travel to reach us (or radio waves). That makes the Earth the center of the universe.

Or at least it's the center of the universe that we see (and hear). But why is it that scientists never ask if the light that reaches us didn't come from a source that sent light in the opposite direction? Are there huge cosmic lamps out there that only point light one way, like the great stands of lights that surround game stadiums at night?

Where does that light go? Is there some Earth-like planet in the middle of another section of the universe whose scientists are saying, "We're only Bleeple Mipps away from the edge of the universe", and in fact we here on Earth are outside the distance covered by those Bleeple Mipps?

When I was a tyke, or perhaps a lad, a strapping young man, some older friend of mine (he may have been all of 14 years old at the time) tried to explain to me that -- according to Einstein, who knows all things about gravity, mass, light, and relativity -- a beam of light directed at the edge of the universe would continue on its way until it reached its point of origin. That is, the universe is so massive that somewhere the light's path -- though seeming to remain straight to a point of observation concurrent with the light particles' position -- would seem to curve to an observer positioned at the point of origin.

Supposedly, the curvature would be so great that the light would come right back in to its point of origin -- or wrap around the universe about halfway and then come right back. Sort of like a rock being thrown up that eventually has to come down.

The problem is, if that theory is correct, we should see ourselves coming back to meet ourselves. I mean, at some point, the light sent out by Sol -- our sun -- should return to the Solar system. And if we could detect that ancient light from Sol, we should be able to determine how long (relative to our own position in the universe) it took that light to zoom out to the edge of the universe, curve around, and come back.

Ideally, you'd want to do that with a nearby pulsing star's light, although I suppose that pulsing stars don't last very long in cosmic terms as they pulse because they have captured or been captured by the mass of a nearby star-like body. But how do you measure the distance of a universe where you haven't seen the light come back around?

Scientists depend on the radiation they detect from the Big Bang, the supposed event of origin for this universe. That is, the radiation has moved out so far it has already bounced back to us. Except, if the radiation we detect is from the earliest experience of the universe, when did it bounce back? That is, if the universe is constantly expanding -- or if the universe was constantly expanding for some length of time in the past -- then why did the radiation fall back into the universe? Did some particals have less energy than others, and there are still particles farther out that didn't bounce back at the same time as the radiation we have already detected?

There should be a fall-edge or event horizon for the universe somewhere in all directions, where light cannot escape. We are essentially a light hole in the space of the greater nothingness that surrounds the universe. That is, if the universe is expanding, it must be expanding into something or else it is not expanding at all. That something may have nothing in it, but it remains something into which time and space and move. Call it Absolute Distance, where the laws of relativity do not apply because -- except for our universe and perhaps a multitude of other universes -- there is nothing to produce the laws and relativity. There is no mass in the greater expanse of Absolute Distance.

So our universe, if it has an event horizon, is bright unto itself, because all light remains within it, even though that light may be moving farther away from center. Eventually, though, the light loses its energy and the mass of the universe pulls it back in, just as the mass of a black hole pulls light into itself, and the light falls back into the universe.

We are standing in an ever-constant, gentle storm of lightfall, showered by the memories of the past. But we still don't know if science is right or if it has missed the obvious universe sitting right next to us. After all, perhaps Absolute Distance is tightly packed by universes which almost touch each other, constantly jostling for more room, but constantly sucking their light (or its equivalent) back into themselves. We see not the darkness which surrounds us, but we feel its absence within the walls of our universe, and we ask, "Is there anything else out there? Or is that all there is?"

Mary's Band celebrates New's Year Eve in Houston

2006-12-28T01:58:00.000-06:00

I really wish I could be in Houston this weekend. I would love to see Mary's Band again. She recently sent out the following announcement on her mailing list:

Please, go to WWW.MARYSBAND.COM for information on our schedule this week.

If you don't have any plans, Mary's Band will love to invite you to celebrate with us the arrival of the new year 2007.

Celebrate New Year's Eve in Style at the Hyatt Regency Houston! Your night of celebration includes two live bands: "Mary's Band" and "Commercial Art", a DJ, dinner, and an incredible 50,000 balloon shower at midnight. For more information, please call 713.654.1234 or visit www.hyattregencyhouston.com.

The Marysband URL actually redirects to Mary Fometa's official Web site, for what it's worth.

If you've never heard a live Latin band before, and you have the opportunity to hear Mary's Band, I don't think you'l regret the experience. She's an incredible performer.

Mary's Band is performing at Cantina Laredo Thursday, December 28 and Friday, December 29; at Plaza 59 on Saturday, December 30; and at the Hyatt Regency Houston-Downtown on Sunday, December 31.

In memory of George Budabin

2006-12-28T01:52:00.000-06:00

Andru Edwards is one of the organizers of the Seattle MindCamp, an unconference where several hundred people from diverse technical fields come together and share what they are doing with each other.

He probably has no idea of who I am, although we've exchanged a couple of emails. I might have said "Hi" to him at the Seattle MindCamp I attended in October.

Andru made a personal request of MindCampers recently and I've decided to comply. I wish I could do this for everyone, but tha's not possible. Still, let this commemorative post represent my heartfelt compassion for all families who have recently lost loved ones. Here is Andu's request:

Andru Edwards here. I wanted to first send a general thank you to those of you who emailed me to express your condolences for the passing of my father two days ago after reading the article I wrote about him on my blog:

http://www.andruedwards.com/index.php/blog/article/the-loss-of-a-hero-goodbye-dad/

For those who don't know me, I have a favor to ask of the blogoshpere. My family (my mother and six siblings) have each decided on a "section" of life that they will take the helm of to create a memorial of our father. I chose "Internet" as an outside the box approach. I work on the Internet, and it is a part of who I am. That being said, here is my request:

If you have a blog, and you wouldn't mind, could you link the term "George Budabin" to the article above where I talk about my father? Also, if you use tags, use the tag "George Budabin" in your post as well?

So here is my contribution to the effort.

George Budabin

And now for the second year...

2006-12-27T02:08:00.000-06:00

Today marks the beginning of the second year of my semi-official blog. I can't really think of anything great to say, but I didn't want the anniversary to completely pass without saying something.

Over the past year, I've learned a great deal about what to say on the blog, what not to say, and what piques people's interest. Perhaps it is no coincidence that I tend to get more visitors when I share intimate details of my life -- the sort of things that I shouldn't say on a blog.

You people are evil.

Still, it's been a worthwhile experience overall, and I'm glad to see I haven't lost my audience yet. As 2007 unfolds, I hope I can keep sharing the kinds of neat thoughts and anecdotes that have entertained you folks.

If nothing else, I have a record of some things I've forgotten through the years but remembered long enough to write about. I'd link to them to show you what I mean but I can't remember any specific examples.

Merry Christmas, Mizuo Peck

2006-12-25T16:06:00.000-06:00

Who is Mizuo Peck, you ask? She's the lovely young lady who plays Sacagawea in "Night at the Museum". While I'm not crazy about Ben Stiller, I liked this movie. It's a fun, light-hearted romp through history that gives some old-timers (Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney) a chance to come out and play. To be honest, I thought Mickey Rooney was dead. I'm glad to see he isn't.

The movie has been almost universally panned by critics, which just proves once again that it doesn't take much intelligence or character to be a film critic. While "Night at the Museum" probably won't make it into the "Classic Comedies of All Time" category, this is the best work from Stiller I've ever seen -- meaning, he didn't bore me to tears as he usually does.

The movie is fun because it's not really a Ben Stiller vehicle. It's a "let's poke fun at Hollywood cliches" vehicle, and it takes down quite a few cliches.

Still, what caught my eye (besides the lovely Carla Gugino) was the nice performance by relatively unknown actress Mizuo Peck. Her casting as the Native American Sacagawea museum replica was not well received among online Native Americans, who rightly feel there is plenty of Native American talent capable of performing well in the role. But Mizuo won the part and the film is done and I think she deserves a little recognition.

So I've created a feature article about Mizuo at Xenite.Org. As an added bonus, I included some content and links about Savagawea (but since there are people who can tell her story better than me, I decided to just recommend a few good sites, including the Lemhi-Shoshone Tribe's official Web site).

I hope that Mizuo Peck picks up more roles in films I'll want to see. Her career has sort of wandered across the map for now, but maybe this will be her breakout role. And, if it is, I think Xenite has the privilege of hosting the first "fan" site for Mizuo.

Welcome to the Xenite family, Ms. Peck, and Merry Christmas!

Brandimensions.com - Change your tactics NOW

2006-12-23T22:43:00.000-06:00

I'm never happy to see that my sites are being scraped, but I'm even less happy to find that an intermediary firm is sending robots into my server to scrape content for their clients to look at surreptitiously.

I did not set up Web sites so that companies out there can sell private access to their clients.

Brandimensions has been sending robots to look at discussions on SF-FANDOM about the movie "Eragon". I can understand why the movie studios want to know what people are saying on the Internet, but this is not acceptable.

Brandimensions does not own that content, they do not manage it, and they are not entitled to make any money by providing directed access to it.

My partner and I will be discussing how to block Brandimensions and other movie studio spy firms from our server in the coming days.

In the meantime, if you are a movie studio executive, contact me and let me know what you would like to know about fan reaction to your upcoming movies. I can help you get involved in the fan communities without your having to pay Brandimensions or other companies to do it for you.

Tolkien Studies site now has a blog

2006-12-23T09:45:00.000-06:00

After much dithering, hemming, and hawing on my part (and begging of Dixie to help me), Tolkien Studies on the Web now has a Tolkien Studies Blog.

The blog will allow me to post content more often, and I hope to invite a few guest bloggers to eventually post content.

I expect to start making regular posts by the first of the year.

Thank you, Ms. Dewey

2006-12-17T00:49:00.000-06:00

Ms. Dewey sends this blog traffic. I have no idea of why. I use Google Analytics to track the statistics for this blog (as part of a year-long experiment) and as stat tools go I find it to be pretty limited. Nonetheless, Google Analytics says that Ms. Dewey is one of my leading referers.

Have no idea of why, but at least I know that other people are sitting around, laughing their heads off at the Web's sassiest search engine.

If you haven't given Ms. Dewey a try, and you have a multimedia-capable computer, do it. You'll love what you find. She is a marketing gimmick that Microsoft put out to help promote Live, but she's a much better interface than any of the search engines have so far.

Just don't ask her "Who is mickey mouse?" That still leaves her stumped and confounded, and it will eventually crash your PC.

Beowulf was an email spammer

2006-12-17T00:00:00.000-06:00

I maintain a couple of email addresses through a free service just in case the Xenite server crashes so utterly we cannot get email through (happens maybe once every two years). We use one of the email addresses to handle domain info, too.

Well, someone publishes that email address (probably the domain registrar) and therefore it gets lots of spam.

Once or twice a month I go in and scan the incoming messages. If I see nothing useful I flag the whole kit'n'kaboodle as spam, delete the junk mail, and move on.

Tonight I saw a message from "Eoforhild" something or other. I thought, as I flagged everything as spam, "Waitaminnit. That could be a Tolkien fan trying to contact me through an unlikely back door."

Well, I opened up the message and found I could not read it because it was written (partially) in Old English. While the average "Beowulf" scholar might have gotten a chuckle out of the experience, I onlly rolled my eyes. I couldn't even see what the spammer was selling.

Maybe someone is just having a little fun with me. I don't know. Don't care.

But if you're going to send me spam, at least make it legible. The SEO forum spammers are actually much better at constructing almost believable text than the email spammers. I guess that is because the biggest email spammers are based in Russia and their content is so poorly fabricated they make Nigerian scammers look like eloquent and articulate academics.

I maybe some of the spammers are experimenting with Old English to see what they can slip past the Bayesian filters that are looking primarily at Modern English. But spam is spam. As soon as enough people report the Old English spam to their filtering systems, the Old English will become useless.

I survived the Seattle windstorm

2006-12-15T10:31:00.000-06:00

Everyone at work is relating how they lost power in their homes. I feel almost deprived, as my only real inconvenience was the hour-long drive home last night (short by comparison with other people's horror stories -- but at least I made better time than the buses).

At one point my cable service died for about 3 minutes. And the lights flickered a little bit.

But the worst part of the evening for me came after I went to bed. The winds were so strong they shook the repeatedly building. Now, tall buildings are built to sway a little in the wind. Even taller buildings have internal mechanisms to help shift the energy from wind so that the buildings don't break.

But I couldn't help wondering what tolerances the Seattle building codes specify for wind stress. It didn't feel like my building was built for this kind of windstorm. And this morning someone told me they don't have wind-storms like this.

Maybe a few Balrogs blew into town as a tempest of fire or something.

So, anyway, despite the debris-littered streets, the fact that people who rely on public transportation are getting into work late, and the fact that I was without cable for about 3 minutes (3 minutes of silence gives you time to say to yourself, "Huh?"), I don't really have anything to report.

Shame. Would have made an interesting blog post.

I have no heart and you must eat my soul

2006-12-12T22:44:00.000-06:00

Sounds like the title for a science fiction or fantasy story, doesn't it? I should probably run a contest for whomever can write the best story to the title "I have no heart and you must eat my soul". But I'm not sure what I could give away as a prize. Maybe a couple of autographed copies of my books? Yeah, I can see the legions of fans beating down the doors to write blazing copy for me.

Maybe a $50 gift certificate from Amazon? I'll have to think about that.

In the meantime, I went walking along the street a little bit tonight. It's the first time in weeks I felt like going out. In fact, I had to mail a letter to my sister and forgot to do so at lunch, so I walked down to the post office. And after I got home from work I walked down to the corner store to buy my dinner. Not that I needed to buy dinner but I wanted to go out for a walk.

I got pretty sick in November. Everyone at work was coughing, sneezing, hacking, and wheezing. In fact, a few people are still struggling to get healthy and the rest of us are struggling to stay that way. I finally went back to the doctor and begged for help. "You're not really sick," he said. "It looks like an asthmatic reaction to me."

Reaction to what? The antibiotics he had given me a week before? I'm still in the process of getting to know this doctor, and he me. We understand each other to a point so far: I complain and whine, he waits for me to shut up, and then he does something doctorish. This time around he told his nurse to stab me twice and wrote a prescription for me.

"This may make you feel caffeinated," he said sotly.

Caffeinated? What does that mean? I had no idea, so I asked. "Doc, what does caffeinated mean? Like 'wired'?"

"Something like that," he said.

He gave me the prescription, shook my hand, and gracefully waited for me to exit his office. I glanced down at the prescription and saw some strange behemoth of a pharmaceutical name I had never heard of before. But it sounded familiar, like something I knew other people took on occasion. It seemed to me that I was about to start taking POWERFUL MEDICATION (sorry for those of you who have screen readers).

Well, I couldn't stop coughing so by this point I was willing to try just about anything for my "asthmatic reaction". I headed down to my pharmacy with my new insurance card in hand, looking forward to taking advantage of the company health benefits after waiting nearly two months. I didn't even have to wait very long. The pharmacist processed my prescription in about 15-20 minutes. I could feel that cough wrangling in its death throes.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I had warned my boss that I might seem a little different over the next few days. "Why?" he asked. I told him the name of the medication. His eyes grew wide. "Oh, yeah."

Did everyone know something I didn't?

Well, to make a long preamble longer, by the time the pharmacist came over to discuss the medication with me, I was ready to try anything. So I could barely contain my enthusiasm until she said, "And this may make you feel caffeinated...."

Wherehaveiheardthatbefore?

"What does that mean?" I asked. "Like, I'm going to be wired or something? Bouncing off the walls?"

"Yes, you could say that," she replied. "And some people take the entire dose in the morning, but you may want to spread it out across the day if you have never taken anything like this before."

Okay, I spread the doses out across the day. Didn't help.

I spent the next few days bouncing off the walls, yelling, screaming, crying, depressed, excited, laughing, joking, talking fast, slowing down, speeding up, turning sideways, doing cartwheels, handsprings, somesaults.

Yeah, they say steroids will do that to you.

All the women just laughed at me and said, "You're just PMSing. You'll be fine."

Okay, I understand so many things better now that I have stopped climbing buildings and chasing down armed bankrobbers. I know I said things I should not have said. I did things that should never be mentioned in the light of day. That doctor did things I would never disclose in therapy or under oath.

But I feel a lot better. Hardly cough at all now.

It's hard to complain about success. I just hope I don't go through any more asthmatic reactions again. Next thing you know, I may be running for President.

The Balrog of Moria

2006-12-12T02:52:00.000-06:00

People ask some of the strangest questions (well, they may seem strange in the morning). I get a lot of traffic on Xenite.Org for various topics. When you have that much content, you capture a lot of queries in the search engines.

I used to see the question "Why did the Elves sail west?" (Answer: To get to the other side of the Sea) come up a lot. I suppose such questions were driven by the third "Lord of the Rings" movie, where everyone jumps on board the ship and no one really explains why.

Even in The Lord of the Rings (the book) Tolkien doesn't do a very good job of explaining why Elrond high-tails it out of Middle-earth after Sauron's defeat. Everyone says, "The time of the Elves has gone and the Time of Men has come", but they don't explain why that is so very well.

The Elves, of course, have really messed up Middle-earth badly. They tried to make Middle-earth as beautiful and timeless as Valinor, but they are not the angelic Valar. The sheer amount of power required to hold back the effects of Time across Middle-earth woud be immense. I can well imagine Tolkien saying to himself, "The Elves are drained and unable to withstand the onslought of time as it catches up with them" in the wake of the destruction of the One Ring.

The Elves had to leave Middle-earth and sail over Sea because they were too closely bound up with the power of the Rings. They felt the effects of Time washing over them while other peoples really felt nothing. The Elves felt suddenly old and weary.

In Valinor, which was essentially Paradise, the Elves would be renewed and rejuvenated. The Valar would heal them and help them recover their strength. The Elves would, in effect, be able to pick up the pieces of their shattered dreams and do new things, great things. They would be able to move forward, whereas in Middle-earth they had become stagnate, unimaginative, and incapable of accomplishing anything new.

That's the best answer I can muster to the question.

But people have many questions about Balrogs. "Did Gandalf kill the Balrog of Moria", "What were the powers of the balrogs", "do Balrogs have wings?", "what does Gandalf say when he face to face with the balrog of moria?" (I kid you not), "Where did the Balrog come from?", "Why did the Balrog not use wings to fly?".

And that's just a sampling.

What is it about Balrogs that so fascinates people? Well, I cannot answer that question, but I can answer some of the others.

Q. Did Gandalf kill the Balrog of Moria?

A. Yes, Gandalf killed the Balrog of Moria. The sequence of events goes something like:

The Balrog approaches the Chamber of Mazarbul and Gandalf catches a glimpse of it
The Balrog enters the Chamber as Gandalf tries to seal the door
Gandalf and the Balrog struggle briefly and the roof collapses on the Balrog
The Balrog takes an alternate route to overtake Gandalf and the Fellowship
The Balrog approaches the Bridge of Khazad-dum
Gandalf breaks the bridge and both he and the Balrog fall into the chasm
The Balrog and Gandalf hit a body of water
Gandalf chases the Balrog through underground passages until they emerge on the peak of Zirak-Zigil
They battle on the peak
Gandalf and the Balrog mortally wound each other
The dying Balrog falls from the mountaintop

People often ask, "If the Balrog had wings, why didn't it fly out of the chasm and why didn't it fly off the mountain peak?"

Well, the whole question of the Balrog's wings has been misunderstood (and badly misrepresented by sites like The Encyclopedia of Arda). The wings were simply extensions of the darkness with which the Balrog surrounded itself. They were "shadow-stuff", there for show. Think of a Peacock's feathers expanding outward in a display of beauty (only the Peacock is trying to frighten you, not mate with you).

Don't know how to explain it any better than that.

But if we assume that Balrogs could fly (and there is no reason why we should assume they could not), then there was still no reason for the Balrog to fly out of the chasm. After all, it survived the long fall. It must have had a pretty good idea taht it would be able to do so (Gandalf, too, survived that fall). In fact, I have long speculated that the Balrog used its internal fire and heat to slow its descent. Gandalf was whacking at it with a sword all the way down, so it's not like it should have been unfettered and free to think, "Hey, I need to fly out of this chasm" (but where could it have flown anyway?).

And, of course, by the time it was falling off the mountainside, it was dead or dying. It would have been no more capable of flight at that point than a dragon who fell from the sky (and both Ancalagon and Smaug fell to their ruins after being mortally wounded).

Q. What were the powers of the Balrogs?
A. This smacks of a gamer-style question. In role-playing games, creatures have specific abilities and powers. In Tolkien, the Balrogs were fallen angelic beings. They were capable of shaping entire worlds. They took physical bodies of their own free will. They had immense power and to try to quantify that power or categorize abilities is naive. The Balrogs didn't have limitations that could be measured by comparison with an Elf or Man.

When Gandalf confronted the Balrog, he said, "You cannot pass! I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass!"

The Secret Fire, we are told in The Silmarillion, is the Flame Imperishable. Many people equate that with the Holy Spirit.

The "Flame of Anor" is the fire of the sun. Gandalf seems to be saying that he, like the Balrog, was in origin a spirit of fire. Unlike the Balrog, Gandalf (like Arien the Maia who guided the Sun) remained loyal to Iluvatar and the Valar.

The dark fire is the Balrog's power as wielded by it corrupted fire spirit.

He calls it "flame of Udun" because Udun was the ancient fotress of Morgoth.

People also ask "Did Sauron command the Balrog of Moria?" and there is plenty of speculation there. While Tolkien never explicitly says that Sauron controlled the Balrog, there is circumstantial evidence to show he probably did command the Balrog. Among other things, Tolkien wrote that in the Third Age Sauron claimed to be Morgoth returned to Middle-earth. Since Sauron and the Balrog apparently never came together during the Third Age, and since no other Maia before had been able to reconstitute itself, Sauron probably had a very good chance of fooling the Balrog from a distance.

You see a suggestion in the primary text, in the name of Gothmog (lieutenant of Minas Morgul), of this identification of Sauron. Also, when Aragorn says that Sauron does not allow his servants to use his right name, many people wonder what he is talking about.

Linguists suggest that "Gothmog" could mean something like "voice of (Mor)Goth" -- hence, Gothmog might actually be the Mouth of Sauron. Until Aragorn claims the throne of Gondor and openly proclaims Sauron to be the Dark Lord of Mordor, Sauron's ruse is still in effect. So Sauron's servants must have believed he was Morgoth right up until the very end. Only when Aragorn revealed the truth did the Mouth of Sauron name himself as "the Mouth of Sauron".

If Tolkien intended all these points to go together as I have presented them, then it is almost cerain that the Balrog of Moria regarded Sauron to be Morgoth and therefore its lord and commander.

And that's enough about Balrogs for now....

Essay contest for Battlestar Galactica fans - win a copy of Richard Hatch's edited collection of essays

2006-12-10T21:37:00.000-06:00

So, many of you know that I'm a big Grace Park fan and that we have a Battlestar Galactica Forum at SF-FANDOM (one of the first fan forums set up for the Ron Moore series, in fact).

Well, a while back I was contacted by BenBella Books and asked if we would help promote So Say We All: An Unauthorized Collection of Thoughts and Opinions on Battlestar Galactica, edited by Richard Hatch. They were willing to give us a few copies to hand out to fans.

Hm. Free stuff from a publisher with a book about a poopular science fiction television show. Agonizing as the decision was to reach, I grudgingly conceded that Xenite.Org might be persuadable to help the causes of commercial productivity.

In reality, the publisher contacted me as I was getting ready to leave Texas and move to Seattle, so the timing was off. But I said I'd be glad to help out later. They got back to me in November and true to their word shipped the books out. I now have them.

So the contest is underway. We're looking for five essayists of our own. We'll publish their essays on Xenite.Org, give the writers a little biographical credit, and each writer will get a copy of the book and a gift certificate (from Amazon or maybe Barnes and Noble).

I've posted the contest rules in the forum and the contest runs through Midnight December 31, 2006 -- my time (Pacific Coast, Seattle, Los Angeles time).

Check it out.

Spread the word.

There will be more contests as we come down to Xenite.Org's 10th anniversary on March 14, 2007.

Stay tuned.

And thanks to everyone who has been part of the Xenite.Org experience for nearly ten years.

I found the Woodstock song! I found the Woodstock song!

2006-12-10T13:26:00.000-06:00

Matthews' Southern Comfort did the cover of "Woodstock" in 1971 that I have so loved and been unable to find through the years!

What am I talking about, you say? Back in August I asked Who was that masked musician?. I started out that post by saying:

There's an old recording of the song "Woodstock" (lyrics include "We are stardust, we are golden, we've got to get ourselves back to the garden...") that keeps rolling through my mind. I haven't actually heard it in many years. The most popular version, the one that is always played, referred to on most Web sites, and virtually named as "the best" (not in my opinion) is the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version.

Further on:

The version I'd like to track down was a studio cut by a glossy pop rock band of the late 1960s or early 1970s. They probably released their version in 1970 or 1971. The lead singer had a very high-pitched but soft voice. The group had great harmonies.

I really like the Matthews' Southern Comfort cover of the song because it's so smooth. I just like smooth, mellow, melodic, harmonic, resonating music.

I used to hear this version of the song all the time on the radio, but gradually the Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young version replaced it in popularity. Their version (the original, so far as I know) is just too raw for me. I don't really like it.

So, it's not like I really went on a quest to find the song. In fact, I've been so busy the past few months I just haven't had time for much personal entertainment. But because I needed Internet access in my new apartment I decided to subscribe to the low-cost digital cable service that includes music channels.

I've been listening to a variety of commercial-free music in my spare time at home while working on Web sites, ignoring email, etc. Every now and then an old song I used to really, really love comes on and I just sort of drift off into memory lane.

So here I was, spamming--er, posting comments on Matt Cutts' blog (sorry, Matt, but I really, really, really hate FireFox), and all of a sudden a very familiar song started playing.

I thought, "That's nice. Haven't heard that one in yea--EARS!"

