Shaky Danny

  The defaults seem the opposite of common sense. AdSense is pestering me about an ad.txt file. I finally get a custom one in settings. Then I just figure out to click the blog file in manage your sites to get it scanned. If they want a file why not just make the file? I can find my blog in Bing but not in Google. I hesitate to mention it because maybe Bing is in error. Is it something with indexing? I go to Google Search Console. The page is crawled but not indexed. So, I request indexing. They notify me they are thinking about it. Weeks later, still thinking. I finally found a way in search console to request another crawl, but that crawl didn’t show up on the report. Why is the default for blogspot to not show up in Google? How neat that I can request and control how Google scans my page, not. The reason Google surpassed Yahoo is because they didn’t try to control searches. What else is Google missing? It would be nice to have a table of contents. 

  Christine asked: -Why is Canada burning? Without hesitation I responded: -Lumber companies planted the wrong trees and it got warm. Seems glib, but in this case my cynicism was correct. If you go out on Google Earth, it is clear that the arboreal, original Canadian forest did not burn. Lumber companies proffer all sorts of rationalizations. Whatever they say, it didn’t work. If they take refuge in regulation, consider the Exxon Valdez. Exxon Mobil went into court and said that Alaska did not require double wall tankers. Everyone laughed because the reason for that was because Exxon had lobbied against it. Covering North America in soot is a lot worse than dumping oil on beaches. Lumber companies have no refuge. This is their game. They ran it. Lumber companies don’t own all the land, but they did the cutting. They didn’t know it was getting warmer? The cutover areas flamed. Arboreal sometimes burns, not like this. Please prevent these boobies from planting trees. Th...

Roller Derby was the most popular show on television. Then advertisers realized the demographic had no money. Hill Street Blues had lousy ratings but the demographic was management. Now they can target ads to individuals rather than shows. But the current marketing is pathetic. Given all the individual demographic that advertisers have I should be soft putty in their hands. Instead, they parrot my own history back at me. Why tell me about a site I have already visited or a product I have just purchased? Tell me something I don’t know. Amazon tries. “If you like this, you might consider that”. If I were an advertiser, I would want to screen out the people who know about me. When Harold Washington, mayoral candidate, was passing in front of the CO-OP grocery store, the bagger yelled to him: -Harold, go somewhere they don’t know you. Washington was smart enough to listen. When I see poorly targeted ads, I suspect the company is bad at everything else. There is a fine line between re...

Many people in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, are installing sewer valves for their homes. Some years back we had an impressive deluge and this is a reaction