I jumped up and ran into the other room to see what was playing. "Matthews' Southern Comfort, Woodstock, 1971". Woohoo! That's it! That's the song that's been driving me crazy for years.

Now I know.

I can rest peacefully.

I can enjoy my Kashi cereal in the morning.

Everything will be okay as soon as I publish this post and archive the group's name (because, like, I won't ever remember it).

Introducing a new SEO Theory blog

2006-12-09T13:49:00.000-06:00

It's my blog actually but I've decided that since I can now begin sharing some SEO theory on the Web again, it would be better to do it on a more general purpose SEO blog rather than my Google Says ... blog. I've decided to stop posting to Google Says ... so I don't have to keep up with so many blogs.

So, if you have an interest in search engine optimization, please keep an eye on SEO Theory. My first post there discusses Semi-Natural Linking and how the search engines may be looking at it.

NASA wants to build a moon house

2006-12-07T02:22:00.000-06:00

The Christian Science Monitor reports that NASA has announced a plan to establish a permanent base on Luna's south pole by the year 2020. That's just 13 years and a few weeks away.

That's more than a lifetime for a space program initiative. Many things can derail the progress of reaching out to other planetary bodies in the Solar System.

One has to wonder if the American people have the collective willpower to pull this off. Our representatives and sentators in Congress appear to be too concerned with advancing their own careers, playing politics, and disregarding the will of the American people.

Those of you who want to see a moon base established need to say something now: say it on your blogs, in your forums, on your Web pages, and in your letters to those senators and representatives you helped to elect.

Let them know that wasting 50 million taxpayer dollars on politically motivated scandal investigations is not acceptable. Let them know that investing in new technologies that will benefit everyone is what we want.

More neat and cool stuff coming out...

2006-12-05T08:04:00.000-06:00

I have actually been working on Web sites in some of my spare time lately. So has Dixie, for that matter.

She has redesigned the Tolkien Studies Web site and in the process given me a new template to beat to death (bwahahaha!). It looks pretty good, although I don't believe the blog is ready (haven't looked in a day or two).

I've also been working on the long-promised site about the Compuserve IMPs. Several IMPs wrote back to me with information I can use for articles. I just haven't put enough stuff together to make a decent beginning to the site. I don't think I'll wait until I have all the interviews and features done, though. It's just been too time-consuming a process and I'm not one of those people who puts off releasing a new Web site just because it doesn't have all the content.

Keeps people coming back if you keep adding content, you know?

In other news around the Xenite network, we now have a pretty cool Science Fiction Search Engine that I created through Google Coop's Custom Search Engine. It may not be as sexy as their featured CSE role models but it was still one of the first Custom Search Engines created.

And this past weekend I surpassed even myself by creating the Entertainment News Search Engine, which is even way cooler than the Science Fiction Search Engine because it can be configured to do Harry Potter News searches, and Spider-man News searches, and Star Wars News searches.

That is, it scopes out the mainstream media AND all the large science fiction mega sites for news about actors, directors, movies, whatever.

So you can satisfy your entertainment curiosity in one place, from Paris Hilton News to Narnia News.

I'm not too happy with the weighting (basically, there is NO configurable weighting), but hopefully CSE 2.0 will allow us to say, "Site X is more important than Site Y" in some reasonable fashion. I'm thinking if they would give us a scale of 0 to 20, that would work well (and no one would confuse it with that stupid Google Toolbar PageRank).

Of course, it would help if -- when they introduce a new feature for the custom search service -- they would actually explain what they are talking about rather than just say, "Hey, we've added this service". What's up with the circumspect posts, Googlers?

But enough about Google Custom Search. I've incorporated the Entertainment News Search Engine into several older Xenite news search pages, so I think it will get some long-term use. I have to tweak it a little more, but it's a pretty flexible search right now. I had to look at several hundred online news sources to get good indexing. Unfortunately, services like UPI and Reuters don't make their content very crawlable. Why do they have Web sites if they don't want people to search them? Guys. Drop me a line. I can hook you up with some great search engine optimization experts.

And then there was the October Fiasco, where I thought I had redesigned the Xenite.Org poster store pages so that I wouldn't have to update them as frequently as the old way required. Nope. I mangled that badly. Our most popular page in November was the Santa Claus Posters page and all it showed was "Chronicles of Narnia" stuff.

Yeah, you can guess how many posters we sold in November. I saw the problem some weeks ago but didn't have time to fix it. And all I can say is that I'm glad I cranked up the Google AdSense earlier this year because it's been paying the server fees. We normally sell a lot of posters in the last four months (September through December) of the year. Didn't happen this time around, but hopefully December sales will pick up.

I'm not happy with the way AllPosters has reconfigured its affiliate service. The interface just absolutely sucks. But if their dynamic poster stores work better than downloading static code, well, maybe that will be okay. I don't know. I'm just afraid I'll have to restock the dynamic stores every couple of months. That's the problem with being ambitious. You get to be too big for your britches -- and you don't have enough time to fix everything that goes broke.

So, anyway, that's the latest from Xenite.Org, although I'm sure I've left out a few things.

In a dark and crazy moment

2006-12-05T07:34:00.000-06:00

Love the title. Don't really have anything to go with it.

Other great titles considered for this post included: "Whatever happened to Mary Sue Frances Ellen Katherine?", "How many light bulbs does it take to change a crazy Iraqi insurgent?", "When will Lebanon get a clue?", and "Did George W. Bush really just say he wanted to change the constitution to allow third terms?"

Not that I expect anyone to care about titles for blog posts. It's the substantiality of the post that matters, right? After all, there you are, searching through blog posts that are listed with title and possibly coherent snippets of text, and you're thinking, "Hey, this blog post looks like it explains quantum theory for the layman in less than five paragraphs. I think I'll read it."

And here you are, looking for an explanation of quantum theory (wait, I've changed my mind -- or maybe I never had a mind at all, so pay no mind to this statement).

It's not that blogging makes one interesting so much as one's interests make blogging worthwhile (or boring). I've written some bad blog posts in my time. And I've written some interesting ones, based on the feedback I've received (or just the traffic and links).

I do have to say I was a bit disappointed that my post on how to steal the planet Venus and make it your own didn't create the buzz I was hoping for that day. I think it's a pretty cool idea. Not that I'd really want to live in the atmosphere of a very poisonous planet, but living on Mars isn't very appealing to me, either.

Maybe we can just skip the old colonizing Venus and Mars cliche and head right for the stars. After all, we now know what kinds of planets are good for human life, and that cannot be all that bad. But maybe the space colonizing crowd just haven't found this blog yet, and so I'm trying to warm up to the wrong crowd.

Many of you showed up throughout the year while I was rambling about my various personal issues and adventures in Houston. Sorry for the lack of adventures in Seattle. It's not that that I don't intend to go out there and do stuff. It's just that it's so cold.

Based on what people tell me, I should be feeling adventurous here in Seattle sometime around late May, up through early August.

Stay tooned because I have plans. BIG plans.

In the meantime, in the interest of attracting the space-seekers (maybe I should call them star-seekers or star-explorers), let me put my finely honed search engine optimization skills to work.

Star travel -- why, yes, this blog discusses star travel, as in travelling to the stars, colonizing other worlds, and utilizing quantum theory to control time and space.

Space exploration -- Indeeed, my friends, space exploration interests me. Why, I've been exploring the empty space of my mind since I was a kid. In fact, I used to watch Star Trek all the time, boldly going where no one had ever gone before. Colonizing other worlds.

Get the message? I thought so.

The Seattle Transition

2006-12-04T01:20:00.000-06:00

I have been reluctant to get on the buses here in Seattle. There is no reason why I should not, except that I don't know where they run and don't really want to find out. People use the buses every day and, technically, I only need to travel in a straight line from home to work and back again.

And it's free. I live and work inside the free zone in downtown Seattle.

So why do I continue to pay for parking near the office?

For one thing, if I need to get to my car, it's at least a 20-minute bus ride away -- and that doesn't allow for however long I would have to wait for the bus. So what is the value of saving 30 minutes of my time by walking for 30 seconds to get to my car? Multiply that by two, going both ways. How much is an hour of my time worth?

On a busy morning it takes me 10 minutes to drive to worrk. On a busy evening, it may take 15 minutes to drive home.

Like so many other Americans who don't live in downtown Seattle, New York, Chicago, etc. I am married to my car. I refuse to go shopping at stores that don't have parking lots. I don't care if I have to pay for the parking. I want to have my car there. And that is because when I walk out of the store, I want to take as many packages as I can put in my car.

A few weeks ago I tried walking about 4 blocks to a local store to buy some groceries. It was raining but like a good tourist I took my umbrella. Naturally, when I came out of the store with a load of plastic bags (they did not have paper bags, which would have been easier to carry), I had to keep switching the bags from one hand to the other as the circulation in my fingers choked off.

And then I dropped the bags on the wet sidewalk, and had to scramble to pick up my groceries in the rain while I missed being able to walk across the street. So I had to stand there in the rain, waiting for the walk light to change again.

"I won't be doing this again," I told myself. Once was enough for me.

Now, with practice you can learn to do anything well. I see people carrying their groceries and parcels on the street all the time. But there are a lot of sick people here in Seattle. I mean they have colds, flus, bronchial infections, etc. I got one myself and after 10 days of taking antibiotics I don't want another.

How did people live without cars in past generations? I cannot imagine how much time had to be spent taking care of tasks that cost so much time out of the day. Would Henry David Thoreau have been able to write Walden while living in a city where he had to go buy his groceries every day because he couldn't carry more than an armload for a mile?

I don't think so.

Not that I write anything like Walden with the time I save. Mostly I just stay out of the cold and wonder what I'm going to do with all my spare time.

To be honest, I've been living on a budget because it's expensive to move 2,000 miles and set up in a city you've never lived in before. I've been spending my discretionary income on dining out, parking fees, and the occasional splurge with my girlfriend.

In Houston, everything was so spread out where I lived. You would see people walking on the street but most of them were doing it for the exercise. There is public transportation in Houston, to be sure, and some people use it. But you almost need a car to get around town in any decent amount of time. I lived close to everything in Houston, but I still had to budget anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes to go grocery shopping just because it took time to drive there, park, and get into the store, etc.

4 Houston blocks' worth of traffic equates to about 8 Seattle blocks of traffic. I mean, when I get on the streets here, I usually can drive a half mile to a mile before having to stop. The traffic signals are so much better syncronized. In Houston you start and stop, start and stop. Of course, the traffic signals are placed much farther apart in Houston. A city block in Houston is equal to about 4 city blocks in Seattle.

Of course, when I lived in Houston I actually lived in West Houston, outside Interstate 610 and inside the Beltway. I didn't live in downtown Houston. I'm not sure anyone can live in downtown Houston. The two cities have very different downtown areas.

In Houston, I planned short trips on the basis of how long it would take me to get to my destination, park, and finish my task.

In Seattle, I plan my short trips on the basis of whether parking is available or if there is rain.

In Houston, you assume there is parking to be had.

In Seattle, you assume that anyone fortunate enough to park their car is fighting the clock and may come back to find they no longer have to worry about parking.

In Houston, people mostly think that anyone who doesn't drive a truck is poor or just plain crazy.

In Seattle, people mostly think that anyone who drives is a tourist.

My boss commutes to work. He parks his car in the suburb somewhere and rides a relatively comfortable train. He doesn't have to fight with traffic. He doesn't have to look out for pedestrians. He is a pedestrian.

I'm lost without a set of car keys in my pocket. Even though I walk to lunch at work, and there are maybe 70-100 restaurants within 3 blocks of the office in almost any direction, I feel vulnerable without those car keys. Just in case I need to get in that car and drive somewhere.

How long does it take to get over the feeling of being lost without a steering wheel in your hands?

As the moon goes, so go we...

2006-11-29T04:47:00.000-06:00

If you're interested in speculating about evolution and things like that, I came across several interesting shows on The Science Channel over the past week. I don't normally watch much television, but I needed to take a break from working on Web sites (the Compuserve IMPs site, btw, is coming along).

The first show was "Before the Dinosaurs". I didn't see all of it, but what I did see explained at least one of the mass extinctions that occurred long before there were dinosaurs. The creatures believed to have populated the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago looked pretty fantastic. They seem to have died out because all the continents merged into one super-continent called Gwondanaland that gradually transformed into a huge desert. The worldwide drought forced animals to migrate toward the coastlands, and non-migratory creatures simply died of dehydration and/or starvation.

The next show was "Walking With Cavemen". I have no idea of how old it is, I guess maybe 2-3 years. The CGI effects were impressive and the cavemen looked good (actors in makeup and prosthetics, from what I understand). One of the neat things is that the show summarized human migration out of Africa in a way I've never really stopped and thought about.

Homo Erectus evolved in Africa, evolved into Homo Ergaster, some of the Ergasters moved out of Africa and into Asia, and became Java Man. They lasted about 1 million years.

The Homo Ergasters who remained in Africa eventually evolved into Homo Heidelbergensis, some of whom migrated to Europe and eventually evolved into Homo Neanderthalensis. The Homo Heidelbergensis who remained in Africa evolved into Homo Sapiens, some of whom migrated into Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

The show recaps speculation that long-term changes in climate gradually produced the changes in hominid groups that led to separate evolutionary paths. Severe drought conditions in Africa and severe cold in Europe caused the division of the Homo Heidelbergensis groups into two new species. Homo Neanderthalensis tended to be shorter and heavier than Homo Sapiens because those body types were better suited for the cold (meaning, a lot of Homo Heidelbergensis babies must have died from exposure while the Earth was covering itself in ice). Homo Sapiens grew taller and thinner because, as the ice formed in Europe, Africa dried up and became arid. Tall, thin body types survive better in arid conditions (meaning, a lot of Homo Heidelbergensis babies must have died from dehydration as Africa shriveled up).

Climate was also central to that portion of the second show I saw. I only watched a few minutes of it because I was tired but I sensed immediately that speculations about the origins of the moon have become very sophisticated. In "Living Without The Moon" (I think that was the title), narrated by Patrick Stewart, we are told that the moon was probably formed with a hypothetical tenth planet (Orpheus, moving in an odd orbit that took it from between Mars and Jupiter to the Earth's proximity) collided with the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago.

Computer modelling indicates that no matter how you try to form moons around the Earth, there is only one way that our moon could have been formed. The collision theory may or may not be generally accepted, but within the parameters of this theory only one stable moon could have formed. Furthermore, the formation of the moon would have been rapid (the collision would have occurred over a period of about 48 hours, it would have spread debris around the Earth that would form a ring, and the ring would coalesce into a moon in 1 to 100 years).

The debris from the collision had to settle into orbit beyond a certain distance (the name for which I didn't catch). So it is possible that several early collisions produced more debris and possibly earlier moons. However, Luna would have been formed from the last major collision between young planetary bodies involving the Earth.

The moon would have formed about 14,000 miles above the Earth. Its tidal forces would have ripped the Earth's mantle and caused huge tsunami waves to constantly roll across the oceans (and I was surprised to learn that scientists think the Earth had oceans about 4.5 billion years ago). Luna is gradually moving away from the Earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches per year. The rate must have slowed as that would mean that Luna has only moved about 106,000 miles away from the Earth in that time (unless my calculations are off).

Having a single moon in close proximity stabilizes the Earth's rotation and tilt. The Earth's rotation slowed down from about 4 hours per day to about 24 hours per day. Since the Earth doesn't wobble and since the rotation is slow, fairly stable environmental conditions for life were able to form (whereas Mars wobbles and therefore its poles melt and refreeze).

What I inferred from all this is that if we want to seek out planets not only that might support native life, but which might support us, we'll probably need to look for planets that have single Lunar bodies in orbit around them, or whose moons (in whatever combination) produce the same stabilizing effect on them that Luna produces for the Earth.

While it's true that if we can launch ships that take us to the stars we'll probably have the technology to dwell in many otherwise dangerous environments, one very real consequence of colonizing other worlds is that the colonists may lose contact with Earth for any number of reasons. If they have to sustain themselves before they can develop an industrial base to compensate for a harsh environment, they need to settle on planets that as much like Earth as possible.

That means more than just having an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and water. It means the planetary rotations and tilts have to be similar to Earth's.

We don't yet know what the likelihood of other star systems forming Earth-like planets in a hospitable zone, with moons that stabilize them, and which contain water, oxygen, and nitrogen really is. We're only just now beginning to identify and catalogue Earth-sized bodies in other star systems.

We might very well find planets with primitive life forms that cannot evolve into larger complex creatures simply because their planets are too unstable to support environments that nourish diversity. Despite the fact that we find microscopic life in extreme environments around the globe, complex, larger life forms need a very stable, narrow band of temperatures so that they can flourish and take advantage of abundance.

Freezing in a white Christmas mode...

2006-11-28T11:33:00.000-06:00

I've now experienced my first Seattle snow fall and, thankfully, it hasn't been nearly as bad for me as for many of my co-workers. The office this morning looks like a ghost-town. So many people are unable to reach downtown Seattle that the building maintenance people didn't bother to turn the heat on.

That wouldn't be so bad except they turned it off last Wednesday to save some money and it was late yesterday afternoon before we started to notice any warmth. So, sitting here in my wool coat two days in a row is kind of unsettling. All those people who could not make it in to work at least get to work from home in a warm environment.

Nonetheless, my commute is about 10 minutes and I cannot complain about that. I hate long commutes. When I was younger I would spend anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes driving to work and sometimes as long or longer driving home. So saving a couple of hours of my day by living close to the office in downtown Seattle has also kept my feet dry.

I just wish it weren't so cold. The funny thing is, we rearranged the office recently and I offered to let my boss move my team upstairs. I'm sitting beside a window right now, which I think is considered a premium seat around here, but even with the blinds pulled down I'm being constantly blasted by the cold draw of the window. It's sucking all the heat out of the office.

Oh, wait. We don't have any heat. So I guess I have no reason to complain....

Menawhile, back in Seattle...

2006-11-25T02:23:00.000-06:00

I need a chair. A nice, highback office chair. I had one in New Mexico that was perfect. But when I moved to Texas a few years ago I gave away all my furniture. I was tired of lugging it around and really didn't have any place to put it in Texas.

I eventually bought another chair in Texas that was okay, not great, but it served its purpose. Most people don't know what makes a chair good. I should say none of us do. You just know a chair is right for you after you've spent about six hours in it and you realize neither your back nor your neck are killing you.

I haven't had a chair like that in more than two years. It's time, I think, to go chair shopping.

I don't lack for furniture right now. I rented a whole suite load of furniture out of pure laziness. But I didn't get a desk and chair (hate leaving the choice up to someone else) so I'm presently sitting at the dining room table, propping a pillow behind my back in the hope my neck won't kill me.

It's not working very well.

I know what I want. I just don't know if I'll find it. But I suppose that not having the right chair makes me a bit ornery. My mood is not the best it has ever been, but I'm just getting over a nasty sinus infection and 11 days of taking Amoxycillin (I missed 3 doses at various times).

And then how will I get it home? My car isn't exactly built for carrying furniture around. I may have to befriend someone with a truck for just long enough to get them to go down to an Office Depot with me.

You know, when I sat down to write this post, I thought I would write something completely different. But my back hurts.

I think I'm done for the night.

Bless the beasts, the children, and the SEOs

2006-11-25T01:39:00.000-06:00

I was reading one of the more popular SEO "journal" Web sites this evening when I realized, for the umpteenth time, that most of the people involved in optimizing your Web pages so they'll rank highly in search engines are functionally illiterate.

It goes well beyond their collective inability to use basic English pronouns correctly (if I have to read "Myself, Dudley, and Studnot got together at the bar" one more time ...).

Okay, everyone makes typos while typing. I do it every time I create a message, blog post, Web page, or essay. And sometimes I even catch my typos before you see them. But I'm not talking about basic typos. I mean, these people don't know how to compose a sensible sentence in English.

What has happened to our education system? Are all the schools now hooked on phonics? I hope not.

Reading SEO blogs and feature articles is a real challenge. The experts all write like English is their second language. I can understand if you're sitting in a conference, blogging on your wireless laptop for the cheap-minded SEOs who don't want to waste -- er, spend a couple thousand dollars on a mutual back-patting weekend. I'll accept the typos, grammatical errors, and incomplete sentences because, frankly, if someone is willing to condense all the meaningless tripe and drivel you usually get from a panel to the relatively few points of worthwhile information, hey, that's worth a beer and even a "thank you" or two.

Thank you.

Pretty much, the rest of the SEO community's commentaries have lately been rather pointless. And repetitive. And boring. People are fumbling over the basics once again. Big name people who should know better by now.

How do you tell someone is a bad SEO? Let me count the ways:

They hint that Matt Cutts is a liar. What is up with all the Matt-bashing?

Is Matt always right? I have no idea. I don't work for Google, so I have no way to confirm or contest what he says. But he speaks with more authority on how Google does things than anyone who does NOT work for Google. So, whom should I believe has a clue: A Googler who has never been caught in a lie, or someone who keeps suggesting that the Googler is lying? Gee, that's a real tough choice, folks....

They talk about "quality links". What is a "quality link"? Even Adam Lasnik (a former SEO who now works with Matt Cutts at Google) has been caught saying, "More quality links". Hm. Frankly, when I want more links, I make them. I've been saying that for years. Only a handful of people have figured out what I mean, but they seem to be doing okay. Maybe there's something in my secret sauce after all.

But I don't spam blogs, I don't spam forums, and I don't run linkbots. Nor do I send out emails to people asking them to link to me. And if I did send out emails asking for links, I wouldn't write anything like:

"DO NOT ASK US TO LINK TO YOUR SITES!" why? If you are in this business you have to tolerate such requests. You too must be knowing that incoming links are best way to boost sites ranking and traffic and you too would prefer to get backlinks to your site then why reluctance with other's.

This seems to me little arrogant statement.

You see, my definition of "arrogance" is more like: the act of coming unexpectedly out of nowhere without invitation or provocation to call someone else arrogant because you don't agree with what they say.

That's arrogance.

Yes, I'm in this business and, no, I don't have to tolerate link requests. I have zero-tolerance for link requests. I don't want them. I don't need them. You don't need them. That's right. Whoever wrote "incoming links are best way to boost sites ranking and traffic" only sees half the picture. Incoming links are useful. They are necessary. But you don't need an endless supply of incoming links.

If you've got dozens or hunderds of links and you're still not where you want to be, you need to stop link-building.

You ain't doing it right.

It's that simple. Anyone who says you need hundreds of links to promote a Web site, for most business categories, just absolutely has no idea of what they are talking about. I have moved into multiple highly competitive search expressions with fewer than 50 inbound links. If I can do it anyone can do it.

Well, this is getting long, and I've deleted more paragraphs than I have allowed to stand. I hope all the poor SEOs out there who are needlessly burning electrons took time out (if they are Americans) to celebrate Thanksgiving. We do all have a few things to be thankful for.

One of them is the next sentence. Bless your hearts, each and every one of them.

November 2006 Google Update

2006-11-20T20:20:00.000-06:00

Oh yes. One more thing.

It appears that Google has unleashed another major update. People are already complaining loudly in all the usual corners.

It appears to me that Google is rebuilding its index (which is normal), but in the meantime a large number of Web sites are showing up as URLs without titles or descriptive text in various search results.

This process should go on for 3 weeks to 2 months. Most major sites should be reindexed quickly, and I believe new content will probably show up too. But a lot of mediocre Web sites will probably feel the pain.

There was a major SEO conference in Las Vegas, NV last weekend and based on what I've read on the Web I'm glad I wasn't there. I don't really enjoy conferences that offer nothing substantively new. The SEO conferences are stuck in the rehash zone.

And naturally I'm under a small but growing pressure at work to start taking my team (or some members of it) to SEO conferences next year. The problem is that I would have to debunk a lot of nonsense my staff would pick up from the shows. They don't realize just how outdated most of the advice given out in the SEO community tends to be.

Anyway, there's a Google update underway. Have fun with it.

And here we are again...

2006-11-20T20:10:00.000-06:00

I still haven't installed my computer in my new Seattle apartment. People at work have been passing some infectious gunk around the office and I not only came down with it last week, I insisted on going out into the cold Seattle rain and making it worse.

I've been chewing on antibiotics ever since.

So I don't much feel like messing with computers and cables when I get home at the end of the day, besides which I only got the cable service installed a few days ago.

In the meantime, here I am, trying to stay on top of things at work, and getting a little grumpy in the process. Sorry, folks.

I did find a grocery store near downtown Seattle that has its own parking lot. You have no idea how important free parking is until you move to a downtown metropolitan neighborhood and refuse to give up your car. My social life sometimes consists of negotiating for an available parking space and then guarding my car ferociously to prevent anyone from towing it.

You see parking enforcement officers doing their jobs every day here. I've watched mre than one vehicle be towed away at the owner's expense.

So finding a store that doesn't charge you for parking is a Godsend. They must be making a humongous profit on the groceries I'll be buying there, but the mere convenience of not having to cruise around looking for a paid parking space on the street is worth the price alone.

It's one thing to think, "Well, I may take the bus to work", but quite another when you are carrying a couple bags of groceries through the rain and one of them drops. I've watched a lot of people struggle with groceries on the street. They either don't have cars or hunger has not yet forced them to give up their parking spaces.

I did the four-block walk with groceries in the rain once. God willing and the river don't rise, I won't have to do it again.

So, I'll be back to blog a little more this week. I do have Thanksgiving day off (and the day after) so I may actually set up my own computer for a change. The email is piling up and I should really do something about answering it.

I say I "should", but we all know by now that (sadly) most of those emails will languish.

Sorry. I'm just not feeling up to it.

On a happier note, I went to see "Happy Feet" this past weekend. That is such a cool movie. I may go see it again.

You should go see it.

I stumped Ms. Dewey

2006-11-09T12:17:00.000-06:00

Or, how Ms. Dewey and Mickey Mouse crashed my computer.

Yesterday I caught the buzz about Microsoft's interactive Flash search engine Ms. Dewey. I went over to the site and started asking questions. While the SEO industry is flabbergasted by the answers you can get to silly questions (actually, she couldn't say anything when I asked "Who is Mickey Mouse?" -- my computer eventually hung and crashed before I got an answer), if you enter real queries, she'll make any number of relevant comments.

What the SEOs haven't noticed about Ms. Dewey is that Ms. Dewey is a semantic search engine. Let me say that again. Ms. Dewey is a semantic search engine. Microsoft's AI is demonstrating an incredible capability for looking at your query and offering relative commentary through the interactive interface.

The AI also analyzes your query patterns and adjusts the commentary accordingly. This is significant, even though the scrolling search results don't necessarily have any relevance (you can ask some things that don't have answers).

The actress who plays Ms. Dewey is Janina Gavankar, who has her own official Web site JaninaGavankar.com. If you want to really frustrate the search engine, ask Ms. Dewey about Ms. Javankar.

Parents should keep in mind that some of the queries and responses can entail sexual innuendo and explicit commentary. The search engine does not hold back much. I showed my boss how it works and he asked a question that elicited a bit of profanity from Ms. Dewey. Fortunately, he was so schocked he laughed out loud. But that's not the type of response I'd want from the interface if kids were in the room (NOTE: The site censored the character).

My gut feeling is that this may be the new face of search. It makes the experience more entertaining, but it can also be more informative. They must have spent a lot of time working on the interface's responses. Maybe the response database will be updated. I don't know. I hope so. It could become an evolving, almost living personality if they put the effort into it.

Wherever you go, there you are

2006-11-08T01:45:00.000-06:00

I think Yogi Berra is credited with saying something like "Wherever you go, there you are". If not, he should have been. It sounds like something he would have said. Of course, some people say that Buckaroo Bonzai said it. Doesn't matter who said it, really, as I don't have time to write a short post, so this will be a long one (don't even get me started on who was supposed to have said that).

The Democratic Party apparently won control of the House of Representatives this election. Now Americans can sit back and enjoy two years of multi-million dollar investigations, pork-barrel spending, and more deadlock and gridlock than this country has seen in a decade. It's a shame the electorate won't get the message and just stop voting for all Democrats and Republicans. They're all crooked, they're all liars. Almost every person I have discussed politics with over the past year (all three of them -- no one else can stand the topic) agrees with me that people with real integrity simply don't run for office.

There's something seriously wrong with a system where the only viable candidates for office are guaranteed to be as smarmy as Ted Kennedy and Newt Gingrich. 'Nuff said about politics, I feel sick enough as it is.

In fact, the people at work are passing around some sort of bug or flu. I probably should have gotten a flu shot, but instead I'm wolfing down over-the-counter meds like there is no tomorrow. And tomorrow (as I write this) I have to move into my new apartment. I was going to take stuff over there tonight, but I just don't feel up to the task. So now I have to move everything in the morning. Oboy.

On the search engine optimization front, it appears that Google has broken just about every useful command in their query interface. For the past several weeks, I have been unable to get consistent results between their info: command and queries that look for unique text on indexed pages. It seems like one third of the time I can get pages to come up for info: but not the unique text query, or I can get them to come up for the unique text query but not info:.

What's up with that, Google?

Ask has now officially, formally been inducted into the Top Four Search Engines ahead of America Online (whose results are pulled from Google, so I have been ignoring them for years) by at least two independent ranking sources. I believe that if Ask continues its current trend, they'll capture about twice their present market share by the end of 2007. We'll see.

A few people have wondered where I went to, why I dropped off the search engine forum circuit. Well, I took a position as a director of search strategies for a company that is heavily involved in search engine placement activities. I'm no longer at liberty to share theories and experimental ideas with everyone else. I have to leave it at that.

The mainstream media continues to express more interest in search engine placement, and of course they are drawing upon the usual wrong sources of information. Nonetheless, Advertising Age surprised the heck out of me by compiling a fairly accurate and useful 27-page document about search engines. They even took a stab at listing the top 20 SEO firms (ranked by reported revenues). Well don, Ad Age. Well done.

On the Seattle front, I have not been flooded out, as downtown Seattle seems to be in no danger of receiving flood waters. At the very least, I think there are hills, mountains, and valleys between me and the floods washing away the rest of the state. I feel for the people who have had to contend with the rising waters. I wish them the best. I actually drove through some of those areas not so long ago.

And I cannot think of anything else to say. Which is not to say there isn't anything else to say. Rather, I'm just not feeling good. It has nothing to do with being in Seattle or all the rain. It's just "cold and flu" season.

Oh, yes. Since I'm moving into my new apartment, I'll be without personal Internet access until the middle of next week, give or take. I'll try to post something from work, but the long transition between Houston and Seattle is not yet finished.

Like our favorite California governor is so fond of saying, "I'll be back."

When the truth is known, won't you want somebody to love...

2006-11-05T16:37:00.000-06:00

It says something about a person that they'll think of an old Jefferson Airplane song when starting to write a new blog entry. I never really did like the Airplane much. They were a bit before my time, in terms of the kind of music I grew up enjoying. I wasn't into the drug scene. I much more enjoyed the ballads of the 1970s that told stories. Some of the late 1960s songs set the pace for those ballads, like "Honey" ("see the tree, how big it's grown, but friend it hasn't been so long, it wasn't big"). My mother loved that song and she turned the radio up every time it came on.

So why did I think of Jefferson Airplane? Maybe in part because Tim Berners-Lee fears for the Web's future. Berners-Lee invented the technology that runs today's Web. He is now, in 2006 (17 years after he created the monster), just voicing concern that the Web may be used to spread misinformation. Um, yeah, Dude. Have you looked at Wikipedia lately? There's plenty of misinformation on the Web.

It's always good to hear a voice of reason coming from Berners-Lee's corner of the Internet. Unfortunately, he just seems to be so behind the times in recognizing that propagandists, frauds, and liars have taken control over the information medium. And what is sad about the whole thing is that many people honestly trust these sources of information without demanding any sort of credible explanation of where the information came from.

But maybe my latest Web creation also got me to thinking about the 1960s. I have just set up a Web page about the Schick Quattro Treadmill Girl. If you don't know who I am talking about, there is a link on the page that takes you to Shick Labs' Web site, where you can watch one variation on the commercial. The girl is doing her thing and some guy with a really close shave steps up beside her and she loses all focus and concentration, falling down on the treadmill.

It's a cute gag but it doesn't compell me to go out and buy a Shick Quattro. In fact, according to one negative review of the product that I found, it doesn't give as close a shave as 2-blade and 3-blade razors do. I don't know. I just occasionally see a television (or theater) commercial that makes me laugh. And I laugh when the girl goes down.

But there is something troubling about that commercial, at least to me. For years, men have been taking the falls. Many television commercials have been portraying men as inept, stupid, incompetent, and not nearly good enough to be with the women in their lives. More than a few men's groups in the U.S. have spoken out against such advertising propaganda. It's starting to look to me like the advertising industry is getting the message: no more man-bashing.

But does this mean we'll be going back to sex-based stereotypes where women mindlessly chase men? We've already seen that kind of advertising with Axe Body Spray (which I have not tried, but I've looked at the package and see nothing in the ingredients which would lead me to believe it's any different from any other cheap toiletry product). We also saw something like it in a jeans commercial where Orlando Bloom was chased down the street by a horde of girls.

Okay, the Orli commercial is actually probably more faithful to reality than either the Schick or the Axe commercials.

Now, I'm not particularly concerned about how the bad stereotypes will impact our children as they grow up. I am sure that many media watchers will howl and snarl over this kind of advertising, as they have been for years. Rather, I'm just concerned that shifting the pendulum back the other way will give the media watchers yet more reason to howl and snarl.

Good comedy pokes gentle fun at who we are and what we do. Parody in advertising should be not only permissable but also encouraged. For example, I've also seen a few commercials for a new Jeep campaign in which obviously computer-generated animals mistake Jeeps for other animals. The Jeeps are being dive-bombed by birds, challenged by a lizard, and swatted by a flyswatter. There may be more spots I haven't seen. I think they're funny.

Do I want to go buy a Jeep? Not on your life. But I enjoy the commercials.

If I have to put up with commercials when I watch television, at least make me laugh. Take a cue from GEICO's Tiny House commercial and pique my curiosity. You never know. Some day, I may have to buy a razor blade, and if my choice is between carving up my face with Gillette or carving up my face with Schick, I may just choose Schick because they made me laugh.

Disclaimer: No Balrogs were criticuzed in the production of this blog. Grace Park may be married, but she still has a lot of very interested fans. Your mileage may vary. Tax, tags, and title not included. Do not attempt this at home. Professional blogger on a closed venue.

Trick or Treat: Kerry likes to bleat!

2006-10-31T21:18:00.000-06:00

Now that I'm working for a tech firm in Seattle, I don't have to dress up and wear a tie to work. My good ties have been collecting dust, and I can't say I really miss them. It's nice to wear a tie once in a while but having to dress up every day gets old pretty quickly.

Well, we were told we could dress up for Halloween, and since I've never been much for dressing up in clown outfits or big furry suits, I decided to go to work as the scariest thing in Washington state: a Republican party partisan.

I wore my power blue suit.

I wore my power red tie.

I wore my warm wool coat (good thing, too, as it got down below freezing temperatures last night).

I looked good. And when I walked into the office, I went up to people, took their hands in both of mine in that politician "you're so trapped" two-hand grip, and said, Good morning! George Bush can do no wrong, and I know you'll vote Republican in next week's election!

I had people in stitches. But I never thought John Kerry would frighten Democrats more than me. The guy is about as brainless as any Presidential candidate who has ever stood in front of an audience. We were all mocking him at the office today, doing the Kerry Chop, practicing Kerry Fu.

But Kerry put the Fu into Fool by boasting that he would not apologize to anyone for making one of the most stupid sound bites since Dan Quayle spat out "The Human mind, what a terrible waste."

Kerry, you're a veteran. You served your country. Great. So did millions of other Americans. You're a war hero, too (I don't want to revisit old scandals). But you said something really, really stupid and if you think you're helping the Democratic Party by digging your feet in, you've got a sad, sorry lesson coming to you next week.

And if you seriously think you have a shot at winning the Presidency in 2008, I can tell you now I'll vote for Hilary Clinton in the Democratic Primary just to make sure you don't get a shot.

To all the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan: you know what American politics is like. Just sigh deeply and know we all want to bring you home, safe and whole. Somehow, we'll find a way. Hang in there.

Why don't Democrats want to serve their country?

2006-10-28T11:19:00.000-05:00

Everyone pretty much believes that the Republican Party has become corrupt. They have been in power so long they give the appearance of acting like they can get away with anything. Now, the reality is that the Republican Sentators and Members of the House of Representatives are very much aware of the general antipathy in the media. They know they are being closely scrutinized by both average American citizens and hostile Democratic partisans.

In reality, the Republican Party is acting like a drunk who has stumbled home at 4:00 AM and is trying to straighten up his clothes before the wife sees him.

The problem with this situation is that the Democratic Party is acting like the creepy prowling neighbor, hiding in the bushes outside the window just so they can catch the drunk as he tumbled over the doorstep. The Democratic Party's avowed poison pen campaign shows that they have no intention of serving the American people's best interests.

Now, politicians have been conducting poison pen campaigns in this country since the Federalist Papers were first being penned. Much as the American people say they hate mud-slinging, they'll often believe just about any lie said about a politician. Many of our political scandals in the past 50 years have started out as mud-slinging contests where someone lied about someone else and launched an investigation. The political investigations usually find that the original allegations were unfounded lies -- both the Democrats and the Republicans are equally guilty of lying about each other.

What these political parties have done in the past 10-20 years, however, is elevate organized mud-slinging to the level of professional intervention in media outlets. Both the Democrats and the Republicans orchestrate the news they want Americans to see and hear, and because of the political sympathies in many news rooms, generally one party or the other gets favorable treatment at large news organizations like CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc. We don't have a neutral media presence in this country and the political parties know it.

In the 2006 elections, however, the Republican Party is on the defensive. The Democrats are manufacturing Republican scandals faster than the Republicans can launch counter-attacks. And the Republican Party has to live with the fact that the Bush Administration really has screwed up the situation in Iraq.

But the Democratic Party is determined to make leaving Iraq a political issue. They are trying to throw away American lives (both already lost in combat and potentially to be lost in future terrorist actions) for the sole purpose of recovering control over the U.S. Congress.

And if the American electorate gives that control back to the Democrats, you'd better believe they'll use their majority to stonewall every Bush Administration policy they can. We can look forward to 2 years of gridlock, bickering, stupid childish ranting, and attempts to impeach another President. Impeachment has become the stick with which every American President can expect to be tormented. Both political parties have devolved into gangs of thugs who do nothing more than threaten and bully each other.

We're going to lose a great deal when the election is over. If the Republicans retain control of the Congress, they'll continue to rubber-stamp every Bush policy. If the Democrats gain control of the Congress, they'll hammer every Bush policy and use their political clout to dredge up more scandals against the Republicans.

The American taxpayer can expect to pay about $100 million for investigations, hearings, and scandal control over the next 2 years. The average independent counsel investigation now costs more than $40 million to conduct at the Federal level.

I'd have absolutely no problem with the Democrats taking back control of the Congress right now if they would just shut up and do their jobs. Their jobs don't include withdrawing our troops from Iraq before the Iraqi government can take care of itself. Their jobs don't consist of impeaching the President. Their jobs don't consist of grandstanding on CNN about how all the Republicans are evil and corrupt.

The Democrats are just as evil, anti-American, and corrupt as the Republicans. Since we're stuck with these two parties, the best thing we as voters can do is vote all the incumbents out of office. If, every election, we just get rid of the dead wood and put some new faces into Washington, I think the message would get across very quickly and easily: do your jobs, serve our interests, and put your stupid political parties' interests in the cellar where they belong.

Ask not on Google, nor Google on Ask

2006-10-27T12:13:00.000-05:00

The gentle people at Ask have responded to Google's position statement on how they would like see the rest of us use the word 'Google'.

Ask's rules are a bit more liberal and flexible than Google's, and they are obviously poking Googlers gently in the eye.

Frankly, I'm beginning to think all these trademark attorneys are a bunch of Yahoos -- but that's just my opinion, and I reserve the right to change it at any time.

Can you live with that?

A theorem for the dynamically inclined

2006-10-27T01:41:00.000-05:00

Say "theorem" and people start to scramble for their nail clippers, as manicures often seem more important than math and science. That's kind of odd, as the average human mind probably concocts a new theorem every few minutes when faced with a new situation.

Some people become so married to their innate theorems that they seem inflexible -- their theorems become axioms. Technically, you postulate a conjecture first, and on the basis of your conjecture you formulate a hypothesis, which you then test. If the hypothesis passes enough tests, it is promoted to a theorem. A theorem is a very powerful logical proposition that is "proven" to be correct in some fundamental way. Rarely should a theorem be found to be incorrect, although the science of Physics has occasionally been turned upside down when established theorems have been challenged.

In everyday human experience, life is not nearly so formally constructed. Our unvoiced theorems survive challenges through sheer force of will more often than not. That is, plain, simple stubborness may be all that props up a theorem we have come to cherish, though we have neither named nor even recognized it for what it is. For example, when you move to a new home, you have to find a new way to get to work. Eventually, after trying several routes, you settle on one that seems like it is the best for your needs.

Several months, perhaps even a year or more later, you ride along with someone who knows the area better than you and they cut sharply right or left, taking a road you have often passed but never gone down before. And as you ride along, you realize that maybe this path will trim five or ten minutes off your commute to work.

But come the next morning drive, you follow the same path again that you have schooled yourself to follow for months. Simply knowing that there is a better way is not sufficient. Your subconscious mind doesn't like to be proven wrong. And that is why you don't like to be proven wrong, because your subconscious has to accept the better way before your conscious mind can win the battle of wills raging within you. How many times have you promised yourself you would get up 15 minutes earlier and get some extra tasks done? How many times have you forgotten to get up early?

We often attribute our inertial inflexibility to a "force of habit", but it's not so much a force of habit as a force of will. We have convinced ourselves that a certain path from here to there is the best one and our subconscious minds remind us that we have already settled this debate. It becomes more and more difficult to change our minds on a given topic each time we fail to change our minds.

Now, that's my theory, which is unproven (in my experience -- perhaps it has been proven correct or proven wrong formally but that is outside of my experience). It's only a theory, or a hypothesis, but it works for me. And that is the danger. The more it works for me, the more tests it passes for me because I construct tests that I know mmy theory will pass.

In order to truly test a theory, you have to let someone else challenge it. That is the scientific way (not the scientific method, but the scientific way). In science, one party makes a conjecture, presents an argument in favor of the conjecture, and then other parties challenge the conjetcure. Many conjectures are proven to be incorrect, and many conjectures are proven to be correct but remain relatively insignificant.

We clutter our minds, however, with conjectures that are technically incorrect but which our knowledge and experience are incapable of proving incorrect. For all intents and purposes, within the scope of our abilities, these conjectures work.

And that leads me to the point I'd like to make: search engine optimization theory is formulated on the basis of habit and conjecture that seems to work. Since most search engine optimization specialists don't know how to formally challenge a concept, they are unable to properly test their conjectures in a scientific way.

The easiest way to test a conjecture is to look at authoritative sources of information to determine if there are documented contrary points. SEOs typically do not do this. Some of them search the technical literature, but they do so looking for support for their ideas. Seeking only support, they skim over or completely bypass whatever may actually contradict their ideas.

And that is why I am so critical of the propositions put forth by even the most highly regarded SEOs in the industry. They just do not understand that consensus of opinion proves nothing (other than that an idea is popular). Nor does consensus of undisciplined observation prove anything (other than that most people are not trained to make formal observations).

In my present work environment, my freedom to challenge and test the SEO community's ideas and arguments is severely curtailed. I miss being able to point to authoritative references for the sake of a wide audience. I don't always have the right explanation for any particular event in the search engine experience. In fact, I probably don't do any better at conjecturing than the next guy.

But I do at least make an effort to compare my conjectures to what has been published or disclosed by the people who actually know how the search engines go about their business. Maybe 1 out of 10 of my ideas passes that first test.

It's all downhill from there, but I feel satisfied that anything which passes the first test at least has a reasonable chance of passing the next one. It's sort like, if I drive down this street I have never driven down before, as long as I don't see a "Dead End" or "Wrong Way" sign, I have a good chance of coming out upon another street that may lead me to some place useful. Sometimes that is true. Sometimes, there is a huge truck blocking the way and I have to back up and start over.

So, what brought all this meandering philosophizing to a boil? I fear me that my old pals at SEOMoz have lost their way once again. Rand recently took a shot at reverse engineering the Google ranking algorithm. Alas! He seems unwilling to let go of his long cherished idea (which is grossly incorrect) that links heavily determine rankings. Rand judges the effect of links by what he sees, not by what other people see.

That is, Rand -- being involved in the business of helping other business people achieve high rankings -- doesn't take into account the fact that most queries produce no optimized results in the listings. Millions of queries every day lead people to content that ranks almost solely on the basis of content.

That is because that is how the search engines prefer to work. A time-tested principle in most SEOs' plans of action these days is to build as many links as possible to a given Web site to help it rank highly. This methodology often works well in spite of itself, because the search engines really cannot pre-emptively defuse a spammy idea, although they often implement filters once specific link-building tactics prove themselves (note: Ask claims to do the least amount of filtering because its technology is more firmly rooted in provable trusted measurements -- and I agree, they probably have the best algorithm).

My point is one I have often made: just because many people think that linking is the necessary strategy, that doesn't mean it actually is. Nor does their collective opinion make it the best strategy. You need some links to get crawled, indexed, and validated, but after that point you can take one of two paths: you can optimize your content and achieve a high on-page relevance score or you can just hope you get enough links to assert relevance (through their anchor text) to rank highly.

Either way, you're ranking on relevance and not on linkage (proof: three links with anchor text of "skimadagy" will help a page outrank another that has 1000 links for "infamative" if the query is "skimadagy" -- but then, so will on-page content). But try explaining that to an SEO who habitually bangs his head against the wall for no reason other than that most other SEOs bang their heads against the wall. With enough head banging, you will knock a hole through the wall.

But while that hole may seem like the shortest path from here to the other side, the time you spend making it usually is longer than the time you would devote to walking around the wall. That is, if SEOs habitually focused on on-page relevance first, they would find they need fewer links to get good rankings.

Rand gets away with counting on gross inefficiency because he believes in creating link bait -- building content that is so rich and compelling that other people help promote it for him. That's a great strategy and it should continue to work well for him for years to come. Unfortunately for the people who look to guys like Rand for advice (but who are unable to create similarly compelling link bait), they'll continue to scratch their bruised heads and ask in various SEO forums why they cannot seem to get the high, stable rankings they need.

The sucess of link baiting doesn't prove that rankings are based on linkage. It proves that compelling content will be rewarded. Eventually, the distinction will be recognized, but probably not before it's been challenged enough by reality that people stop banging their heads against the wall long enough to realize there is a doorway right next to them that will get them from here to there much faster.

There now: I've said what needed to be said, and I feel much better for it, especially knowing that most SEOs will continue to ignore the short cut and take the long way 'round. That does make it easier for me to beat them in the search engines.

And, quite frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. After all, it's not like I haven't been telling them how to do this more easily than they are for years.

Do you know the shoe shine man?

2006-10-26T08:55:00.000-05:00

Do you know the shoe shine man, the shoe shine man? Do you know the shoe shine man, the one on first avenue?

Okay, not quite as cute as "Do you know the muffin man" but I got my shoes shined yesterday. While you may not think that's a big thing (anyone can buy shoe polish and rub it on their shoes), it's a big thing to me. I suck at shining shoes. I don't know why. I suppose it's just a "practice makes perfect" issue, but it seems like all I do is create a mess when I try to rub polish on my shoes and take it off. I'm not talking about the little squiggy bottles you buy for your $10 shoes, I'm talking about the hard polish in the can.

So I pay to have my shoes polished on occasion. In Houston, I found a couple of shoe shine guys working at local car wash/detail shops. For $5 you'd get a great shine, but the car wash business is so competitive that one shop bought out the other and fired one of the guys. And the other guy was in such high demand I stopped trying to get my shoes shined. It was just too expensive to take my car in for a wash every other day.

The first guy, the one who was fired, knew shoes like no one I'd ever met before. He was an older gentleman and had obviously been plying his trade for a few years. He could clean your shoes and polish them while carrying on an interesting conversation. The sun had trouble outshining my shoes after he got finished. He spoiled me.

I remember I couldn't find him one week, so I took my shoes down to the Houston Shoe Hospital. They did an okay job on the shine but when I saw the shoe shine man again he took one look at my shoes and said (as if his wife had just betrayed him), "Why, these shoes have been electric buffed...."

How do you tell the difference? It must be the cracks in the polish.

So imagine my pleasant surprise as I was walking down first avenue near Pioneer Square in Seattle yesterday when a guy sitting on a little wooden bench beside the street hailed me. He looked at my shoes, first. "Sir, you want a shine?"

I looked down. Yup. My shoes were glum. Every woman looking at my feet would have known what he saw instantly. Me, I didn't pay no heed to the problem until he called out to me. But there was his gear all set up beside him. The dude may not have a fancy rig, but he clearly was serious about shining shoes because he was sitting in the cold shadows of a building. And most of the people walking past us were wearing sneakers (I still cannot get over how many people in Seattle wear sneakers with dressy casual slacks).

I obviously needed a shine but I also needed to eat and the clock was ticking. "Maybe tomorrow," I promised. "Are you here every day?"

"Every day," he replied, looking disappointed. He must be turned down by a fair number of people with ugly shoes, but at least he knows which shoes should be shined. I took hope from his established knowledge and the fact he said he would be there.

Moving on, I found a pizzeria that wasn't as crowded as all the other little eateries, got my pizza, and ate a quick lunch (the place started to fill up as I left -- I have that effect on people). I looked at my watch and noticed I still had about 15 minutes left in my lunch hour. So why not see the shoe shine man? It had been so long....

He did a good job. I'll be walking his way with a few more pairs of shoes. And when he finished, I asked how much. "Oh, just make my day!" he said, "Just make my day."

Well, Seattle is an expensive place to live, in my opinion. But I didn't want to pay too much for ten minutes' work. So I said, "Well, in Houston I paid the guys $5."

"Just whatever you feel it's worth," the shoe shine man said. He's good, I'll give him that, but I held the line at $5. He couldn't have been doing too poorly, since several people stopped to say "Hi" to him as he shined my shoes, and because when I came back to him, he was eating a burger and fries even though he had packed his lunch in his little carry-bag.

I've been wondering what to do about my Pronto Uomo shoes here in Seattle. The Houston Shoe Hospital is a long way off and eventually I'll have to get these shoes reconditioned and resoled. But at least now I know I won't have to get them electric buffed....

There's a new science fiction search engine in town...

2006-10-25T02:11:00.000-05:00

Google has now made it possible for anyone to create a custom search engine through their Google Co-Op service. I have long been frustrated by the search results at Google for SF & F queries, so I decided to create a search engine that favors sites I know to be relatively good.

I picked out dozens of fan sites, author sites, convention sites, etc. I decided against having Google search only those sites because I know there are plenty of other good sites out there about which I know nothing. So I only set the CSE (as it's called) to favor those sites -- meaning (I think) that they should show up first for whatever queries that are relevant to their content. Maybe.

I also filtered out a few sites I am sick of seeing turn up in search results, especially Wikipedia (which is horrifically unreliable in the SF & F entries, among others).

So, without more ado, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Science Fiction Search Engine. Enjoy.

Going to Seattle MindCamp

2006-10-23T02:19:00.000-05:00

I was so impressed with the BarCamp concept that I have persuaded my new employer to send me and four other employees to Seattle MindCamp 3.0 in November. About 300 people from many different companies should be there (they are only selling 300 tickets and the last 20 or so tickets should be sold soon if they are not gone already).

Since I work under a very tight NDA, I'm not sure what I'll be free to talk about or if I can give much of a presentation. I'm hoping our team can do something, as I think it would be good experience for each of the other employees to say something.

Although Houston has its share of high tech companies, Seattle clearly has achieved a high level of visibility in technology, given that companies like Microsoft and Amazon are based here. I'm looking forward to learning more about the Seattle tech community at the MindCamp.

Mary Frometa costume party at Cantina Laredo

2006-10-20T12:43:00.000-05:00

Mary's Band plays at Cantina Laredo on Westheimer in Houston most weeks (Thursday and Friday). She just sent out a notice about a costume party on October 27. Sounds cool. I wish I could be there.

Hello Houston!!!

Your are cordially invited to join us to celebrate
Halloween.
From "CANTINA LAREDO RESTAURANT" and VITALIS MEDICAL SPA", the best costume will get:
a.. 1st Place: a Dinner for 4 and a one hour full body massage for the costume winner.
b.. 2nd Place: Laser Hair Removal, 2 Treatments ($400.00 Value)
c.. 3rd Place: Skin Analysis, Facial, Microdermabrasion (Value $150)

When: Friday October 27th, 2006
Where: Cantina Laredo @ 11129 Westheimer (corner of Westheimer and Wilcrest)
Time: 8:00 pm to 12:00 mid-night
Phone number: 713 952 3287
"Complimentary Admission"
"Free Parking"

Live Music by Mary Frometa & "Mary's Band".

You may invite your friends & family.

Check our web site for details on our October schedule!!
www.maryfrometa.com or www.marysband.com.

New Riders of the Polish Sausage...

2006-10-18T02:15:00.000-05:00

I think I ate too much. I ate an entire breakfast burrito for dinner. It seemed good, a little juicy, and perhaps a bit spicy. But I didn't expect it to strike back at me. After conferring with a fellow sufferer of temporary food displacement syndrome, I concluded that I may simply have bitten off more than I should have chewed.

But it could be that the Polish hot dog I had for lunch didn't help. Now, this really has nothing to do with my GI system, so stop saying "Ewwww!" And why do you have to be so prissy about that stuff anyway?

But, more importantly, I have noticed something about the food in Seattle: it's really, really spicy, and all the spice seems to be concentrated in sausage.

When I think Seattle, WA, I think of many things like the Space Needle, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Puget Sound -- but I don't think about sausage.

How in the world did Seattle end up with the spiciest sausage in the world? Well, okay, I don't know for certain that it's the spiciest sausage in the world, but -- damn -- it's spicy. What do they put in the stuff?

It could be the large Asian community here has influenced the way traditional European meats are seasoned. After all, you can almost find a Thai restaurant on every corner in Downtown Seattle. What's with all the Thai restaurants? I see more Chinese and Vietnamese people than I've seen of any other east Asian ethnic group here. Do Seattlites just like really spicy Thai food?

But the Italian food is spicy, too. I ate a pizza from a local pizzeria on Saturday. The sausage like to set my mouth on fire (and, sadly, it added three pounds back to my weight, which had declined all last week). I also ate lunch at a cool little Italian cafe near my office last week. It's located on Pioneer Square (the cafe, not the office) but I cannot remember the name of it. I'll recognize the place when I see it. I had a sandwich with an unpronouncable name the chief meat of which was ... sausage.

If we were in the Middle East, Seattle would be the capital of Sausage Arabia. I'm beginning to think all the coffee shops around here probably offer sausage lattes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

By the way -- did I mention that Seattle really loves sausage?

I've found myself lusting for a cheap McDonalds' hamburger. Not a Big Mac. Not a Quarter Pounder. Just a little hamburger. I'm sure there is a McDonalds downtown somewhere but I haven't found it, yet. I did stumble across a KFC last week and stopped in to eat dinner because it was the first restaurant I'd found that had an actual parking lot where you can pull in and not have to pay any fees. Technically, it wasn't in downtown, but rather in Queen Anne, or on the edge of Queen Anne, which is right next to downtown (and should I be consistently spelling that Downtown or downtown?).

Well, it was good to have some greasy fried American food for a change, although the KFC meal had its way with me afterward, too. I think it may have been the sausage....

Moses and the Sea Peoples...

2006-10-16T01:09:00.000-05:00

I've been staying close to my hotel room the past few days in part to save some money but also to give myself a chance to work on some Web site tasks. To keep from going nuts, I turn on the television and listen to the news or interesting shows on the History Channel. Lately, they've been running programs about Egypt and the Middle East that have led me to think about possible connections between discrete historical events.

Many archaeologists and historians treat the subject of Moses and the Hebrew exodus from Egypt with care. There has been, until recently at least, very little archaeological evidence to directly support the Biblical account of the Exodus, although the emergence of the Israelites and their gradual conquest of Palestine are well confirmed by archaeological and historical evidence.

One (controversial) show (I believe it's called or based on "The Exodus Decoded") looked at whether there is evidence for the parting of the Red Sea. I have long been influenced by The Bible As History to understand that it was not the "Red Sea" whose waters were divided, but rather a "Reed Sea".

This History Channel documentary followed the much discussed hypothesis and proposed that the reed sea is today's modern Lake El Balah. The documentary also looked at a proposed hypothesis that a Mycenean grave stone contains a record of the event. Of course, the proposition is not wholly supported and does have some apparently flaws. History will never be without controversy, I think.

Now, here is where I begin to wonder about unexplored connections. Let's suppose that the El Balah/Reed Sea conjecture is correct and that Moses' crossing point has been identified. Let's further suppose that some Israelites or other people who fled with the Israelites did indeed cross the Mediterranean Sea to settle in Mycenean Greece and/or nearby lands. Their stories about the weakness of Egypt and/or Palestine could have inspired the invasions of the Sea Peoples, who have been connected with the Philistines of the Bible.

Wouldn't that be an interesting parallel? Did the Hebrew Exodus inspire the migration of the Sea Peoples who ultimately settled in what is now Lebanon to become the Philistines?

Another documentary called "Strange Egypt" mentioned that the ancient Egyptians did not have a marriage ceremony. Rather, when a young couple wished to become husband and wife, they simply moved in together and became irrevocably bound together. This is similar to Tolkien's Elvish marriage custom, where a ceremony was not required for the union of male and female. In Eldarin culture, "marriage" ensues from the moment of sexual union.

The Egyptians also developed many canals running off the Nile river. I've only been marginally aware of their canal building, but it does remind me of the supposed canals of Atlantis. If Plato's account of Atlantis really was conveyed to the Greeks by Egyptians, the presence of canals in Atlantis would make a great deal of sense to the Egyptians.

So, my weekend has been inundated with Egyptian mish-mash, some of it interesting. I think the computer reconstructions of ancient monuments and architecture is becoming very good. But I hope to become more integrated into Seattle as the weeks pass by. I may have found a place to move into in November, assuming everything works out.

Until next time....

Democrats continue to endanger American lives

2006-10-14T11:25:00.000-05:00

As the fall election approaches, members of the Democratic Party increasingly demonstrate their irresponsible and careless behavior by calling for a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. These calls for withdrawal are heard in the militant world and are received as confirmations of the militant strategy for conquering Iraq.

The American people, through their elected Democrat and Republican representatives, authorized an invasion of Iraq which left us completely, morally, and legally responsible for the wellfare of the Iraqi people.

If the Democratic Party has its way, American voters will turn against the incumbent Republicans and throw them out of office. Now, while I would not be sad to see the Republican Party get its ears clipped, we don't need to replace one group of irresponsible politicians with another.

The Democratic Party's Iraq policy continues to encourage acts of terrorism throughout Iraq and, if they succeed in bringing our troops home prematurely, the Iraqi government will very likely have to confront a true civil war and not simply the levels of sectarian violence they suffer from today.

There are civil wars occurring in other parts of the world, or which have just shut down. We've seen troops marching through the streets of devastated cities, civilians fleeing en masse, and a total breakdown of government services in those other nations. Iraq has not yet come to that.

It's time the American people said to both political parties, "Stop lying to us for the sake of your political careers".

We're having to endure yet more Democratic nonsense over the Foley scandal. They're calling for investigations in the name of the American people. I can't speak for the rest of you, but I'm sick and tired of Washington spending millions of dollars on politically motivated investigations. They've been the call of the day since at least the Clinton administration.

It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican. You need to tell your party to stand down on the hateful mud-slinging political rhetoric. You can do that by refusing to donate money to the party and by finding alternative candidates to vote for. Our electoral process has created a system of elite professional liars and hate-mongers who put their own career goals ahead of the people they falsely claim to serve.

I didn't go to the polls in the last election to help liars and self-serving political hate-mongers further their careers; I went to the polls in the hope of finding people who would want to serve their country. I was immensely disappointed in the low moral quality of the candidates from both parties.

What does it take to get an honest representative into office who will put his or her constituents ahead of the party's agenda? Nancy Pelosi betrays her constituents' trust every day. And many of them just roll over and take it.

America, you're about to elect the Congress you deserve. If you think things are bad now, just wait. You'll make them worse by voting for the same political choices you've made before.

I'm all for getting out of Iraq, but not on the Democratic agenda, which will result in many more deaths and most likely will turn the attention of Islamic militants to an increasing number of targets outside of Iraq. It only takes one side to fight a terroristic war. We're committed to seeing this conflict through regardless of how war weary we become.

The Democratic and Republican parties should be held accountable for their flagrant disregard of their responsibilities to the American people. I'm fed up with their fabricated scandals and politically motivated investigations. They are just wasting our tax dollars in their endless political bickering.

A sermon for those who need to be preached to

2006-10-12T23:12:00.000-05:00

Dear brethren, we are come together today to speak about the dreadful things that have caused all manner of grief and disharmony among our beloved and beloving family.

A family, as we all well know, is the whole of a plant, from its seeds to its flowers, to its roots and its stems. A family, as we all well know, is like a grape on the vine that longeth for the sweet warmness of the sun in the cloudiest of days, and for the cool shade of the grey skies in a parched and dissolate landscape.

Now, there are families and families, and some families are brought together by Happiness and some families are brought together by Happenstance. Woe unto those who seek to separate the families of the Wheat from the families of the Chaff, for there is no Wheat among us, nor any Chaff. A family, whether it live in harmony or dissonance, is a whole plant, and being wholly planted completes itself from the Spring unto the Fall.

That is, when one part of the family speaks ill of another part of the family, the whole family in its entirety trembles from the tip of the highest flower to the base of the deepest root. As the Book of the Gracious Words says in Chapter 12 Verse 8: "There shall be none amongst ye who speak darkly, that light shall not reach through those of whom thou darkly speakest."

It is a terrible revelation upon us all that we in our family find whisperings and mutterings intended for the benefit of some and the harm of others, for a family cannot both attack and defend its own. Even if a family is a family of Happenstance rather than a family of Happiness, borne out of Need rather than out of Desire -- even if our family represents only the unwilling cooperation of stem and branch -- still, we are a family, a plant wholly unto ourselves, and we needs must be one and united, and not speak evil of those whom Happenstance has made our companions and members of the same family.

It is a sore and miserious thing that some shall speak harshly behind the turned backs of others, not out of righteous condemnation but out of pettiness and coldness, and all small and narrow-mindedness, as like are to be found in the hearts of small communities where all manner of gossip and turmoil are the bitterest of daily graciousness. For in these small and pettile communities, where each neighbor knows the other, and where all comings and goings forth are gathered and mentioned for comment upon, it is understood that he who strikes first strikes hardest.

Even so, as the Book of the Roots tells us in the third verse of the second chapter: "Let those cry out who seek to draw the first blood, for blood shall be given to them, and they shall find it to be bitter and unsatisfying."

The victim of the first drawer of blood is the petal of the flower that crests our plant, and it is both gentle and sweet as the nectar sought out by the humble bee. The root of the plant is neither humble nor humbled, but seeks to raise itself up with pride, though it stand with bendeth back and weakened knee. The root lives in darkness and fears the light, but the flower revels in the glory of the day and sleeps soundly in the cool arms of the night, awaking in the glistening fingers of the bedewelled dawn.

It is saddening to hear of a family that trembles with the anger of miserly gossip and unrighteous plotting, for these connivances are contrived solely for the pleasure of the stooped and bended root, rather than for the good of the flower or the whole of the plant. Shall a family be deemed whole and healthy if there is a bitterness which seeps through its roots like a devilish poison?

And woe unto they who wallow in the bitterness, who heap fresh leaves upon the poisoned root, for they stand with evil and shame the whole plant, which is a family, though it may only be a family of Happenstance rather than of Happiness. It is a guileful thing to speak as though one is happy for another, but secretly wishes in one's heart for the hateful bitterness of the other's downfall. Those who speak evil of others in plain sight of all shall find themselves mocked and preached to by the righteous, as the Book of Stern Warnings doth say.

For the unrighteous, who steep themselves in pettiness and shameful connivances, produce an odorous mixture that is both unsightly and distasteful, whereas those who are but the unwilling tasters of the poison espoused by the root shall, when bathed in warm waters, produce a gentle tea that is both refreshing and healing.

I leave you, dear brethren, with this word of caution: seek not to plot against thy brethren and sistren with devious, hateful, or petty connivances, for all things are marked, and shall be remembered by the righteous. And there shall be no charity for the hungry on the day of famine, when they who have sought to bring all harvest to their hearts find their hands are empty, and the workers whom they believed would feed them have moved on with both the harvest and the seed for the following crop.

There is a constant yearning which can never be satisfied, for it is a craving for light fed by darkness, and the darkness is ever unfulfilling.

Rent Shock in Seattle...

2006-10-11T02:21:00.000-05:00

I knew there was a lot of money flowing around the Seattle area. After all, you have Microsoft nestled here amidst many other high tech firms. But Houston, being the fourth largest city in the United States, is hardly poor. There is oil money there, tech money there, international commerce money there, and much more.

The strength of a city's economy is reflected in its rent values and the age of housing, in my opinion. In Houston, so many new houses are being constructed they cannot tear down older apartment complexes fast enough to keep the vacancy rate low enough for rental properties to remain profitable. The day I moved out of my old apartment (a little over a week ago), the new manager (the third one this year) was telling a new resident that when she had taken over there were 28 vacancies and she had reduced them to 15.

In Seattle, I have yet to drive by a new neighborhood. I'm not saying there are no housing projects. I've only covered a small fraction of city. But everywhere I go, I see old, old buildings -- many more than 60 years old, some maybe as much as 100 years old. And Seattle itself is not very old at all.

Tonight I drove out to West Seattle to inspect a private studio apartment in an older house. Someone had already rented the apartment by the time I got there (the rent was only $400 a month). I was able to look inside the house itself and noted that while the building was probably more than 50 years old, the interior had been renovated within the last five to ten years.

As I drove back to my hotel, I looked closely at the yards of the houses I passed by. They were all well-tended, neatly trimmed, carefully manicured lawns. The houses look like they were built in the 1940s and 1950s. There are many such old wood-paneled houses in the Atlanta area, for example. But the late-model cars and SUVs in the driveways and lining the street made it clear I was not in a low-income neighborhood.

While calling around the inner city today, looking for vacancies in reasonably priced apartment communities with parking, I heard prices ranging from $900 to $1500 per month. Parking costs extra, usually $125 to $150 per month, although one place quoted me $200 for reserved parking.

A lot of people ride buses and trains here. And a lot of people walk. You'd think these environmentally conscious people would be enjoying the healthy benefits of their lifestyle, but sadly I would have to say that about 1/2 of the people I see on the street smoke. Cigarettes dangle from every other bottom lip. I'm pretty allergic to tobacco and even if they don't allow smoking on the buses, I just cannot imagine what I would experience if I had to stand or sit next to a group of smokers for 15-20 minutes going to and from work.

I've found a few places that rent out studios and/or 1-bedroom apartments for less than $800 a month. Even though I have no idea of what their neighborhoods look like, I get the impression these are not very attractive facilities. The hotel I'm staying in offers long-term leases for about $600 a month -- provided you don't earn more than $30,000 per year. Let's just say I won't qualify for long-term housing here, even if I wanted to stay.

I remember going through rent shock when I moved out on my own for the very first time. And after a year of living by myself I went back to rooming with other people for a few years to keep my costs down (I was still in college). When I made the break with shared housing again, the rents had gone up -- but then, I was looking at better quality housing.

I've rented houses, apartments, and even a mobile home. That mobile home sat on top of a hill and I stayed there for 13 months while I was in college. That hill was so cold in the winter that my car's engine froze solid that December. It took a friend of mine six hours with a blow torch to thaw it out. Even so, I was without a car for four days because it took that long for anyone to come check on me.

I've given away enough furniture to fill at least four houses, maybe five. I've given away thousands of books. I've shredded and tossed out thousands of documents through the years, too. I have learned to get rid of as much as possible when I move so that moving is as painless as possible. Even so, even having no furniture to contend with, even with most of my remaining books still being in storage in Florida from my brief foray there in 2004, I had so much stuff to move this time I couldn't take most of it with me. The rest is stored in a friend's garage in Texas.

People ask me why I don't buy furniture. It's because I move so often I'm sick of getting rid of it. I move so often no one wants to help me move. I move only because I have to, or because I can no longer tolerate being where I am. I've picked some rotten roommates through the years. I've picked some rotten landlords. One landlord even went so far as to evict me and get a judgement (illegally) after I had moved out of her house, just so she could keep the $1000 deposit. I had to hire an attorney to get that mess straightened out.

Another landlord rented me his house with the promise I could stay there up to four years. He came back after two years and told me he needed his house back. And he didn't bother to return my $500 deposit despite promising to do so after inspecting the house. So I don't rent houses from private owners any more.

I may buy a house some day. I don't know. My family owns land so I've never felt much desire to buy more. I can't take it with me. I just want a place to stay, to feel comfortable, and maybe to entertain friends once in a while. I don't want to have to walk 3 blocks to get to my car. I don't want to have to find someone to buy or take my furniture when I'm ready to leave. I don't want to mow grass. And I sure don't want to have to fix someone's plumbing problems because the previous tenants didn't bother to take care of the property.

That pretty much leaves me looking for apartments. And I've learned that when you pay $400 a week for a 1-1/2 room studio, you cannot sit around waiting for a great rental unit to fall into your lap. There is a lot of money in this city, and it's chasing every house, apartment, and street corner that is habitable.

If I can find a decent place to live for less than $1200 a month, it will be nothing short of a minor miracle. The most I ever paid in rent was $1150 a month in Houston, when I lived in a fairly upscale townhouse. I'm not sure I want 2 bedrooms right now. What would I put in the 2nd room?

Sleepless in Seattle...

2006-10-10T03:05:00.000-05:00

Couldn't resist reusing an old title. I'm only sleepless in that I woke up from an early evening nap a while ago. I've spent more than a week in my car and my first day on the new job was a whirlwind of meetings, greetings, and getting-to-know-yous. So I fell asleep after catching up with the girlfriend by phone.

I wish I could pontificate on something eloquent and profound, but to be honest I've just spent the last hour doing mundane stuff and testing Internet access. I can't really elucidate well.

The SciFi Channel is recapping Battlestar Galactica and I'm sort of distracted by that. BSG is an interesting show because it's more soap opera than science fiction. And currently, Grace Park is the most popular topic on Xenite.Org. I wish I had created more GP content last year when I had more time for it, but I was distracted by other interests.

There is a dearth of interest in science fiction subjects among search engine users. I strive to identify emerging new trends in SF topics for potential content on Xenite.Org. Sometimes I'm only able to tap into a strong trend peripherally. For example, our Harry Potter content is rather sparse. I've long wanted to write essays about the Potter books, but most of my books are packed up in storage. It's hard to compose an essay from what little I remember of the books.

There really isn't much in the SF entertainment industry that interests me now. Without at least a spark of interest, I cannot write much. I've long enjoyed the Stargate shows but haven't felt compelled to say a great deal about them. As entertaining as the shows have been, they don't really strike deep nerves with me. They don't say much that requires comment.

I'm waiting for a good show or a new series of movies that evoke more than the usual, "That was cool" or "that was dorky" commentary. Even Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies didn't inspire much in-depth commentary. He only dumbed down a story that is much deeper than the cinematic experience can be.

Science fiction and fantasy have grown stale over the past few years. The genres need something new, something innovative. We are trapped in a dormant stage of creativity, retelling old tales with new actors and faces.

We stand at the brink of a new Dark Age for SF. Maybe a light will shine from a distant corner. Maybe things will just get boring after the last Harry Potter book is published, after Stargate: SG1 says farewell, after Battlestar Galactica falls into the predictable rut of just rehashing current events without imagineering a vision of What Might Be.

On the road with Charles Kur--er, Michael Martinez

2006-10-08T00:02:00.000-05:00

I wish I had time to write a full account of my trip so far, but after taking nearly 200 pictures (via cell phone), I think I'll never be able to document my journey from Houston to Seattle very well. But I wanted to share the picture of the moonrise. Alas! my cell phone doesn't do the beauty of an Oregon moonrise justice. The moon looked so huge, I wondered if I was seeing a mirage of the sun (which was setting on the other side of me).

And as I write this, I'm still only in Pendleton, OR (I think). Something about driving through mountains on precipitous ledges when there is no light and nothing to prevent my car from diving off a cliff thousands of feet in the air except my own desire to stay alive just makes another night-time passage undesirable.

I noticed two things as I drove through the mountains of Colorado last night: first very, very few people make that trip. Second, it's a kind of scary feeling to know that you could plunge off the road in the blink of an eye just because you cannot tell the difference between the black top and the blackness of the valley you're driving past.

So when the sun set this evening and I found myself driving through the mountains of Oregon, I decided I'd had enough fun with hair-pin curves and insane vacation drivers who don't appreciate just how fast they are going on two-lane roads that have 'runaway truck' turnoffs that look like skateboard slam walls. Has any truck ever failed to stop on one of those things? I hope not.

I've traveled across the United States before, although most of the time I have flown across the country. But I've drivenf from Florida to Indiana, from Georgia to New Mexico, from New Mexico to Ohio and back, and from New Mexico to Texas. And now I'm driving from Texas to Washington. I've seen many things, met many people on those trips. But I couldn't help noticing a few repetitive motifs on this trip.

I don't know if I have ever encountered as much road construction as I have this week. It seems like half the highways in Texas and one-third of the highways across the country are being widened, repaired, or renovated. As I drove through one congested construction project, I sent my girlfriend a picture of a bulldozer or something and said, "Wanna go tractor tipping?" We had seen the movie "Cars" this summer and loved it. As I passed another one, I decided to tilt my cell phone and sent this image to her with the subject line, "Tipped it!" She wrote back, "Don't get caught!" (you have to know how the movie handles tractor tipping to understand the reference).

At the same site, I saw two road smoothers (I call them "steam rollers" but they don't actually operate on steam) tilted at 45 degee angles as the drivers smoothed the side of the newly laid asphalt. I took a picture of the second one but Blogger is not cooperating. I can't seem to upload the picture.

I've driven through 4 or 5 rain storms. The scariest one was in eastern Utah, where as I drove across the flatlands sheet lightning so powerful it looked like huge explosions lit up the night sky like daylight. Via the half-light of the lightning I watched a rain storm in the distance pummel the open land. I took a picture of it but the picture was so faint I decided it would need a lot of work.

Although I used the RandMcNally Web site to plot my course, I took a wrong turn in Colorado and found myself driving through a national park that consisted entirely of mountains. Large mountains. High, large, rocky, you can barely breathe mountains.

Who in their right mind would want to put a national highway across the peaks of high mountains? A highway that is so hard to see at night that people just pulled off the road to stop and wait for daylight. I wondered who was crazier: me for continuing on after it became impossible to see anything (it was also raining) or the people who parked their SUVs about 100 feet below the snow line.

I did take some pictures of the snow up close. But I didn't stay around to see how cold it would get. I eventually found myself wandering into the little town of Ouray, Colorado. I had actually stopped at Silverton but their lone gas station was closed and I wasn't sure I wanted to ask for a room in a house that had a sign on it that read, "Hotel". This town looks like a classic "western" town from the movies, only the main street is paved with asphalt and they have electricity.

So, having sufficient gas to make it to Montrose (by my calculations) before I'd have to shut down for the night, I decided to try my luck on the dark roads and set out from Silverton to Ouray. Ouray looks (at night) like a sort of ski resort. I'm not entirely sure of what it is, except that it is larger than Silverton and has more than one street.

Ouray at least has a gas station where you can fill up if you have a credit card after dark. As I drove down into Ouray's valley and hit the outskirts of town, a 12-point buck came running up a side street, crossed main street in front of me, and ran up another side street. Unlike many a doe I've nearly hit through the years, this buck didn't stop to stare at my headlights. Either he was the official welcoming committee having had a few too many dark lagers, or else he's done the slip-through-Ouray-at-night thing before.

And, no, I didn't think to snap a picture. I was too busy saying to myself, "Wow! There's a 12-point buck walking across Main Street in Ouray, Colorado...."

I drove up to Grand Junction, thinking I would stop there for the night. But, noooh! That wasn't about to happen. Grand Junction is a sizable city. But every hotel and motel was booked up full. I didn't think to ask what she meant when the night manager for one hotel said, "I don't think you'll find anything before you get to Salt Lake (City)."

When I hit Green River, Utah, an elderly gentleman coming out of yet another full hotel explained it to me. "Every Mormon from Salt Lake City is heading to Moab," he said. "You won't find any rooms anywhere." And here I thought Moab was the name of a Biblical country descended from one of Lot's incestuous daughters.

Well, I didn't ask why the Mormons were migrating to Moab (or maybe it's an annual pilgrimage -- I intend no offense), but he apparently saw my weary, frustrated expression and suggested I try the other end of town. "I'm no longer a trucker," he said, "but time was when there was only one motel in this town and it wasn't one of these national chains. Then there were a lot of little ones. Go up past the truck stop and try your luck."

Then he got into his U-Haul rental truck and drove off. I don't know who he was, but he seemed to be quite familiar with Mormons, truck stops, and motels. So I headed to the other end of town.

Unfortunately, a couple hundred Mormons had beat me to those little motels, so I got back on the Interstate and drove 3 miles up the road to my next scheduled turn-off. After driving another hour or so, I found a hotel in Price, Utah that had some executive suites available. I was tired, it was late, so I took one.

There is so much more I could say, but I'm still tired. And the pictures are amazing, even for a cell phone. I'll have to create a Web site on Xenite.Org some day. Assuming I can get the pictures off my cell phone. It's becoming sluggish. I don't know if that's from all the pictures or from me constantly recharging it because I keep using up the power.

Anyway, Seattle isn't far. And then come Monday I'll start a new adventure.

'Till then, gentle readers, take care.

Afternoon delights and sweet showers of sorrow

2006-09-29T01:06:00.000-05:00

There are a thousand things I need to do but I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening (Thursday) working on a new Web site for Xenite.Org. It's a feature article titled Seattle Afternoon: How not to find your way home in Seattle.... I wrote it for my (mostly ex-) girlfriend, who appreciated all the pictures I sent to her on my cell phone, but she really didn't get to see Seattle through my eyes.

I wanted to leave her with a memory that we could both share. And, to be honest, we've got lots of memories. We spent $20 on an Image Shots session. The pictures came out pretty well, except for one where I have a goofy expression on my face because I was talking to the photographer (in fact, we were joking about it in the car and I kept emulating the voice of Disney's Goofy). That will, of course, be her favorite picture in the bunch, but I made sure we got a different pose for the larger pictures.

The past few weeks could have been a really difficult time for me, but I've been unbelievably happy. And when I walked around Seattle Monday afternoon, I did my best to show her what my new home would look like. I don't know where in Seattle I'll live, but my home is really wherever I am, wherever I go. She was able to share my first experience in Seattle thanks to the magic of cell phone technology.

One could say we'll be bound together by that technology, but she wants us to let each other go and move on. It's for the best.

So, Seattle Afternoon is my parting gift. It's a memory that will always be there for her, as long as Xenite.Org is there.

This whole week has been hectic and insane. The last thing I should have been doing was creating a new Web site on Xenite.Org, but it was important.

And I also went down to the dance studio to help Gloria Jones with two more Salsa clases before saying good-bye. We've been teacher and student for so long, I'm not sure if I said a proper good-bye. I left Houston once before, but it was under entirely different circumstances. And I came back for a variety of reasons.

While I hope to come back for occasional visits, I don't expect to return to Houston or Texas to live any time in the near future. I've made many friends here, had many great times and adventures, learned many things. How do you say good-bye to a city that has shaped a corner of your life? I just don't think I can do that.

I'll have to come back eventually.

There were other things I wanted to say, but it's getting late and I should get some sleep. I still have to pack books and things and move them out of my apartment. And I have two evenings of saying "good-bye" to friends and loved ones.

This will probably be my last blog post for at least 10 days, maybe 2 weeks. I have seen other people say, "I won't be blogging for a while now" and they disappear for months on end. I'm not ready to let the blog go without comment that long. I still have things to say. In fact, I will have many things to say about my new home.

I'm looking forward to what lies ahead. But I'll always remember what I leave behind. J.R.R. Tolkien said it best, when he wrote these words for Gandalf at the end of The Lord of the Rings: "Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."

Rain can be a beautiful thing, when beheld by loving eyes. I will miss you, Houston.

And the interview resulted in...

2006-09-26T20:39:00.000-05:00

A job offer. Yes, I've accepted a position with a reputable firm engaged in Internet Marketing and Promotion.

I'll be leaving Houston and all my friends here and moving cross-country. I have so much to do this week, that I don't know how much I'll be able to blog.

Of all things, Maggie called me yesterday and asked if I could join her for dancing tonight. How could I say "No"?

When I leave Houston, I'll stop and visit some relatives in New Mexico, and then I'll head for the great Northwest. While I'm traveling, I doubt I'll have much if any opportunity to post here.

But once I get settled in Seattle, I'll get back online ASAP.

Thanks to everyone for your positive words, and for just being here for me.

I had a blast in Seattle and will try to post some pictures before I leave Houston.

The last Cha Cha

2006-09-24T12:31:00.000-05:00

There are three reasons why you may not see a blog post from me at any given time:

I don't have anything to say

I don't have access to the Internet

I'm too busy to sit down and share my thoughts with my reading public

On a rare day, all three reasons may fall together. Over the next couple of days, I'll be traveling and won't have access to the Internet. The travel is related to my current unemployed situation, so I certainly hope to come back with some good news. And much though I appreciate all the encouragement I have received from people for my stepped-up search engine consulting, I just wasn't prepared to go full-time.

I'll keep doing whatever I have to do to bring in an income, but I'd rather have a job for now than be an entrepreneur. I suppose that is a good reason for preparing oneself for the worst of circumstances. Not that being without a job is the worst of circumstances for me. But I'm usually ready for the transition (or think I am) when it comes. This time around, it was so unexpected I was just glad to have a part-time consultancy already going.

But as I was doing a little research on what may become my new home earlier today, it occurred to me that I often move right before or during the holiday season. Three of the last four months I've moved were October, November, and December. The December move was not of my choosing. The man who owned the complex where I lived sold the property and gave all the residents 6 weeks to vacate (state law requires only a 30-day notice, so he was actually being generous). By the time the announcemnt came, maybe half the residents (who suspected something was up) had already moved. Out of stubborness, and because I liked where I was living, I waited until the last day to move out. I think I was the last resident to leave. A few days later, the buildings were gone, bull-dozed.

What is most sad about that event is that the people who worked at that community had to stay and watch everyone go. I don't know if they had jobs lined up or not. They certainly had a fair amount of warning, but the Houston rental market has been devastated by the housing boom. Even this year, in the wake of Katrina and Rita, where thousands of families have moved in to fill some vacancies, and with the housing boom now officially over in most parts of the country, I see rental communities being bulldozed. New construction is not focused on rental housing.

Whole neighborhoods are vanishing in the space of a few days. New neighborhoods continue to rise on the outskirts of the city. The highways in Houston are becoming more jam-packed than ever before as people move farther and farther out, extending their commutes. Houston's ongoing highway projects, where they build a little extension here and there to buy time for building larger extensions and widenings, cannot really keep up. However, for the first time since I moved to Houston in 2001, sometime this summer I was finally able to drive around the northwest corner of I-610 without having to stop and wait for traffic to decongest.

There are some sections of road that have been dug up and rebuilt at least 3 times since I came to Houston in June 2001, right after Tropical Storm Alison flooded the city. I'll never understand why Houston has to rebuild the same section of road over and over again. This year I watched them rebuild the crossunder intersection of Richmond and I-610 4 times in the space of 3 months. The safety signs shifted from left to right, lane to lane, twice as they dug up road and put new road back down.

Houston never changes, but it is ever-changing. And as the fourth largest city in the United States its most common complainnt is that it is often ignored by multi-city programming in favor of Dallas-Fort Worth. Conventions, special movie extravaganzas, special media tours all bypass Houston like it was some backwater not worth spending money on. The nation only sat up and took notice of us when hurricanes disrupted the flow of goods and gasoline to the rest of the country.

I say "us" after having lived here only a few years -- and that with a brief interlude where I returned to Florida. Now I am contemplating a move cross-country to a state I have only visited once, to a lattitude I have often sworn I would never live at again, to a region where I hardly know anyone.

And if I make the move, I'll be going by myself. That girlfriend I have so happily hinted and finally blogged just a little about will be staying in Texas. She is Miss Cute Reluctant in so many ways, not because she won't go with me (we haven't seriously considered the idea). But because of things I suppose are too private to share. Life is like that. You find someone you want to be with and the floodwaters of change sweep you apart.

If I don't get this job (she is convinced I will), then I'll most likely head back to Florida and see what I can do with the Internet on my own. People want me to write more but there are bills to pay. Writing takes time, and there is no guarantee the next book will sell well.

I'll miss the dancing, little though I have danced since my surgery. I've only just started going back to the advanced Salsa classes. And my stamina has been so low that yesterday was the first day I was able to get all the way through a class without collapsing or nearly collapsing.

I'll miss the friends I have made in Houston. I'll miss the dinner parties, the group outings, the quiet afternoons and evenings spent with good friends. I'll miss dropping in on Maggie and telling her my woes and joys. She is a new grandma now, anyway, and she's excited about having a baby in the family to help take care of. The last time we danced a Cha Cha (a few weeks ago), as we were walking off the floor, she said, "Michael, that was really good! I think that was the best Cha Cha we ever danced."

It was good. And whatever happens, wherever I go, I'm glad the last Cha Cha was the best.

That's the way it should end, if it must end at all.

And now for the news...

2006-09-21T17:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been very busy lately and that is why I'm not posting on the blog as regularly as I used to. It takes time to sit and think about what I'm going to say, even though I do seem like I ramble all over the place. And I just haven't had time to think much.

One of my biggest distractions this week is that I got into a huge debate about search engine optimization fundamentals -- more specifically, how the Google algorithm works -- over at SEO Refugee's Forums. As I understand it, SEO Refugee was started up by some former members of the SEOChat forum, which sort of exploded in many different directions when the admins at SEOChat instituted some changes.

Now, I've been familiar with some of the people at SEORefugee for some time and when I was invited to follow up to a discussion there earlier this year I forgot to bookmark the site. A couple months later, I decided to check back in and couldn't find the URL. There are many SEO forums on the Web, and it took a random reference to it somewhere to prompt me to return there.

So now I know where the forum is and I've been visiting daily, but I found myself drawn into a huge back-and-forth discussion that began with comments on Matt Cutts' explanation of how you can use content for SEO (that is, use content to achieve good rankings in search engine results). People became upset with Matt because he was poking one of their favorite myths in the eye, and his blog entry hit the top ten for "seo" for a while (in part, perhaps, because a lot of people linked to it).

Well, the content-versus-linking debate won't die down any time soon. But, to be blunt, I judge the depth of SEOs by how much they acknowledge the importance of content with Google. The less they acknowledge that importance, the more they have to learn about the way Google really works. What misleads so many SEOs is that Google's algorithm is fluid -- you can overwhelm it in many ways, but because it's easier to be caught by ramming a page full of spam keywords than by ramming a thousand inbound links full of spam keywords, most SEOs prefer to achieve their rankings through links.

And a lot of them complain about how difficult it is to get good rankings. Duh! That's because you're doing it the slow, hard way, folks. It works, but as Google filters out more and more links, it will take even more time and effort than before.

In other news, I've been talking to companies about where I'll be working next. No job offers yet but I haven't given up.

I've been using much of my time to clean up the mess Xenite.Org had become. Although many people may not agree with my basic page layout choices, they are pretty effective: simple, usually clean, and easy-to-read for most people (although I am concerned about how screen readers interpret all my bold fonts). My goal is to get as many pages fixed as possible so that Dixie and I can devise a plan for converting the content to a CMS system. The less junk I have on the pages, the more uniform I can make them, I think the easier it will be to grab the content and put it into a CMS.

Maybe. We'll see.

I've also been restoring old content that was lost in server crashes (in some cases, several years ago). For example, I have now restored The History of Xena: Warrior Princess, A Norton Companion: Glossary for the Witch World, and my old Dragon*Con reports (among other content). It's been a long tedious process, and most of my work has been under the hood, so to speak, updating HTML formats, restoring or repairing broken links, etc.

And I've created some new content sites, too. For example, I have an experimental Celebrity News site, but I'm not happy with it. It's too cumbersome and needs to be reworked. Also, I'm dinking around with Google Site search again, and they have now made it possible for us to return search results on our own search page. So as I add more Google search boxes to Xenite, they'll resolve to that page. But the search tool is not limited to my domains, and only allows me to specific three domains, and only searches on domain (or the entire Web) at one time. I don't like that. I'd prefer a "network search" interface that ties all the Xenite domains together.

And today I wrote an essay on mesothelioma. The short version is that people who have worked around asbestos develop this cancer about 20-40 years after exposure, but so far only 2-3000 cases are diagnosed per year. I was curious about why so many law firms mention it on their Web sites. I guess there's just a lot of money to be made from mesothelioma lawsuits. And people wonder why insurance costs so much money....

Have been dancing some but I'm not really ready to say much about the dancing. To be honest, the classes have either been even enough that Gloria doesn't need me in the rotation, or else I've spent most of my time working with people who need a little extra help. I don't feel it's right to write up current beginning students, since I often go for the humorous angle. Since I'm no longer allowed to flirt with girls (well, not seriously flirt), I've been paying less attention to who may want to flirt, so that angle is done for now, too.

Sorry.

Miss Cute Reluctant and I talk every day now (guess who the new girlfriend is). We're still figuring out where we want to go and where we'll be, but I'm having a blast with her.

And I have not forgotten the IMPs, but when I became unemployed my priorities changed. I wanted to really clean up Xenite.Org before adding the IMP feature section. I still have a ways to go, but I'll be back in touch with the IMPs soon. I just have a lot of stuff left to work on.

Oh, and I have also been doing some consulting and SEO for other people. That takes up time, too. But keep those inquiries coming. I'm having fun, and as long as I enjoy doing this, I'll have a passion for it that should keep things interesting.

Sootle Web Directory Interview

2006-09-20T13:06:00.000-05:00

The Sootle Web Directory has been publishing a series of interviews with SEOs, asking them each six questions about SEO.

I was pleased to be invited to participate in the series and mine is SEO Interview Part Five.

Other interviewees so far have beedn Bill Slawski, Michael Grey, Dave Davies, and Joe Balestrino. If you're not familiar with the search engine optimization industry, these are some of the most well-known names in the field. It's an honor to be included in the group, and I look forward to reading interviews with more SEOs.

Thanks to Darren and Sootle Web Directory for a great series of articles. Darren is showing people how you can spice up any resource site with supplemental content. That is really what good SEO does.

Is this your child?

2006-09-19T20:10:00.000-05:00

There is a proud parent out there somewhere who took this digital image and passed it on to a friend, who passed it on to a friend, who passed it on....

My sister-in-law and my girlfriend both sent me this picture. I can only imagine how many millions of people have viewed it by now. This poor baby will grow up in the shadow of having been the child who kissed/licked a pig snout.

Mothers are so cruel to their children. They save pictures of you playing in your underwear, wearing soup bowls, poking your silly, goofy eyes through a pair of scissors, and doing a million other things that kids think are funny but grow up to regret when Mom brings out the photo album to show your new girlfriend how "cute" you were when you were little.

What did mothers do before cameras were invented? How did they humliate their children throughout life? Did they save every blanket and diaper, every sleeping gown, every ribbon, and say, "This is from when Litte Johnny ate too much pumpkin pie for his third Halloween"?

Maybe that explains why there are so many wars. Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden probably did not bring their girlfriends home to Mom. They weren't humiliated, given the "he's so cute" treatment, and shown what it means to be human. Maybe they resented not being loved by their mothers so much they had to just go out and conquer as much of the world as possible (of course, Bin Laden is a pretty sad world-conquerer -- at least Sadam Hussein got to terrorize an entire nation for 20+ years before slinking off to his underground hideaway).

Well, psychologists may conclude thaht this picture is harmless, but I think it may be the difference between a young child growing up curious and the next mad dictator growing up furious.

Instead of villainizing the United States and playing cozy with the world's barbarians and mad dictators, maybe Hugo Chavez should call home and say, "Mom, I've got a new girl I want you to meet. Do you still have the family photo album?"

Weekly recap and special offer for small businesses needing SEO

2006-09-17T22:05:00.000-05:00

It's been a fun, crazy week. I've fixed and restored many Web pages on Xenite.Org that I had long despaired of finding time to fix. I've worked long hours on some search engine optimization projects. I've attended some huge dance classes. And I've had fun with friends and a special someone.

I'm going to make it an official announcement now: I have a new girlfriend. She is fantastic. She's fun to be with and laughs at my jokes. Some of the time. Anyway, I'm taken, not looking, happy, and lucky to have met someone when I wasn't looking or expecting to meet anyone. Isn't that the way "they" say it always happens? But enough about me.

Ed Schipul asked me to rework my blog report about the NetSquared Houston meeting and post it at the NetSquared Web site. So if you don't mind a sense of Deja Vu, check out Tuesday at the Pub With Netsquared Houston.

I was also asked to do an interview for an SEO news resource. I waited a couple days longer than I should have to send in my informaton, but I'm hoping the interview will still be published. I wasn't trying to be fashionably late. I just ran out of time earlier in the week to do everything.

Mine is not the most popular voice in the search engine optimization community. I feel like the babysitter who went off to change the baby's diaper, saying, "Okay kids, be good until I finish this." Well, changing that diaper took a year or two and when I came back the kids had trashed the house. Sense and sensibility have been replaced by maniacal theories and outright gibberish. So, yes, I've been ruffling feathers since starting to speak out again on various SEO forums early last year. A lot of really stupid ideas have been adopted and passed around as good, reasonable search optimization practices.

Let me put this as delicately as possible: If you approach an SEO specialist who says your new content-rich Web site won't hit the top ten search results in less than a year, you need to find another SEO specialist. That's just irresponsible laziness. Low-content sites, bad content sites, boring sites -- yeah, they'll need a long, long time to rank. But the average business Web site that says, "This is our company, this is what we do, this is where we came from, this is who we are, this is how to contact us" -- that kind of Web site doesn't need to wait six months, twelve years, or a two years.

I don't care if you're in insurance, real estate, and travel. If you're not just creating another affiliate link spam site, but are honestly creating a Web site about a brick-and-mortar business, you can rank well for various competitive queries in 2-6 months. Any idiot SEO guru can claim it will take longer based on experience. I claim it takes no longer than 2-6 months based on experience.

So, enough about SEOs.

We went dancing Saturday night. Wait...I've been dancing all week. I can't remember as far back as Monday, except that I think I just registered a lot of student. Dance-Passion is now offering Hip Hop, Country Western, Ballroom Dancing, and Salsa dance classes. I registered 50 people for one class and Gloria had to bring in 8 guys from another class to help balance out the mix. There are so many women who want to learn how to dance, guys need to stop wondering what they will do with their lives and get down to a dance studio and take six months' worth of classes.

It doesn't matter what dance style you choose (well, I strongly recommend a partner dance, rather than something freestyle). What matters is that you become good enough to lead a beginning dancer so that the women think you're a good dancer. They'll ask you to dance if they know you are better than they are. Trust me. I've been there. It happens. And it happens to other guys, too.

I put together an SEO resume. I don't really do the resume thing. I've more often gotten jobs because people knew what I could do. When I worked for Basis International, Ltd. writing technical papers, articles for their magazine, offering advice and second-tier support, and doing technical presentations on road shows, on-site consulting, and at conferences, I usually got 1-2 job offers a week. Unfortunately, many of Basis' customers have moved on to other programming languages. I no longer look for Business Basic jobs because the industry is, in my opinion, dying. Companies are tired of losing vendors. And the great innovators of Business Basic have pretty much retired. A new generation of innovators are focusing on other languages.

So I put together an SEO resume. I had to wonder how good it would look, since most of of what I do is confidential or (to be bluntly honest) pro bono. Yes, I do free search engine optimization analysis. If someone contacts me and says, "Michael, why do you think my Web site isn't ranking?", I'm more likely than not to share an opinion.

Of course, most of my pro bono opinions are not written up in 50-page reports. But I don't keep track of the people who write back to say, "Michael, thanks to your advice, my Web site rankings have improved!"

I should have, but I've always done the consulting on the side to augment my income and just enjoy helping people. When I worked for Basis I didn't have to track billable hours or figure out where the next project would come from (although if they had listened to me and paid more attention to the customers they were losing, maybe I would have been more inclined to stay around).

I don't know what the future will bring. I've been unhappy in the insurance field. Every time I did research on a potential prospect I would look at their Web site and think, "Ew. I could improve that with my eyes closed." I've been wondering if I shouldn't start calling local businesses and saying, "Hey, I had to find your Web site for a previous job and you just really don't know how to be found. Let me help you for $200.00".

A $200.00 special on Basic Business site SEO. If I could interest enough companies, I could hold a half-day seminar and show them how to instantly improve their performance. Maybe if 100 people show up I'll have something left out of the $20,000.00 to pay my bills.

Small business Web sites are typically so badly designed from an SEO point of view that I could spend a year earning just $200 a day and not hit the same industry (much less the same region) more than once.

But telemarketing SEOs have pretty much made it difficult for small business operators to trust the next phone calls. I've read many a horror story on SEO forums about people who received phone calls where they've been promised the moon.

Look, for $200.00 I'm not going to make your site the most famous in the world, but if you sell lug nuts to people in Tacoma, WA and want to be found on the Internet, I can tell you how to do that for $200. Throw in another $200 and I'll even get you some trusted links on related content pages (but don't mistake that for an offer to buy or sell links -- I don't do that).

Offer ends September 30. Let me know if you're interested in SEO Services. To get the $200 rate, you have to mention this blog.

Dear AT&T: Please tell me your phone number...

2006-09-14T12:28:00.000-05:00

This goes out to all the businesses who send out emails telling people to contact them through their Web site. If you have a telephone number that your customers may use to reach you, include it in your emails. That's not a request. It's a demand from someone who, as one former employer told me (and anyone who asked him for a reference), "has no tolerance for idiots and fools".

You see, a while back I was walking down the yellow brick road ....

Wait, wrong movie.

Okay, I'm an AT&T customer. I signed up with SBC before they rejoined the AT&T family of phone companies (I feel like I've come full circle, but AT&T isn't as consumer friendly as it was before the breakup, in my opinion).

I don't actually use my land line for anything but DSL access. On a good month, I remember to pay the bill. Occasionally I've paid the bill late because I get busy and forget. Paying bills online is easy and convenient and I love the concept, but now that many of my vendors make it possible for me to stop killing trees by going with email-notices only, I do the green thing and ask to have my paper bills stopped wherever possible.

And I turn off the ringers on my house telephones because I only use my land line for DSL access (besides which, I'm embarrassed about losing the Nielsen TV diary before I could mail it back). I'm so afraid that Nielsen is going to call, asking for their dollar back. After all, I didn't really earn it. And I feel personally responsible for the failure of Stargate-SG1 because it was to be one of the only three shows I would have put in the diary. But I digress....

So, the ringers are turned off. If there are any bill-collectors trying to reach me, my voicemail box may be full (I'm not sure if I have voicemail for the land line -- I went with the cheapest option possible). If AT&T had tried to call me to ask where their payment was, I never got the call.

So I was sitting here a while ago, thinking, "I need to do some research for this contract I have to finish up this week" and decided to go back to Google for a moment (not that I don't use other search engines, but this contract requires Google research). At the same time, I was struggling to heat up a frozen meat loaf a very wonderful, gracious friend made for me so I could have a protein-laden lunch. I love meat loaf. I grew up on it. It's the food that is nearest and dearest to my heart. After white cheese dip....And Three Musketeers Bars. But I digress....

The meat loaf was fighting me, steadfastly remaining frozen. I know you're not supposed to turn the oven way up high when you reheat a frozen meal, but I wasn't sure how low I could go without growing old and dying of starvation. So, as I worried about the meat loaf, I tried to log onto Google.

Nothing happened.

"Hm," I thought. "Maybe I can get by with a little search on Yahoo! after all."

Nothing happened.

With a sudden, sinking feeling I jumped up and rushed over to a land line (well, actually, I let the cool little SBC Self Help Tool start up and tell me to check for a dial tone). No dial tone. Maybe the wire was loose. Nope. Phones were properly hung up, too. Ohmygodiforgottopaythephonebill!

I looked in my email but there were no desperate pleas for cash to save the poor investors in one of America's largest companies. And that is where things went sour.

I don't know my own phone number. I never use it. I never give it out. How do you call up customer service and ask for help with your phone line if you don't know your phone number? So I frantically rooted through all the paper bills that have been piling up (I tend to not open my mail since I pay most bills online). I couldn't find a phone bill. Oh, yes. AT&T is green. They love trees (or maybe they just want to save the trees for more telephone poles -- I don't know). I don't get paper phone bills any more.

But maybe they can look me up by social security number or something. I thought, "Hm. That might work." So I opened up one of my emails to look for their customer service phone number.

Only they don't have the intelligence to include their phone number in their email. They tell you to go to their Web site.

"Hey, dudes at AT&T. I have no phone service, so my DSL is out! How am I supposed to go to your Web site?"

So I ran around the place looking for a phone bill. Couldn't find one. Eventually it dawned upon me that I have stacked my laundry detergent upon those door-stops the phone companies send to me every few months: telephone books (thank God for Switchboard and Smart Pages because I wouldn't know how to use a phone book if my DSL service depended on it).

After some frenzied fumbling and not-quite-so-righteous commentary on how stupid it is not to put your customer service numbers on the front cover of the directory (wait, did I look there?), I found the phone number on page 3 or something. Breathing heavy sighs of relief I dialed the number and got the automated login system.

"Just enter your telephone number...."

But I don't know my telephone number. So I spent 3 minutes (while my meat loaf finally started to juice up in the oven -- mmmm) asking the automated system to give me access to a real live person. Finally, it decided without my help that maybe I needed to speak to a real live person. So while I waited, I found an early snail mail from SBC from right after I started my service. Never opened it up. Yes, it had my phone number.

Naturally, as I celebrated the fact that I now know my phone number, the customer service rep I no longer needed came on the line. "Thank you for calling AT&T. May I have your phone number, please, and how may I help you?"

So I gave her my phone number and explained that I forgot to pay my phone bill.

"I'm seeing that you're paid up, Mr. Martinez."

"I am?"

"Yes, sir. You last paid your bill on XXXX and you're current with us."

"But my phone service was disconnected..." I whimpered.

"Are you sure?"

So I did the amazingly natural thing and picked up the handset to prove it to her. And there was that old familiar dial tone (BTW -- I was using my cell phone to make this call, in case that isn't apparent).

Boydidifeelstupid. Thanking the lady for her time and wishing her a happy life, I got off the line after a little more nervous chit chat. I forgot to pass on one request, though: please tell the bosses to include your telephone number in your emails.

Ah, well. At least now I can go online again. And while some people may say I could just drive down to an Internet cafe to sign on to their site and pay my bill, the only former such business in my area that I know of now has a sign that says something about erotic stuff. I could get into serious trouble if I walk into that place.

At least the meat loaf tastes good. Mmmm....

Lou Dobbs: Armchair-commander-in-chief orders generals to deliver

2006-09-13T20:55:00.000-05:00

Lou Dobbs must be looking for link love, so here it is, Lou.

Once again Mr. Dobbs has gone off into LalaLand, informing the American people that President Bush is under some moral obligation to explain exactly how we're going to end the conflict in Iraq. Everyone set your watches now, because if Mr. Bush doesn't deliver, Armchair-commander-in-chief Dobbs undoubtedly has the plan that the generals have all been waiting for.

Clearly, the oft-stated goal of building up the Iraqi security forces to a point where they can sustain themselves before we pull out has made no impression on the indelible Mr. Dobbs. How does one make a game plan more clear than that? "We'll leave when the Iraqi security forces can fight the war without us," is a pretty definitive plan.

We know that new Iraqi battalions are entering the fight every month.

We know that Iraqi security forces are taking control of more and more provinces.

We know that we are consolidating our forces in the most unstable areas of Iraq because they are no longer needed in other regions.

And though most people don't say it, quite a few of us expect a large part of the Iraqi insurgency to die down as soon we start seriously dropping troop levels. The idiot insurgents will take to the streets, dance and proclaim a victory against the Americans, and every literate person on Earth will know they are bald-faced liars who just want to look good on Arabic television for the illiterate masses.

But that isn't good enough for Mr. Dobbs. He wants an accountability we never demanded of Franklin Roosevelt and Ike Eisenhauer. Presidents are supposed to fight wars on crisp timetables, with clearly predictable body counts, and we have to have a specific day on which we can declare victory.

It didn't take the news media long to rework President Bush's "end of major hostilities but not end of war" speech into a declaration of peace and victory. But after a couple of years of misconstruing that speech, Mr. Dobbs and his professional peers are now intent upon rewriting the history of "We don't know when we'll be able to pull our troops out of Iraq, but we intend to leave just as soon as the Iraqis can defend themselves".

Truth be told, if the Iraqi insurgents had sense enough to shut up and stop killing other Iraqis, we probably couldn't leave any sooner because it still takes time to train and equip soldiers and police battalions. But they're not doing anything to make us leave faster when they go out slaughtering every Iraqi man, woman, and child they can shoot.

We Americans only have to care about the Iraqi situation because we morally indebted ourselves to the Iraqi people. Bad as it was, evil as it was, we toppled and disassembled the former Iraqi government and we have to stay in Iraq until the current Iraqi government is strong enough to man the streets.

The real question Mr. Dobbs and his fellow armchair warriors should be asking is, what are we going to do when Al-Qaeda In Iraq is left to face only Iraqi soldiers and police? How long does anyone really expect the foreign terrorists who have flocked to Iraq to hang around there? They have to realize that they'll start losing allies as soon as the American troops leave. And they aren't very popular now.

Those terrorists are going to find a new land to terrorize. What's the gameplan for that next step in the war, Mr. Dobbs?

Or are you not prepared to give us a clearly defined time table with delivery dates and accurate body counts?

Oh, I feel guilty...

2006-09-13T10:29:00.000-05:00

I should point out that all my off-site links open in new browser windows. I do this because browsers can hang if you try to pull up unavailable pages. If a server is down, your browser becomes unresponsive for up to 1 minute. I hate that.

Anyway, I attended the monthly meeting of Houston NetSquared last night. The event is organized/hosted by Ed Schipul of Schipul Web Marketing (he's sort of a competitor, I suppose, but he's a really nice guy). The purpose of Net Squared is to "re-engineer the Web for social change".

What does that mean? Does it mean to make the Web a better place for all? Not really. It's about putting the influencing powers of Web mongers like me to work for the greater good -- online, offline, wherever.

Last month I wrote When The Soldiers Come Home here on this blog after attending my first Houston NetSequared dinner. I'm now using the Xenite.Org network to help increase awareness of and promote the Wounded Warriors Web site, a non-profit organization that helps to improve the lives of soldiers who have lost limbs or otherwise become disabled because of their service to our country.

That's an example of how a NetSquared meeting can produce some positive results. You can move people to take action.

This month's guest speaker was Sharron Rush, the Executive Director of Knowbility, a Houston-based Accessibility Consulting and Training firm. Sharron's mission is to help make the Web more accessible to the approximately 250 million people around the world who must rely upon screen readers and other accessibility tools to browse the Internet. Are all 250 million of those people online? I don't know. I doubt it. But Sharron made the point that even from a business point of view, that's a huge segment to be ignoring.

Ed played Devil's Advocate at the meeting to help underscore some of the issues that the accessibility movement struggles with. For example, the least expensive (but moderately reliable) program people have available costs about $1300. You and I can download a Web browser for free. If you cannot see, you have to pay $1300 for a decent Web browser, or visit your local library or community center and hope they have the software installed. Many schools and large corporations do make the software available to their students and employees, but Ed really touched home with his point. There is a severe economic barrier to making the Web accessible.

But let's say that good browsing software is made available to everyone who needs it for free. Does that mean that people who rely on specialized browsers have equal access to the Web as those of us who can see? Absolutely not. And that is where I feel guilty.

Most Web sites do not comply with accessibility standards. In designing many of my own Web sites, I have never given any thought to accessibility. I've had no training in accessibility design. The good news for me is that most Web pages that are optimized for search engine positioning tend to be accessible. On-page optimization -- when done properly -- means that if you were to strip out all of your HTML code and leave all your indexable text in place, you'd have a fairly readable block of text.

Many Web pages rely upon non-indexable text to convey their messages: they embed text in images, in Flash, in Javascript, in Java, and fail to include descriptive text in alt= attributes for images. Pages that use tables for positioning (Web page layout) often break up text and scatter it across multiple elements. When you linearize these tables, strip out the HTML code, they look pretty bad.

My tables linearize very well. I use as little table code as possible for my layout. I don't use DIVS and CSS because it takes too long to produce a layout that looks nice. I code by hand so that my HTML code is as lean as possible (well, as lean as I think it should be -- lately I have been stripping superfluous HTML code from older pages to make them even more lean).

The less HTML code you use on a page (and that includes all CSS code), the less time it takes to render the page. Page rendering is usually responsible for most of the delay you experience when you bring up a Web page. Heavy use of tables, images, and CSS really slows down rendering time. New browser software and faster computers compensate for rendering slowdown, but a lot of people still leave Web pages that don't show something within the first 5-10 seconds.

So my pages in general probably rate somewhere in the middle of the scale of accessibility. If you score pages from 1 to 100, with 100 being the best, I'd probably average between 40 and 60 for many pages. Some of my pages are completely accessible even though they use table layouts. But some of my pages would just annoyingly scream at you. They are experimental pages and let's just say that I have occasionally used more H1 tags than are really necessary. When you reverse engineer search engine algorithms, you have to make some bizarre pages just to see what happens.

But I also make liberal use of the bold HTML tag in my pages. I do that to make the text more readable. I hate having to squint at a screen when I read online text, and most Web sites use truly awful faint fonts (mostly light greys in this Web 2.0 world) that just make me want to strangle the 20-something Web designers who rely on them. Maybe my choice of font could be improved, but I don't have control over what fonts your computer supports.

So my pages probably force people to turn down the volume on their screen readers. I'm sorry about that. I wish I had the means to tell your reader to tone it down for you, but I don't know of any way to do that. Accessibility is not just an issue for people who cannot see. It's also an issue for people like me who need to be able to see the friggin' letters.

Web 2.0 is not very accessible, but it can be. Many Web 2.0 designers take no thought for accessibility issues at all. What's ironic is that there are indeed Web designers who cannot see. There are artists who cannot see. There are writers who cannot see. If there is a job that you can do from a desk, odds are pretty good there are blind people doing that job.

Well, I'm not going to be adding any special links or advertisements to the Xenite.Org network, but after last night I'll be thinking about accessibility more often. I'll also devote some time to studying the issues. As I continue to experiment with new page concepts, I'll strive to keep accessibility in mind. I do actually prefer simpler page layouts because they are generally easier to read and deinitely are easier to get ranked in search engines.

Ed mentioned a tool that I'll be trying out. It's called Fangs, and is a FireFox add-on. I don't like FireFox. I think it's an awful browser, but I use it on occasion. So, if you design Web pages and want to test how accessible they are (without spending any money), try Fangs for FireFox and see what your work looks like to a screen reader.

And that is why, if you have a NetSquared group in your city, you should join it and share in the experience of helping to use the Web for social change. We really can all work together to make some improvements in a lot of small places.

I have decided to offer a premium SEO service

2006-09-11T14:50:00.000-05:00

Today I added a page to my SEO site introducing SEO TurboBoost. The SEO TurboBoost program reflects what I can really do for most Web sites. Anyone can go out and build links. Anyone can slap together a Web page.

What I do better than most people is figure out why sites get stuck in the search results. And I devise methodologies for those sites to rank better. I've been doing exactly this with my own sites for years, but I've also been helping other people get their sites to start moving up the search results.

I've found that charging a minimal fee for this kind of service doesn't really help. The less money people invest in a turboboosting campaign, the less effort they put into it. I can certainly do all the work, but that is a time-consuming process and it's not what I enjoy doing.

On the other hand, turboboosting Web sites doesn't usually take a long time. I can usually achieve spectacular results (if I may say so myself)in 2-3 months. There are SEOs who ask for a year to achieve results.

The SEO TurboBoost program runs on top of an average SEO campaign. That is, you have to lay the groundwork by creating optimized content and getting about 100 non-spammy links. You need SEO TurboBoost if you cannot rank with 100 non-spammy links. You don't need it if you are ranking well with those 100 links.

This is the Secret Michael Sauce, if you will. What I'm offering is the very best SEO service that I know how to provide. I don't flood you with keyword reports and optimizing strategy worksheets. You should be past that point when you turn to SEO TurboBoost. You should already know where the traffic is. You just need to jump ahead of the crowd.

I don't talk about how I achieve these kinds of results in SEO forums or on blogs. That's why the service is a premium service. You get access to my deepest secrets and my newest innovative techniques (some of which may still be more experimental than others).

People who think they need to just find one more Web directory, one more article archive, one more reciprocal link and all their problems will be solved just don't get it. Sometimes, you really do have to bring in a big gun to blow a whole in the massed ranks opposing you.

That's what I'm good at.

My calendar is fulleth, this week...

2006-09-11T14:02:00.000-05:00

Tonight I'll be helping (I think) with some Ballroom Dance Classes for Gloria Jones, give or take.

Tomorrow evening I'll be attending NetSquared in Houston, hosted by Ed Schipul, who seems like a pretty neat guy.

Wednesday, I'm not sure.

Thursday, I would normally be going to the Inklings Roundtable of Houston at the Hobbit Cafe, but this month I committed to helping Gloria with her Thursday night Salsa dance classes.

Friday -- well, Friday I'll be checking out a Salsa group at Azteca's Margarita Bar and Grill in Houston. They may or may not have great music, but they definitely have some of the best White Cheese dip in Texas. Some people say it's even better than Berry Hill's white cheese dip. I like them both.

And then I have to do other things, I'm sure....

Damn the truth, full elections ahead!

2006-09-10T14:11:00.000-05:00

With apologies to Admiral Farragut, I have to say I don't have much love for either Damnocrats nor Ratpublicans. Never really could stand either political party. All of the members of Congress seem willing to sacrifice the needs of the U.S. people and allies for the advancement of their parties' political ends.

The best solution to all the lies that the Democrats are throwing around at the Bush Administration over the war in Iraq is to vote every last member of Congress out of office this fall in favor any independent candidates who are on the ballots. (NOTE: Regrettably we can only cleanse 1/3 of the Senate, but the sooner we get those lying partisan propagandists out of office, the better.)

I realize there are millions of Americans who are blindly and stupidly tied to both the Democratic and Republican parties. We can't do anything about those poor saps, but the rest of us can take action and vote independent this Fall. The government won't collapse just because we vote all the liars out of office.

Do it.

I'm sick of their political agendas. It's time the U.S. Congress work for the American people. All political parties should be outlawed. We'd be far better off without them and their endless, stupid, childish bickering.

Forty years of boldly going where no one has gone before...

2006-09-07T10:38:00.000-05:00

The original words in the opening credits, spoken by William Shatner, were:

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Of course, it took a while to get there.

Standard Opening Narration. Is that really Hollywood-speak for "voice-over used in the opening credits"? It sounds almost military.

And one of the oddest things about Star Trek is that it's a show about a futuristic military organization (Starfleet) that bears little resemblance to a military organization. They never had any overprecise jargon such as the U.S. Army's infamous manually operated high impact delivery system (what we civilian folk would call a hammer).

Instead, it was always, "Scottie. Four to beam up." Or, "Uhura, open a hailing frequency." Even Jean-Luc Picard (who violated the prime directive more often than Kirk and fired first more often than Kirk) seldom sounded like a military officer. "Number One, why is that asteroid circling our ship?"

Real military crews, at least in our modern professional western civilization forces, speak with a drilled precision that is as meaningful as it sounds meaningless. The elocution of army-speak is a science waiting to be explored by Hollywood and the television industry. I think it works well enough in movies like "Soldier". You almost hear the jargon in Stargate-SG1 (and I don't mean, "Colonel Mitchell, congratulations on getting the band back together").

Nonetheless, despite its lack of a true militarisic air, Star Trek shaped a generation's imagination. And in ways we never imagined. Today we're more likely to tell people to boldly go where no man has ever gone before when we're angry, or when we're trying to motivate underpaid overbullied corporate workers to be innovative and caring of their bosses' jobs and bonus schedules.

Modern hospitals now have vital sign monitoring stations that, if not quite as cool as those we saw in McCoy's sick bay, at least serve similar purposes. We're using robotic surgical instruments cased in housings placed over patients' bodies, just as McCoy's surgical unit was. And we're approaching a tricorder-like technology where doctors and their assistants can quickly scan our bodies for signs of deteriorating health. Blood sugar and body temperature can both now be checked in a matter of seconds with only the barest of invasive technology.

And that's what it was all about for many of us: the cool technology. The phasers, tricorders, sensors, gadgets, and the oh-so-cool computers and holodecks (which were introduced in the second series, Star Trek: The Next Generation -- which actually occurred several generations after Kirk's day).

But is that what it was about for the people who made the show? One could easily get the impression that it's all about money. But that's not wholly so. In the early days, it was also about passion.

Passion is what makes great things great and bad things evil. You put enough passion into a cookie, and the memory of that delicious savoricious moment will stay with you forever. You fill your soul with enough hatred and you become as memorable as Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden, two of the most evil men in human history. They will be forgotten, in time, but for now we remember them for their godless crimes and sins because they really, really enjoy(ed) being evil.

If Star Trek is to continue, Paramount needs to understand that it will make more money by not caring about money. It has to care about discovering the impact of technology and new ideas upon the human experience. Star Trek has to struggle with moral questions. It has to ask why we're in Iraq without mentioning Iraq, and it has to make the explanation sound as plausible as the rebuttal.

Star Trek has to resonate with the generation that grows up with it. The Viet Nam War is over. Kirk and Spock no longer have to agonize over whether to give weapons to one side or the other. And while we may be in danger of losing ourselves to global warming or other human-influenced traumas of the environment, we need to find new voices to ask whether playing with the DNA is an acceptable risk.

Star Trek thrives as it moves forward. I hear a new ST movie about young Kirk and Spock is in the works. Maybe I'll go see it. Maybe not. At this point, it sounds about as interesting as dustballs under the bed. Looking at the young Kirk and Spock is hardly a step forward. Maybe that is why Enterprise only lasted four seasons. Instead of looking forward, it looked back.

In my opinion, it's time to move on. We've spent 40 years in the desert. We don't need to go for 50. We can see the promised land. Have we not yet purged ourselves of past sins, so that we can all go down into the land of milk and honey?

Star Trek needs to boldly go where nothing (in the human experience) has gone before.

Dancing the night away...

2006-09-06T01:28:00.000-05:00

I decided to try going back into Gloria's advanced Salsa class for the first time since my surgery over the Memorial Day Weekend.

I like to died in there.

Last year a doctor told me your body loses its muscle tone after three days of inactivity. Imagine what it's like after three months of relative inactivity. I've got my work cut out for me.

Saw a lot of old friends in the class: Terri Alcala, Rosalia Vasquez, and several other folks. I actually didn't do badly for all that I nearly burned out (low blood sugar). I cut out about 10 minutes early because I didn't want people to see I was getting the shakes. Well, at least I know now what I can do at that level. I'm almost there but not quite.

Advanced Salsa dancing is strenuous for a number of reasons. A couple of doctors have told me that two hours of vigorous Latin dancing is equivalent to running a marathon. I believe them. You can dehydrate quickly and go through several bottles of water. You can also burn through your energy reserves quickly. It's not a good idea to eat a heavy meal before dancing, but a protein-rich meal is helpful. Does this sound like a tutorial for body-building? For any physical activity, you need to make sure your body can handle the demand on its system.

The move Gloria is teaching this month is pretty cool. The ladies are starting out with a fair nubmer of twists and turns, but they are going into a windmill maneuver I have never seen before. That is so, so cool to watch. I know they'll all want to dance it in the clubs in a couple of weeks. The timing is pretty critical. Sometimes you can draw out an advanced move by throwing in an extra basic until you get the timing down, but that isn't really feasible with this move. Timing is everything, and it takes me a while to get my timing back.

Gloria and I have discussed briefly whether I'll formally help out with the club nights again. I went to the Tropicana Nite Club Saturday because Gloria had sent out an invitation. Through a mixup (I think because of a large reservation they got) the Dance Passion table reservation was not properly booked (though I know that Lan talked to the club in advance). Anyway, we got the tables worked out and had 15-20 people show up. It was a great night, I think. I was a bit worse for the wear because several ladies wanted to dance and there weren't enough dancing guys to go around.

I'll be helping to register some of the classes again this week and over the weekend. I'm not sure yet of where I'll be helping out, but I'll probably be working with one or both Pre-Intermediate classes again. Mostly I'm there to help the guys work on their footwork. I don't dance as much as I used to, but it really depends on what the mix in the classes is and how I am feeling at the time.

In other news, I've also been launching my search engine optimization consulting practice. Among other things I've had to do is clean up some of the mess that Xenite.Org has become. People look at your work and judge how well you can do by what you are actually doing.

I've also had to out one of my better performing commercial search expressions. I took the top spot for a highly competitive expression this year and have to say that it doesn't produce a whole lot of traffic. And most of the inquiries, unfortunately, come from people who don't yet know where they are going with their online businesses. You need a clear goal in mind before I can help you.

And you need to give me your telephone number. Believe it or not, I've received inquiries from people who say they need help but they munge their email addresses and don't provide any contact information. Um, yeah, okay, maybe you need help, but I cannot do SEO by osmosis or telepathy.

And I have permission to write about Miss Cute Reluctant again. She was, earlier this year, the most popular topic on my blog. I yanked all the references to her out of concern for her privacy. After I did that, my blog traffic dropped by 40% and it's just now getting back to where it was when I stopped writing about her.

We've been talking and she has said a couple of times that I can write about her again. But I'm not sure what to say, at this point. I think people would enjoy reading about our adventures, but it would be incredibly difficult to maintain the level of privacy that I feel would be appropriate.

Well, suffice it to say that I'm occasionally spending time with someone I find to be extremely interesting. Maybe one day I can write a book about her or something. Just my luck, it will become a best-seller and she'll say, "Why didn't you write that book years ago?"

Hey, timing is everything.

Superhero Rites of Passage and Other Momentous Ramblings

2006-09-05T09:26:00.000-05:00

I watched "The Incredibles" again a couple of weeks ago...or maybe last week...sometime recently. I don't have much movie-watching time these days so which flick I pick for my personal viewing pleasure becomes a hard choice. If you have read my review of 'The Incredibles' on Epinions, you know I like the movie. One of the scenes that stands out is where Helen (Elastigirl) hands masks over to her children, Violet (Invisigirl?) and Dash (Speedy Dashales?).

Up until this point in the movie, Helen has been careful to teach her children not to use their super powers. Not even for good, because the government has forbidden the Supers from being super. The only times you see the kids really use their powers is when they misbehave. The movie clearly shows that any use of super powers is a bad thing because it's illegal.

But once the family passes into real danger (not coincidentally becase Daddy Incredible has been breaking the law by using his super powers), things change. It's now imperative that the children learn to use their powers for good and not for selfish reasons. Violet has already failed to perform once by this scene, whereas Dash did okay in getting himself, Violet, and Helen to safety.

Helen explains to the kids that play time is over. They are now in the real world where super-villains kill children who get in the way. It's time for the kids to grow up and use their super powers for good. She concludes the lecture by handing masks to the children. They've already stolen their costumes and put them on. The message is that anyone can put on a costume. You're not really a super hero until you have earned the recognition of being heroic (or at least capable of being heroic). The kids are put on a sort of probation status by Mom.

This reflects on the sub-story of Syndrome, Mr. Incredible's nemesis. Syndrome's diabolocal plot is to make himself super by killing off all the real super heroes and using his inventions to wow and amaze people. He never quite realized that being a super hero is not about wowing and amazing people; it's about saving the world when the world is in danger. In their own ways, both Mr. Incredible and Syndrome underscore just how dangerous super powers really are. Mr. Incredible endangers the public with his rash, self-centered thinking; and Syndrome literally threatens the public in order to advance his career.

Mr. Incredible does a little (late) growing up in the movie as he realizes that there are more important and valuable things than simply wowing and amazing the public. He may have earned his mask once before when he left super hero school, but he forgot the most important lessons he had been taught. He had to be stripped of his mask and thus had to earn it once again.

The movie implies that only two of the original super heroes were morally just: Frozone and Elastigirl. Neither one was sued by anyone at the end of the Golden Age of Super Heroes (the movie implies at least a couple other supers were sued besides Mr. Incredible). And neither Frozone nor Elastigirl wanted to use their super powers again (Syndrome was able to entice most of the Supers out of retirement with the hope of reliving past glories, and they paid for that desire with their lives). Frozone only uses his powers reluctantly because of his friendship with Bob (Mr. Incredible). Helen does so only out of necessity as she tries to keep her family from becoming Federal inmates.

It is thus appropriate that Helen confers the mask upon Violet and Dash. She has remained pure of purpose. It is also appropriate that Frozone survive Syndrome's nefarious scheme. He really does understand what the greater good is all about (and it's not always about his wife).

It is very symbolic that Mr. Incredible, when he resumes his super hero career in full, cannot fit well into his costume. It's not that he has outgrown the costume so much that he has failed to maintain the high moral standards for which he earned the costume in the first place. And he only reluctantly accepts a new costume. He doesn't feel like he needs a new costume because he has already earned and trademarked a costume. But he's tarnished that costume. He has even damaged it. The costume represents his reputation, and he has ripped his own reputation by illegally using his super powers.

Mr. Incredible only earns the right to wear his new costume (and mask) when Helen forgives him. I think that moment comes at the end of the movie, when she truly realizes that it is no longer all about Bob, it's about Bob protecting others (his family first, and the public second). He comes full circle. He has been purified by his humiliating defeat at the hands of Syndrome, by his heart-felt remorse for his own stupidity, and by his newly regained sense of sacrifice. He would rather die than see other people get hurt.

These are moral lessons we learn and forget every day. We don't have to be super heroes to earn the right to wear the mask. The mask represents an adult's moral responsibility to society, to make a contribution without seeking personal gain and glory. Millions of people earn the mask every day. Millions of people are stripped of the mask every day.

The best that we can do is try to show that we deserve to wear the mask, and not to give up if it is taken away from us. You only lose the mask for good reason, and you only get it back for good reason. The choice is yours to make.

The freedom to be stupid, or, how to become an American billionaire

2006-09-01T12:54:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine called me up this week and asked if I was going to attend Dragon*Con. Man, I wish I were, but I had taken so much time off my job this year that I didn't feel I could afford to take an extra day. So I made no plans to attend the convention, which is just as well, since losing my job on Monday has made me a little more cost-conscious for now.

Although I still have an income from my Internet consulting, every day is a new day for me. I wasn't planning on joining the ranks of the self-employed this year. I have been down this road before and it's as rocky today as it ever was. The challenges are often rewarding, but having to drum up business for myself is kind of a drag. When I was living on gambling, if I needed money I'd go down to a local casino and hit the slots.

That worked well for about 2-1/2 years, until the week I lost $3,000 and then I decided maybe I'd better get a real job.

As a writer I've made some money from books, articles, and work-for-hire projects. For the longest time, the most money I made from writing came from work-for-hire. I had to put up with hooty-snooty authors who supported themselves under their own names telling me I wasn't a real writer. Maybe not by their standards, but a check in the mail is worth the cash I can get for it. Some work-for-hire projects pay very, very well.

I have made money off my books (more off Visualizing Middle-earth than off Understanding Middle-earth, oddly enough. I'm not sure what it says about an author whose self-published reprint of previously published essays outsells a vetted, editorially chosen book (that is admittedly an update on mostly previously published essays). Understanding Middle-earth is, in my opinion, the far better book. It is certainly larger, but the essays were all revised and updated, and there is one essay in the book that you won't (legally) find elsewhere.

Well, the book sales have fallen off and I suppose I could write another book. I actually sent a manuscript to my agent last year but she asked me to find four others like it for comparison. At the time, there were no other books like it, so I let the project drop. Last fall, about six similar books came out....

I could, in theory, just get in the car and drive to Atlanta and show up for part of Dragon*Con. Maybe I could still buy a plane ticket, but the cost of airfare these days is outrageous. While I'm glad that the airlines are becoming profitable, I'm not glad to fly. Not only is it more expensive than it used to be, it is a great deal more inconvenient. The security measures we have to put up with are just not worth the hassle -- which, of course, is why many people insist on flying. They don't want to give in to Osama Bin Laden's terrorism. Me, I was never really a fan of flying anyway.

Now that I have the freedom to do what I want, go where I want, I'm still really not free. I have a responsibility to myself to keep paying my bills. So, it would be nice if I could win the lottery, but the chances of that happening are zilch. I don't buy lottery tickets.

People used to say to me, "Michael, you're a programmer. You should be able to get a programming job. There are lots of them." Yeah, lots of jobs programming in languages I never heard of. Most companies want to hire programmers who are at least aware of the basic syntax of their chosen programming languages. I was an expert in Business Basic, a language developed for mini-computers.

I used to work for Basis International, Ltd., one of the leading providers of Business Basic. Things went sour there when they brought in a new president who decided he wanted the company to go in an entirely different direction. He dropped their most profitable product (it brought in $600,000 in revenue in 1996 with virtually no support costs), fired over half the staff, and launched not one but two redesigns of the flagship programming language they offer -- redesigns which have driven most of their old customer base to a competitive product that was in many ways inferior to Basis' offering at the time Mr. Marketing Genius took over.

My Web design skills have never been more than adequate. It takes too long to design snappy, glitzy sites. I would never have built Xenite.Org into a huge mega site if I had stopped to make things look pretty. Now programmers, Web designers, and search engine optimization specialists snicker at my ugly pages. But I get more visitors than they do. And if I want a top ranking for a query, I can pretty much get it faster than most other people.

So, snicker away, dudes. You may have pretty products, but you're still looking to me for advice and analysis. What does that say about who is freer than whom?

We're all bound to each other. We're like slaves in a galley, chained to the oars of progress, forcing each other to keep rowing because none of us can really get ahead of the others.

Maybe it's just because I don't have much of the kind of savvy that makes a Bill Gates or Larry Page a billionaire. These guys are not particularly brilliant in a technical sense. In fact, their flagship products (PageRank and DOS) leave a lot to be desired from a technical point of view. But their marketing savvy is unquestionably outstanding. Anyone who can take an inferior product and sell it to an unwitting public for billions of dollars has to be smart in some way.

Or just really, really lucky.

Maybe my problem is that I haven't come up with enough stupid ideas. If I can just devise the next Really Stupid Thing, people will buy it and make me rich.

And then I'll be able to buy my own plane and fly anywhere I want to. I'll be free at last, free at last, free at last.

So, stay tuned, keep coming back, and cross your fingers. I'll do my best to come up with something really stupid for you to spend your money on. You're always free to buy some other idiot's dumb idea, so what have you got to lose?

Teaching the human body to kill cancer

2006-08-31T20:13:00.000-05:00

CNN just published an amazing story about a potential cure for cancer. Researchers at the National Institutes for Health retooled 17 patients' immune systems to kill their cancers. The researchers adapted a virus to modify immune system cells from the patients to seek out and kill their own cancers. The patients were then subjected to chemotherapy to kill off their immune systems. Their genetically re-engineered cells were then introduced to their bodies and the cells killed off the cancers.

The research has raised eyebrows across the cancer treatment community.

This news arrives with a special poignance for my sister-in-law's family. They just learned that my sister-in-law's mother has lung cancer and may not survive more than a year.

It's too soon for this radical new therapy to be widely used, and my brother and his in-laws and all their friends can only hope that other treatments will emerge to help battle this highly destructive illness. It's a pity we cannot put people in to stasis to wait for better treatments, although such a radical move would have devastating consequences on their lives in other ways.

Back in the 1980s, I subscribed to an interesting magazine. Each year it was retitled. I think it was called Science '80 when I first learned about it and became a subscriber. In 1981 it became Science '81, and so forth. The magazine was written for mass audiences and it was the best magazine of its kind at the time. Unfortunately, the magazine failed in the mid-1980s. Many of its writers apparently went over to the rival publication Discover, the quality of which improved radically afterward.

Well, there was an interesting article in one of those old Science 'YY issues about a man, call him Uncle Ted, who fell asleep somewhere around 1957 (give or take a few years). His family took care of him for something like 25 years. He sat relatively undisturbed in a chair in a living room in a relative's house.

An entire generation of children grew up around this sleeping man. He barely moved. His family checked on him regularly but rarely if ever were able to feed him or administer any fluids. I believe they had to change his clothes a few times and they kept him as clean as they could. But he sat in that chair for about 25 years and slept.

Are you thinking of Rip Van Winkle?

One day, a physician came to visit the family. She asked who the sleeping man was. "Oh, that's just Uncle Ted," she was told. Gradually, the physician learned that Uncle Ted had been asleep for an entire generation. She was naturally amazed, curious, and fascinated by the medical implications of such a condition.

The doctor persuaded Uncle Ted's family to admit him to a hospital. There the staff subjected him to a series of tests and discovered that his metabolism had almost completely shut down. Not entirely so. There was just enough metabolic activity to keep Uncle Ted alive (or sort of alive) for about 25 years.

With the family's permission, the doctors implemented a treatment to speed up Uncle Ted's metabolism. He revived quickly and regained awareness. He woke up in the hospital and understood where he was. Relatives came to visit him but the staff carefully monitored Uncle Ted's progress. And they witheld from him the knowledge that 25 years had passed. They even managed to find a library to donate 25-year-old newspapers for Uncle Ted to read.

Does it sound like a great story? Unfortunately, there was no happy ending for Uncle Ted. As the days and weeks passed, the doctors at the hospital performed a number of tests on Uncle Ted to determine why his metabolism had slowed down so much and how it had sustained itself for so long. To their dismay, the doctors learned that Uncle Ted had a rapidly developing tumor. I don't recall which type of cancer he had, but it was one of the most aggressive forms. And it was a cancer that had developed in his body before he fell asleep 25 years previously.

Somehow, Uncle Ted's body had mustered the only defense it could against the cancer: it slowed its metabolism just enough to keep itself clinically alive for many years, and by doing so it slowed the growth of the cancer. But when the doctors revived Uncle Ted, they also revived the cancer.

He died soon afterward, but not before his family were able to spend a little more time with him.

Maybe Uncle Ted's metabolic syndrome could serve a useful purpose for many of today's cancer patients if doctors could safely slow down the metabolism enough to sustain life and delay the growth of tumors. But for reasons I have never learned, medical science appears to have passed on this option. Uncle Ted may have just been so genetically fortunate that his body was capable of doing something the rest of us cannot do.

Still, one can hope that one day we'll be able to preserve human life even when we don't yet have the means to cure whatever ails us.

My thoughts are with all those who are involved in the struggle today. Take heart, for work is nonetheless progressing.

Who was that masked musician?...

2006-08-30T00:41:00.000-05:00

There's an old recording of the song "Woodstock" (lyrics include "We are stardust, we are golden, we've got to get ourselves back to the garden...") that keeps rolling through my mind. I haven't actually heard it in many years. The most popular version, the one that is always played, referred to on most Web sites, and virtually named as "the best" (not in my opinion) is the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version.

A lot of people have performed the song through the years. If I recall correctly, it was written by Joni Mitchell. Iain/Ian Mathews recorded at least one version (sung a cappella -- without music).

The version I'd like to track down was a studio cut by a glossy pop rock band of the late 1960s or early 1970s. They probably released their version in 1970 or 1971. The lead singer had a very high-pitched but soft voice. The group had great harmonies.

I used to hear this version all the time when I was young, even though it was by that time in my life already a "golden oldie". But somehow the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version (recorded about the same time) became more popular and radio stations stopped playing the smoother version I had grown up with.

When I used to download songs from various services (I stopped doing that because digital rights management just makes the experience too frustrating and the cost-per-song is ridiculously too high), I often searched for the song. I couldn't find the version I wanted, though I listened to many tracks in the hope of recognizing the familiar, haunting chorus.

I've tracked down other songs through the years. For example, Grupo Niche recorded a great Latin/Salsa song called "Oiga, Mire y Vea". Johnny Walden used to play it all the time when he was teaching free Salsa lessons at Elvia's Cantina in Houston. The tempo is slow enough that you could also dance Cha Cha to it.

Well, Johnny didn't know the name of the song or who performed it. I got so frustrated asking my friends if they could name the song one weekend I walked into a music store and started sampling every Latin CD they had. Could not find the exact recording. Then, one night as I was waiting for friends to meet me at Plaza 59, the DJ played the song. I like to freaked out. I asked the hostess to write down the name and artist for me. She probably thought I was crazy.

Okay, I am crazy, but that's beside the point.

Another song that drove me nuts for several years was "Sad Eyes" by Bruce Springsteen. I used to hear it on the radio while I was working late at night for an event management company in Georgia. I loved the song, but never paid attention to the credits when the DJs would name the songs in their playlists. Naturally, the song's popularity waned with time and I heard it less and less often.

But I wanted to hear the song again and listened to dozens of Springsteen hits for months, whenever I had an opportunity, to try and identify the song. Finally, I started searching lyric Web sites to see if I could identify the words, but it had been so long since I heard the song I could only recall the melody. The words had faded beyond recall.

In desperation I sent an email to a Springsteen fan with an extensive site on his career. I asked her if she could help me identify the song, knowing nothing but that it sort of went "aiii-iii-iii". I literally described it that way in my email. She took a guess and suggested "Sad Eyes", which turned out to be the song I was looking for.

Another song that drove me nuts was a Santana tune that I only started to hear a couple of years after it had been released as a single. It was played a lot on radio stations around Houston but also came across many satellite feeds used by restaurants. I was sitting in the Bennigan's at the Houston Galleria mall one day, eating lunch, when the song came on. I thought nothing about it but enjoyed listening to it, and then when the next song started I realized I wanted to buy the CD. I asked my server if he could recall the song, but he couldn't. He asked another server but no one in the restaurant could name the song.

Frustrated, I walked over to a music store and began listening to all the Santana CDs I could find (do you have any idea of many albums Carlos Santana has recorded?). Naturally, I couldn't find the song. Ready to give up, I went up to the sales clerk at the counter and asked him if he could help me identify a song. "How does it go?" he asked. "I don't know," I said. "But I think it has something to do with the moon."

Well, you can imagine how helpful that was. We talked a little more and he tried to coax the melody out of me, but I really couldn't even do that. This song was just so haunting it only wanted to stay at the edge of my memory. "Are you sure it's about the moon?" he asked.

"Well, I think it says something about the moon and the ocean," I replied.

He shook his head and said, "Maybe it's 'Smooth', which is a Santana song." We walked over to the Santana CDs and he pulled the one with "Smooth" on it. Suree enough, that was what I was trying to find.

Another song that took me a few years to track down was "Have you ever loved a woman?" by Richard Marx -- because it's not by Richard Marx, but by Bryan Adams. Well, at least I remembered the title.

Maybe the first song that ever drove me nuts was the one I always thought of as the "flower girl" song. Never knew who recorded it or what it was called, but I loved hearing it every time it came on the radio when I was a kid. Eventually, the name of the band (The Cowsills) stayed in my mind but I kept thinking of it as the "flower girl" song ("I love the flower girl!"). The actual name is "The Rain, The Park, and Other Things" -- which I didn't find out until many years had passed.

It's not that people don't say, "That was The Cowsills and 'The Rain, The Park, & Other Things'," when I hear these songs on the radio. They are often credited. I just start to groove and get lost in the melodies and forget to pay attention when the songs are over. Who wants to listen to a DJ speak when you have the guitars ringing in your ears, the melodies sliding across your bones, and the keyboards fading into a mesmerizing echo of contentment?

These songs are like warm fires on cold winter days, soft couches sheltered from drumming rainstorms, waterfalls playing on golden stones. You don't stop to think that someone is about to tell you who recorded the song. You just want it to go on forever, firing synapses you didn't realize existed. You breathe in the music and exhale dreams and mellowness.

And that's why I want to know who recorded that song...the one about stardust and the garden. You know, the really smooth, karmalistic version that sends you drifting across the misty skies of forever.

Write down the artists' name for me, will you, when you come back down to Earth? I'm never going to remember who they were....

SEO Services From An SEO Specialist

2006-08-29T20:17:00.000-05:00

Meanwhile, back at the blog, Michael is still occasionally posting.

Sorry about the long silence, but my weekend was very busy as did indeed attend BarCamp Texas in Austin, where I met many interesting people. I gave a presentation called "How to get 100 valuable links in 10 business days or less" to a packed room, and the audience participation was great.

Curiously enough, yesterday (Monday) I was fired from my job for cause. Seems one of the medications I was taking caused me to fall asleep on the job, and that was a violation of the company's employee code of conduct.

Well, such is life.

I've been spending a fair amount of time on the telephone discussing search engine optimization and linking strategies with people. I've been doing search engine optimization since 1998 and have covered most of the hot trends (usually in advance of their being hot).

So, while I'll be earning some extra money as an SEO Specialist for a while, it remains to be seen whether this will be a permanent move for me. I'm in the process of contacting some Texas SEO firms to see what opportunities may be available, but a number of people are encouraging me to break out on my own.

Problem is, I'm not entirely sure of what would be the most productive use of my independent consulting time.

I'm presently engaged in an ongoing reputation management campaign. The contract has a non-disclosure clause (in fact, I usually do work in a non-disclosure framework). Reputation management is more challenging than normal query optimization because you pretty much have to dominate at least the first page of results.

People who have been following my articles at The SEOMoz Blog know I've been writing about linking all year long. So I think I've got some good link-building credentials under my belt, but link-building really isn't part of search engine optimization. It fits into the broader category of search engine placement which encompasses getting sites crawled, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising management, and search engine optimization.

SEOs who achieve rankings through links are either competing in highly optimized queries or are doing things the hard way. And most SEOs who specialize in link building don't appreciate it when I criticize their choices. In fact, there are many good reasons for using linkage to boost rankings: such as when the client won't let the SEO specialist touch the Web pages. If you cannot improve the on-page optimization, then you have to work with off-page factors.

People should naturally wonder if I'll now change the broad focus of this blog and concentrate on search engine optimization advice and tips.

Um, no. This blog is about me, my life, and my thoughts. I occasionally think about SEO but not always. I do other things with my life. I have other tales to tell.

A lot of SEOs do keep running blogs on current trends and events in the industry, and that is precisely why I don't want to write another one. I can pretty much infuriate people just by doing what I'm already doing.

And, yes, I do write the Google Says ... blog, but that isn't so much about search engine optimization as it is about the search engine Google.

Anyway, my services are available for at least a few contracts until I figure out what I'm going to do. I'll be glad to consider a reputation management campaign, a hard-to-place optimization campaign (but I reserve the right to refer anyone I feel needs a 6-to-12 month campaign to some other party), keyword research, and maybe even a creative link building campaign.

Yes, if you're competing for hyperoptimized queries and you really, truly, honestly do need links, contact me and we'll discuss your needs. I am also available for telephone consultations. I've been told my hourly rate is too low compared to other SEO consultants, but for now I'll keep it at the current level. I may raise the price in a few weeks. We'll see.

The phone call that changed my morning drive...

2006-08-28T12:15:00.000-05:00

So, I was running late for work this morning and decided not to make any stops. Trying to behave in a guilty fashion, I studiously paid close attention to what I was doing.

And then my cell phone rang. Now, there are a fair number of people who have my number, but I usually recognize who is calling me. Didn't recognize this number but I decided to risk life and limb to take the call anyway.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Michael?"

"Yes."

"This is so-and-so with something-or-other Publishing Services..."

Publishing services? I don't remember signing up with any publishing services. Did someone in the publishing industry pass my name on to an authors' scamming company?

"I was calling about your order..."

Don't recall placing any orders with anyone.

"Just in case you haven't received it yet, I wanted you to know that it's on the way."

"Okay..."

"So don't be surprised when you get your adult DvD in the mail."

My what?

The smooth, professional voice on the other side of the connection continued blathering on about something as I briefly debated with myself whether I should argue that I haven't ordered any adult DvD. I think the saner side of reason won out when I simply pressed the button to break off the call.

I heard earlier this year that telemarketers would soon be given access to cell phone numbers. Maybe this is the first of many unwanted telephone calls and I'll have to either get a new cell phone number, sign up with the Do Not Call Registry (although supposedly my number is unlisted and unpublished, which to a telephone company only now seems to mean they can charge more money for giving it out), or maybe just have to switch to a more consumer-oriented telephone company (does such a thing exist?).

But I was amused by the fact that this guy was trying to pull the same sort of scam that cheap office equipment suppliers use. They'll call up companies and ask what the serial numbers on copy machines or printers are. If they get the wrong naive person on the phone, they "confirm" an order and have merchandise shipped to the company. Then they send an outrageous bill and make a tidy little profit.

This adult DvD guy may be working a system where he calls men at random, "confirms" their adult DvD order, gets their billing info, and then maybe actually sends a cheap trashy DvD or possibly just runs off and uses the private info to make illicit purchases. I don't know.

I've been receiving an increasing number of phone calls from people wanting to send me $200 worth of groceries and gas or something because I used my credit cards to make purchases (actually, they are reciting the numbers from my debit cards -- which are processed through the Mastercard/Visa systems). Now, I do recall being told about such promotions by my banks, but I always hang up when these "customer service representatives" start to tell me about how I need to pay the postage to receive my prizes.

I'm sorry, but that just doesn't work for me. You're going to give me $200 worth of gasoline but you cannot afford to pay the postage?

I've traced a few of these numbers back to their originators. Some are very well guarded, but one went back to a cell phone in California. So, my national banks are hiring independent contractors to call me from their cell phones to tell me that I have won $200 in gasoline or $600 in groceries but that I have to pay the postage to receive the prizes.

Right.

I can see where the new telecommuting economy makes this possible, perhaps even plausible. But frankly if my bank wants to give me $600 worth of groceries, it can send me a letter at its own expense. I am sure it will cost them less to do so than it would cost me if I were to agree to any of these prize phone callers' conditions.

Maybe these people just answer want ads and sign up for low-skill jobs that help them pay their bills. I don't know, but my inclination when they call is to say something like, "I know you have to feed the kids (or the habit), but you need to get a real job."

Instead, I usually just hang up and continue driving to work. But today I felt compelled to blog about it.

They have made an impact on me.

BTW -- if I do receive any adult DvDs, they will be thrown in the trash and I will devote the next 2-3 years of life disputing any attempts to collect for them.

If you're reading this, take me off your list. I might just be inclined to tell the world what your phone number is and who you work for. I can also often find out where you live.

Think about that before you take that low-skill phone job....

What makes a good story?

2006-08-25T10:51:00.000-05:00

My grandmother introduced me to the Hardy Boys books when I was about 11 years old. My favorite literature at the time consisted of comic books, the DC and Marvel superhero brands that were beginning to tell complex, multi-issue arcs. Characterization was taking on increasing importance for the comic writers, and they were striving to tell stories relevant to the times. The Hardy Boys books had no relevance to my generation. They were just clean, fun adventure stories about teenage boys solving mysteries.

I remember trying to read one of those books again when I was about 16 or 17. I had outgrown them by that age and they no longer seemed appealing to me. I was well into my developing fondness for the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Andre Norton, who wrote for larger audiences. But while I was still into the Hardy Boys I was able to travel around New England or across the country, visit mysterious caves, follow spies and criminals through their futile attempts to avoid justice, and wonder if Chet Morton would ever get a girlfriend (Frank and Joe both had their girlfriends -- why didn't Chet get one?).

Well, mystery writing has influenced modern fantasy in many ways. Andre Norton's books often bring young characters into contact with new cultures, where they have to unravel ancient curses, stop evil-doers from completing nefarious plots, and maybe pick up a boyfriend or girlfriend along the way.

Actually, you rarely read about "dating" relationships in fantasy stories. Men and women (or boys and girls) share adventures and dangers together and then realize by the end of the story that they are soul-mates and just sort of get married (or settle down together). Mystery stories often involve dating scenes, encounters in bars, at museums, etc. Mystery stories are rooted in mundane, everyday non-magical life and their magic consists of the shrewd approaches people take to resolving their various conflicts.

Nonetheless, a good fantasy story draws the reader into its world with elements of mystery and discovery. Just as the mystery story gradually unveils clues that help you put together a larger picture, good fantasy stories gradually assemble all the parts of their milieus so the reader can understand the framework of the characrers' universe.

Science fiction stories can also follow the classic mystery model. C.J. Cherry is a master (mistress?) of enveloping a science fiction universe with intrigue and elements of the thriller. Her thugs carry blasters, lasers, and rayguns; her criminal masterminds speak inhuman languages and have inhuman motivations; her crises and stakes are a bit more weighty than who inherits the family fortune.

It's no accident, though, that many of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers have written mystery stories, pulp adventure tales, westerns, and police dramas. They transfer the elements of those genres to the SF and F genres to make their stories, worlds, and characters more interesting. A good fantasy story doesn't focus on witches and wizards, dragons and elves -- it focuses on the conflicts and struggles between titanic forces, whether those forces are greed and ambition, personal esteem, or good and evil.

Struggle and conflict are key to every successful story. You can write a novel about a man struggling to make his keyboard work a certain way. You can write a short story about a kid trying to figure out who drank the last of the orange juice. You can write a series of stories about teenagers plotting to take the state football championship away from a rival school. As long as you have a starting point where conflict disrupts the equilibrium of someone's world, and move that character through the struggle to establish a new equilibrium, you can put together an engaging, entertaining story.

And that's what the Hardy Boys books do. They disrupt equilibrium and move characters through a struggle to establish a new equilibrium. But for some reason, they stopped appealing to me as I grew older. On some level, the stories are two simply written, maybe too formulaic and predictable. But there are many fantasy and science fiction stories that are also simply written and predictable. And yet, they can hold the attention of an aging audience.

What is the difference?

I think that J.K. Rowling may have shown us what fails with the Hardy Boys through her Harry Potter novels: Frank and Joe never grow up. They move from adventure to adventure and are always the same. Harry Potter changes with each new book. He gets a little older, a little wiser, and he remembers the successes and failures of his previous adventures. He is accumulating baggage and taking his frustrations and ambitions into the future with him.

A timeless story follows the growth of one or more characters. In The Lord of the Rings, by the time we get to the final page, Sam Gamgee has grown from the little gardener who crawls around Mr. Bilbo's Bag End to the Master of Bag End, and there is a satisfying, if saddening, feeling of finality and completion when he takes his daughter into his lap and says, "Well, I'm back."

BarCamp Texas changing venues

2006-08-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

Just got home to this email:

BarCamp was built on the spirit of Spontaneity, Flexibility, and Teamwork -- so, in true BarCamp fashion we are changing venues in the 11th hour. Due to unforeseen circumstances, The Thistle Café has decided not to host BarCampTexas. But don't despair -- the event will go on as planned (BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER). Thanks to the tireless dedication of your hosts, here is your new schedule of events:

Friday Evening (August 25th) Pre-Event Mixer: 8:00PM til ...
Location: Epoch Coffee (map)
Austin's newest and only independent 24hr coffeehouse is located just minutes north of downtown, in the North Loop neighborhood. Courtesy of GeekAustin, we will be pouring Austin's own Live Oak Hefeweizen .

Saturday (August 25th)BarCampTexas: 12 noon - 10PM
Location: Elysium (map)
Following the departure of Thistle Cafe, Elysium has graciously offered to host BarCampTexas. Elysium is a 4 time winner of the Chronicle's Best of Austin award for best dance club.

Saturday (August 25th)
BarCampTexas Brunch 11AM - 2PM at Triumph Cafe ( map)

Additionally, all presentations in the main stage area at BarCampTexas will now be podcast! We will have two screens setup for presentations at the venue on Saturday Afternoon. One 6x9 screen with front projection, and one 7x10 screen with rear projection (on the main stage). We will have signs and people posted outside the Thistle all day Saturday to direct campers to the new venue. I look forward to seeing you all at the Pre-event Mixer tomorrow night at Epoch Coffee -- Remember the Beers on us!!! (Be sure to pack your ID's if you are planning to drink).

The Great Girl Scout Cookie Conspiracy

2006-08-23T12:36:00.000-05:00

I am constantly amazed at how much people insist on ignoring facts that inconveniently get in their ways.

Take, for example, the people of Lebanon. Their country was nearly bombed back into the stone age by Israel because they've been allowing Hezbollah to store weapons in their homes and mosques. Now, are the Lebanese people saying to the world, "Maybe we should not have leased out our houses to store weapons"? Nope, they are decrying Israel's "crimes against humanity" without admitting that Lebanon essentially violated the Geneva Convention.

Take, for example, the thousands of people across the United States who have been influenced by media polls to view the war in Iraq as separate from the war on terrorism. Never the mind the fact that Osama Bin Laden's supporters have been flooding to Iraq for several years in a hopeless, mindless effort to attack American forces. The root cause of the war was ignorance. We didn't go in for the right reasons, but just as the American War Between the States changed its focus from states' rights to slavery, there has been a fundamental change in the focus of the Iraqi war.

Take, for example, the city of Houston's newly announced policy of not pursuing vehicles that break minor traffic laws. The thinking behind the policy is that too many high speed chases are resulting in death and injury. Okay, maybe the police need to rethink how they pursue people who break the law. But if someone runs a red light, shouldn't that person be given a ticket? Or should we just wait until they run one red light too many and kill someone? I have to agree with the officers on the street that this policy will be counter productive. If a police car turns its lights on behind me, I will stop. I won't try to outrun them. But how many other people will think, "Hey, all I have to do is speed up and I can get away with it"?

Take, for example, the search engine optimization specialists who disagreed with Google engineer Matt Cutts about the value of writing useful articles that readers will love. "No, Matt," they say, "you don't know as much about search engine optimization as we do."

People who are well-schooled in nonsense fail to recognize the truth when it comes beating down their door. That is the power of propaganda. That is why Islamic fundamentalists want to destroy secular schools in Afghanistan and replace them only with warrior-training Islamic schools. That's why some people insist that Frodo spoke to Gollum on Mount Doom, instead of the One Ring (which said to Gollum, "Begone! And trouble me no more. If you touch me ever again you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom").

That's why, when the Girl Scouts come around every year, we buy their cookies. Yes, this is really all about Girl Scout Cookies. It's an evil conspiracy, intended to bring Americans to their knees (because we'll be too fat to see our toes). You've been trained to think that the Girl Scouts are just trying to raise money for their non-profit activities. But the truth is far more insidious. They are slowly poisoning our society with trans-fats, processed sugars, and cute pictures on boxes.

Don't believe me? Just wait. They'll be knocking on your door within a matter of months. Then see if you can resist the urge to buy. You won't even stop to think about their diabolical scheme. You'll just sign on the dotted line, along with me and all the other people conveniently ignoring the facts that get in our ways.

SciFi not renewing Stargate-SG1

2006-08-22T13:23:00.000-05:00

It was bound to happen. In fact, technically, it's happened once before. Stargate-SG1 will discontinue production at the end of the 10th season. Hard-core fans of the show are already mailing tissue boxes (you have to watch "Children of the Gods", the first made-for-television movie that launched the TV series) to SciFi executives in a bid to get them to change their minds.

MGM, which produces the show, says it will look for another distribution vehicle. That may mean another network or possibly direct-to-market syndication. Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda was the last marginally successful syndicated show outside the Star Trek franchise. Things don't look too hopeful in that area. One of the biggest problems with direct syndication is that the scheduling runs all over the map. Fans in one city get to see their favorite show at 6:00 PM on Saturday and in another city they may have to watch it at 3:00 AM Wednesday morning.

MGM could also consider going direct to fans over the Internet. Battlestar Galactica is selling previously-aired episodes over the Internet. Will the model support original production for a 10-year-old television franchise? Hard to day. In anoher 5 years, we'll almost certainly have high quality original productions made for the Internet and maybe released on DvD as an afterthought.

If SciFi feels comfortable letting the series end production with the 10th season, after having just barely squeaked into the Guiness Book of World Records for longest running SF television production (The X-Files previously held that distinction), they probably didn't have much faith left in the show anyway. And one can only hope that the Ori saga is at least reasonably resolved (with the usual toenail hanging out the window hint of a future rematch).

The Ori have actually proven to be a more interesting foe than the original Goa'uld. The show has remained faithful to its premise, that Earth is taking on every space alien in the universe masquerading as a god, but the Goa'uld were too mechanical about the process. The Ori, as ascended beings, at least have metaphysical advantages over humanity that makes our guys the underdogs. It's a bit more satisfying to see the SGC win one against the Ori than when they won encounters with the Goa'uld.

Well, all good things must come to an end. Stargate: Atlantis will continue in production, although I suspect it will only last another year without SG-1. The Wraith are not a very interesting enemy and the whole nanite-based replicator threat has also been dealt with in one way or another. If the best Atlantis can do is dip into the old SG-1 episodes for inspiration, it may just be time to put the entire franchise to bed.

That's What Friends Are For...

2006-08-21T13:12:00.000-05:00

I don't remember who my first friend was, besides my older brother. Our family says we were inseparable when we were very young. I remember swimming with Rick, taking naps with him, dressing up for church with him, going on picnics with him, fighting over who got to sit on the highly coveted arm rest in the back seat of our great grandmother's Cadillac.

There were days of fishing, walking through empty lots, sitting on buses, going to movies, visiting relatives, and just playing around the house. Sometimes people would come over and visit and older kids would spend time with me and Rick but I don't remember them. Their just blurry faces without names.

Maybe my first best friend was a boy named Edward. His family lived across the hall from my family and we were in the same grade at school. I think sometimes we were in the same classes. We played after school and on the weekends and ran around and got into trouble together. One day Rick, Ed, and I decided to walk down the street to visit a city park. It was a pretty cool park, as I recall, with neat stands of trees that the kids could hide and play in, an attendant who gave out games and toys, and the occasional visiting clown and puppet show.

So the three of set off down the street and Ed's mother came out to give him a candy bar. "Don't be a litter bug," she admonished him as we walked off. Well, needless to say, once we were out of site, he wanted to throw down his candy wrapper and I wanted to turn him to the Mothers' Litter Bug Patrol. I must have shouted "Ed's being a litter bug!" half the afternoon.

We were friends about 2-1/2 to three years and then my family moved. Eventually, we settled in another town and I went to another school. I didn't really get along with the other kids or know who they were until the morning the principal announced birthdays and put my name on the list. This big scary kid with his arm in a cast walked up to me, slapped me on the arm, and said, "Happy Birthday, Michael! Now you're one of us".

Us was the 9-year-old fourth-graders as opposed to the 8-year-old fourth-graders. As I recall, the kids in that school made a big deal about when you were born. Their pecking order was based almost entirely on birth order. Naturally, the oldest kid in the class was the leader. He's probably road-kill on the highway of life by now, but that's beside the point.

Somehow, someway, I overcame my fear of the big scary kid in the cast and learned to be his friend. It helped that his older brother befriended my older brother, so we often spent a lot of time together, older brothers sort of looking out for younger brothers and younger brothers keeping each other occupied and out of the older brothers' ways. We had some great times with those guys, and there were some sad times. I remember when their dog, an Irish Setter, was hit by a car. I never thought I'd see a big scary kid cry, but Steve -- the older brother -- was mature enough to let his tears flow freely.

We were walking down the street one day, toward Steve and Johnny's house, when we saw smoke coming from their garage. A car had caught fire and it burned part of the house. Steve and Johnny's parents decided to renovate the garage and turn the front section into a pub. They immediately had the coolest house in the neighborhood, and I got to visit it almost any time I wanted to because I was Johnny's friend. That was my first lesson in life about "It's not what you know but who you know."

A year later and my family had moved again. I tried to stay in touch with Johnny because my grandparents lived close to his family, but I made a new friend. I don't recall how I met him, but Keith and I started exploring the city of Miami Beach as only a 10-year-old and 9-year-old boy could do (he was older, so he was sort of the leader, but I was beginning to assert myself by this time). There was no neighborhood where we were afraid to go. I got into a few fights by crossing the wrong boundaries, but my adventures were endless.

Half the stuff we did was probably illegal. Maybe all of it. We'd steal seltzer bottles and have water fights. We'd sneak around people's backyards to look at their landscaping (they had some cool houses back then). We explored new buildings under construction, condemned buildings not yet torn down, empty houses no one knew what to do with, and hotel swimming pools. It was easy for a group of kids to go swimming in any hotel swimming pool. All we had to do was show up and act like we were there with mom and dad. It was scary the first time and boring by the third pool (too many people in it, too much salt water).

Sometimes Keith and I would accompany my older brother Rick and his friends, and sometimes we'd hang with other friends. There came a day when we were downtown somewhere and ready to go home. I flagged down a passing bus, jumped on, paid my fare, and turned around. Keith was standing in the street. "Come on!" I said.

"I have no money," he replied. "I'll see you later."

I looked back at the bus driver and he said, "Make up your mind, son, but I can't give you a refund."

Without thinking I leaped down into the street and the bus drove off. "Why did you do that?" Keith asked me as we set out on a 3-mile walk.

"Because you're my friend," I said. "That's what friends do, isn't it?"

I hope so.

Through the years, I've had many friends come and go. I move around a lot and it's hard to stay in touch with them. But the best friends I've had never stopped to think about how quick and easy the ride home could be. They always jumped down into the street to be with me, ready to face the next adventure, whatever that might be.

That's what friends are for, isn't it?

Traveling to Austin, TX weekend of August 25-27

2006-08-19T09:49:00.000-05:00

I will be hanging with other search marketing people in downtown Austin at the first annual BarCamp Texas. It's a techie/geekie rally being organized at the Thistle Cafe in downtown Austin near 6th and LaVaca.

If you see me there, come up and say "Hi".

Why I don't call government agencies...

2006-08-18T10:02:00.000-05:00

Earlier this year, someone mentioned a specific type of government report to me. I needed to know what this report was, but the guy's accent made it difficult to figure what he was referring to. I sent an email plea out to my co-workers asking for insight. Several people wrote back and suggested I contact a specific government agency and ask if they could figure out what the guy was talking about.

I didn't feel I had enough information to justify that kind of long, involved interaction with the government. To explain myself, I shared the following story with everyone. I only infuriated one person by forgetting to strip that person's reply from the email, but I think the story got my point across (and, yes, we did eventually figure out what report the guy was talking about).

Let me tell you a little story.

When I was in college, I was getting financial aid. I needed to get that stupid report from the government every year on which my Pell Grant and other funds were assessed. One year, I moved about the time the report was mailed to me. The U.S. Post Office doesn’t forward confidential documents sent out by the Federal government. I called the Post Office and asked for an emergency intercept. I had to talk to three supervisors before getting the Atlanta Postmaster General (or whatever his title is) on the phone, and he authorized the intercept. I had to go down to the Post Office and fill out a form, but it was too late. They had already sent the report back.

So I called the government agency that issued the report and they said, “If the Post Office has returned it, we have burned it.”

I said, “You burned it?”

“Privacy laws require that all returned confidential documentation be destroyed. But you can request a duplicate report. It will take three weeks to process.”

By this time, I had to have the report into the financial aid office within a week or I would lose my government grants and scholarships. Other financial aid would not be sufficient to make up the slack.

So I said, “May I speak to your supervisor?”

The supervisor was very understanding and apologetic and said, “I cannot do anything for you. You’ll have to speak to my boss. She is in Kansas City (we’re in Iowa/Idaho).”

So I called Kansas City. The super-supervisor in Kansas City was very understanding and apologetic and said, “I cannot do anything for you. You’ll have to speak to my boss. He is in (Iowa/Idaho).”

So I called Iowa/Idaho and got: “I cannot do anything for you. You’ll have to speak to my boss. He is in (some Midwestern city).”

I called the Midwest. I called Boston. I called Washington D.C. Washington sent me back to the Midwest.

This last call resulted in, “No one can legally do anything for you except the agency administrator. He works in Washington.”

“But I just talked to Washington and they referred me to you.”

“I am a regional director. I know what I am talking about. You have to call Mr. So-and-so at this number.”

So, I called “this number” and the secretary answered with, “Under-secretary So-and-so’s office.”

I said, “UNDER-secretary?”

“Yes sir.”

“As in, he reports directly to a cabinet-level official?”

“Yes sir. What is the purpose of your call?”

I explained what was up. We were on day two of this bureaucratic journey. The Post Office had informed me if the report didn’t go out this day, I would be out of college the next week.

“Mr. So-and-so is not in right now. I’ll have to take a message.”

I said, “I don’t mean to sound rude, but is he really going to call me back?”

“It’s his job, sir. He’ll call you.”

Sure enough, two hours later, an Undersecretary in the Department of Education called me back, listened to my near tear-stricken tale of bureaucratic grief, and he said, “I do have the authority to authorize an emergency copy be overnighted to you. I will do that because, frankly, no one has ever come this far before.”

So, I got my report and stayed in college.

Okay, cute story. Maybe I should have submitted it to Reader's Digest or something, but my point is that you don't just call a government agency and get a simple answer to a question.

Magic healing powders...

2006-08-17T14:41:00.000-05:00

I woke up with a sore throat earlier in the week. I thought nothing of it, maybe gargle with an antiseptic a couple of times and it will go away. But then I got a sniffle, so I took a decongestant. Okay, I'll spare you the icky stuff. I thought I had like an allergy attack or something. But after agonizing through three days of not being able to breathe, swallow, or move -- after sucking down alternating doses of Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen (it does help with the aches) -- after not knowing which way is up a couple of times -- I headed out the door this morning and drove to my doctor's office.

Thar be highway construction around Houston, so I had a long drive ahead of me as I took the back roads. I figured, I might as well call and see if I can get an appointment. Maybe the day of the drop-in visit is done. Good thing I called, because my doctor was not in this morning. Oh, yeah, I thought. It's Thursday. I know what he does on Thursday mornings.

So I randomly went with the first available doctor in the house. Never saw the guy before in my life, but when a man is feeling small enough to want to see a doctor, any doctor will do as long as there are scheister lawyers in the phone book.

I had woken up with this image of going to see my doctor, however, so that I could ask him for The Good Stuff, the Magic Healing Powders they always hold back until you're so sick they just absolutely have to share them with you. I wanted the magic healing powders. I was prepared to offer any convenient sacrifice that would appease his dark spirit. I was tired of feeling pain in my ears because my throat is sore. I was willing to pay for a prescription. No more of this, "You got any free samples this week, doc?" Just give me the piece of paper and I'll be on my way.

So I got to the doctor's office (which is a huge building, sort of a megaclinic that lots of doctors share so they can charge exorbitant fees) and promptly locked my keys in my car. That was okay because I didn't realize I had done that. All I could focus on was getting up the stairs, avoiding pregnant women by the elevators, and staggering into the right office so I could say, "I'm Michael Martinez and I'm here to see Doctor whatshisname...."

"Please fill out this form," I was told.

Now, waitaminnit. I've already filled out forms twice. How many times do you have to fill out forms just to get Magic Healing Powders? I mean, come on. It's not like they haven't photocopied my driver's license, insurance card, and address a dozen times over. These doctors share a clinic. They split fees and profits. They cover for each other on those weekends when they visit their wives or girlfriends. They each need their own piece of paper saying, "I, Michael Martinez, being of sound mind and body, do hereby affirm that I'll pay the exorbitant fees my insurance company eschews paying by whatever means necessary"?

That just ain't right.

But like the sign in the waiting room says -- well, technically, there is no such sign -- but if you don't sign the stupid piece of paper that they'll use against you in court, you don't get the magic healing powders.

So I signed the paper and sat down and waited. A guy came in right behind me and said, "I'm here to see Doctor whatshisname. They said I could see him at 9:30 AM."

I wanted to scream, "NOOOooo! That's my timeslot!" Double-booked in a doctor's office and I still didn't know I had locked my keys in the car.

Well, he had never crossed the threshold before, so fortunately for me (I think) he had more paperwork to fill out. They called my name and took me to waiting room number 2 before he turned in his clipboard.

Why does a doctors' office need two waiting rooms? I have no idea. Technically, I went to pre-examination room 3 first, where I was weighed ("Your scale is broken, miss") and asked why I had come. ("Oh, I was in the neighborhood, just thought I'd drop in and see if anyone had some spare donuts").

Why do people go to doctors' offices? I thought it was because we're sick or injured. Nope. Today people were flooding into this megaclinic for annual physical exams. Apparently, my doctor lives in part on the taxes that people pay to the local school systems because he and his colleagues spend part of their time giving physical exams to bus drivers.

Have you heard the joke where the bus driver goes into the doctor's office and says, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this with my arm"? Yeah, I've heard it too. Several times.

So school is about to start up, or has just started up, and we're spending all the taxpayers' money determining that bus drivers are capable of taking themselves into the doctors' offices. In the meantime, where are my Magic Healing Powders? I mean, there is a sample closet right in the hallway. I could almost smell them.

Well, after I had read about half of a Business Week magazine I had no interest in, someone called my name. "Great!" I thought. I'll just ditch the magazine and go see the doctor and get my magic healing powders.

Why do I always leave the magazine? Do you have any idea of how difficult it is to get a halfway interesting magazine in a doctor's office? And who knows where that magazine has been? Why do I even pick them up in the first place? Sick people have been reading those things. And bus drivers.

Well, whomever sat alone in Exam Room number 4 before me had left a couple of magazines. Obviously, they didn't have a sore throat, throbbing ears, and icky stuff in their chest. They could think clearly. So I picked up the Reader's Digest Special Humor Issue (Note: do not ever read the Reader's Digest Special Humor Issue again!).

I read the magazine. I looked at the pictures on the wall. Yes, this doctor puts pictures in his examination room. His practice includes helping a local high school football team and wrestling team. One plaque contains a letter from an 18-year-old boy thanking the doctor for sewing him back up and helping him go on to State Finals.

"Ohmigod I've got Doctor Frankenstein!" I thought.

I stared in horror at the pictures of young athletes lying in agony on fields around the state of Texas. This guy was in every picture, happy, smiling, loving his work. I started pacing, wondering if I could break out through the wall should Doctor Buzzsaw come through the door with a machete and a weedwacker.

Instead, I listened to various bus drivers talk about--whatever it is that bus drivers talk about during their annual physical exams. I ran through nearly all my cough drops.

"This guy won't get the magic healing powders joke," I concluded. My last grasp on sanity for the morning slipped away, vanishing in a dimly lit examination room I feared I might never leave again. Perhaps I had died and this was the Hell to which I had been consigned for eternity. I looked at my watch at 10:30 AM and saw that it was 10:30 AM. I had been here for an hour for my 9:30 AM (last minute) appointment and all I knew about this doctor was that he sewed kids up so they could go on to state finals...and he knows a lot of bus drivers.

Okay, the door opened and in comes this congenial man. "Hello, Michael, how are you feeling?"

Do you really want to know? I almost asked. But my throat was so dry all I could croak at him was, "Not so good."

He took one look down my throat, asked if I smoke (I don't), and said, "Looks like this is going around."

Oh, cool. I'll be the first of many people suffering in long lines at Houston area doctors' offices while the bus drivers get their physicals. Well, at least I now know what I'm up against.

He quickly wrote out a little prescription. And then another one. He said, "I hope you feel better in a few days," shook my hand, and bid me adiea, fare well, good-bye, and may have mumbled something about "Thank god it wasn't another bus driver" as I stumbled toward the clerk waiting to take my money.

What about the keys? Oh, yeah, I realized what happened when I got to the car. Fortunately, I carry a spare set.

And, yes, I now have my magic healing powders. I feel better already.

Dancing with death on American roads

2006-08-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

We killed more than 2100 American children on our highways in 2003. That's almost as many American soldiers as have died in Iraq since we first invaded.

The loss of American children to alcohol-impaired drivers receives less attention than the loss of American soldiers in a several-years' drawn-out war. Not to diminish the loss that the families of those soldiers feel, but a co-worker occasionally points out to me that we murder about 8,500 of our fellow citizens each year (data opens up in a spreadsheet you can download from the F.B.I. Web site).

I've only witnessed one murder in my lifetime. I hope I don't see any more. But I've had many near-misses in traffic accidents. American drivers may or may not be any worse than drivers in other countries, but we certainly don't devote enough effort to helping each other survive on our own roads. While I cannot do anything about the murder rate (other than to not add to it), I can (and do) strive to help keep the road accident death rate as low as possible.

The earliest near-miss I recall happened when I was 17. I was driving an old Ford LTD down a highway when the hood front hood flew up and I nearly spun out of control. Somehow, I managed to stop without careening into the cars beside me. Several vehicles stopped around me and the drivers got out to make sure I was able to get under way safely. That particular stretch of road was a bridge spanning the Savannah river between Georgia and South Carolina. Had I lost control of my vehicle, no one would have been able to get out of the way.

Not long after that, I was driving across the same bridge when two large semi trucks coverged upon me. One came in from the left and one came in from the right. Neither driver made any attempt to slow down or even honk at me. Our three lands became two lanes in less distance than I had available to accelerate past them. I had no choice but to hit the brakes and only barely got out of the way as the two trucks came side-by-side into the merging lanes. I didn't get so much as a backwards look from either driver to see if I was okay.

Truck drivers are generally regarded as being among the safest drivers in America. They are taught to be extremely careful when navigating their vehicles, and they are not allowed to drive more than 10 hours per day. But accidents still happen, and they are not always due to the truck drivers' negligence. My father once told me about a truck than ran amok on a Texas highway. The driver was apparently high on PCP or something and he drove up the wrong side of the highway, hitting vehicles and running over people.

I remember being forced off a busy street in Marietta, GA by a local business delivery truck that just jumped into my lane. I had to drive up onto a sidewalk without thinking to avoid being crushed. The girl who was with me at the time didn't even have time to panic (not that she was prone to panic -- but you'd think I'd at least have the satisfying memory of a blood-curdling scream). I could have hit a pedestrian, but the whole thing happened so quickly, I just never had a chance to think.

When I was 18 I took my sister and one of her friends to visit my grand-parents in Flroida. As we were coming back, somewhere on I-75 north of Macon, a heavy thunderstorm cut loose and showered the highway with some of the heaviest rain I have ever driven through. I tried to do the right thing and slow down, but everyone else on the highway kept driving at 60-65 miles per hour. This was at night and the traffic was bumper-to-bumper (most likely this was a holiday weekend, but I don't remember the exact date). I had borrowed my brother's old Pontiac Le Mans (and gotten a speeding ticket on the way down to Florida, so I was really trying to be careful).

Well, slowing down was just not an option. So I stayed where I was in the right lane and just hoped no one went sliding off the road. A huge semi came up behind me. Another one came up beside me. Suddenly, to my horror, the semi on my left decided to move into the right lane. I hit the horn on the steering wheel to warn him off. Nothing happened. My sister's friend stared at the truck in petrified horror. My sister, who had been sleeping in the back seat, shot up and stared at the steering wheel as I beat on it frantically. No horn sounded.

I had half a second to look over to my right to see that there was barely any shoulder to the road. I might have been able to ease off a little and started to move that way, but the truck driver behind me beat his own horn and flashed his lights. The truck on the left shifted back into his lane. Had I fully moved onto the shoulder, which was very soft, maybe I would have been able to stop. Maybe we would have gone flying off into the trees lining the highway. I don't know.

A few years later, while returning to Atlanta from another Florida trip, I decided to take the I-285 bypass around the east side of the city. I don't know why I went that way, but I was very tired. At the time I lived on the northwest side, but I-75 comes up in the southeast corner of Atlanta. So I drove off onto what I thought was the exit for I-285 east. It turned out to be an exit road, and as I drove in pounding rain at 60 miles per hour down this two-lane road, I thought to myself, "This doesn't look right."

The next moment I saw those right-arrow signs that terminate a stretch of pavement, indicating a road is making a 90-degree turn. I swerved as well as I could to avoid the signs but went flying off the end of the road. I actually got some elevation out of the angle of the pavement, so the front end of the car pointed up into the sky (and I saw nothing, as not only was it raining but I was also driving at night). After a moment, as I was screaming those famous last two words all Americans scream when they think they are about to die, the front end of the car angled down and I saw a field of mud in front of me.

I couldn't think of anything else to do but gun the engine. I hit the mud with a big floopy splash and pounded the gas pedal and wiggled the car back and forth. All I cared about was that I keep the vehicle moving because I didn't want to stop in the middle of a muddy field. I probably didn't have enough money for a tow truck (this was back in my college days, I think).

Well, I managed to wiggle out of that field and got back on the highway and drove home a little more awake than I had been.

Feel like you would be safe enough with me at the wheel? I've got more hair-raising stories.

There was the time I was driving down a snow-and-ice covered highway (at a very low rate of speed) and hit a patch of black ice. My car went spinning across the intersection where that highway crossed another busy highway. I ended up facing the wrong way but on the correct side of the highway. All the other cars around me stopped and waited for me to get my bearings, turn around, and go on about my business. That same day, I watched a Cadillac slide off the road and into a ditch, so I guess I was lucky.

There was the time when an ice storm came through Atlanta and I found myself driving down a narrow road. Don't recall where I was going (probably home) but I hit another patch of black ice. This time I knew enough to turn the wheel against the direction of the spin. That forced the car to slide straight rather than left into oncoming traffic or right into the very deep ditch beside me. I slid for many, many feet until I came to a full stop. I was on my side of the road and pointed in the right direction. When I tried to go forward again, the car started to spin out from under me into the ditch. That was just a very dangerous section of road.

There was the time I went through an intersection during a rain storm and my car spun out across the intersection as other cars passed through it. I didn't know what hydroplaning was until that night.

There was the time I was driving down U.S. Highay 41 in Marietta, minding my own business, when some idiot decided he was going the wrong way. He hit his breaks as he approached me from the opposite direction, cut in front of me, and turned around. I hit my brakes so hard my car spun out of control. By the time I stopped spinning I was facing north (I had been traveling south) in the northbound lanes. The idiot drove off without so much as a "Sorry about that -- I'm an idiot!"

Another time I was stopped at an intersection, sitting in a left-turn lane. There was a van in front of me, also stopped. Traffic was coming in the opposition direction. Some kid on a motorcycle pulled up beside us and then cut across the intersection. He got through okay but the lady driving the van decided she had enough time to do it, too. The cars coming the other way went screeching and careening in various directions, including the guy who ended up hitting me head on.

And then there was the time I pulled into a right-turn lane, began slowing down, and the cars in front of me opened up a gap and waved another car to make a turn in front of me. I slammed into that car hard enough to knock it off the road. The paramedics tied me to a board and hauled me off to the hospital. I came out of shock a few hours later and that's when I started to feel the pain of whiplash.

Through all these accidents and mishaps I did have sense enough to wear my seat belt. I've learned, since I was a foolish young driver, to slow down, look ahead, and assume that the other guy is an idiot who doesn't bother to look where he's going. I'm not in such a hurry that I have to get anywhere that fast. I wish other people felt the same way. If I miss a turn off, I don't hit my breaks and back up. I wait for the next exit. There is always another place to stop and turn off or turn around somewhere down the road.

But it takes most drivers a long, long time to appreciate that. Too long, in some cases. Thousands of people die in otherwise preventable accidents every year. We don't devote the resources to teaching ourselves how to drive responsibly on our roads that we can.

Cindy Sheehan lost a son in Iraq, and she has devoted her life to bringing the troops home to America. Frankly, in my opinion, if she devoted all that energy to helping make our highways safe -- to teaching people to drive more responsibly -- she'd have a better chance of helping to save lives that will otherwise be needlessly lost.

As for the murder rate: well, we need to figure out why people cross that line and see what it takes to discourage them from doing so. Maybe improving economic opportunities here at home will help -- maybe improving them in other countries will help. I can only take up one cause at a time.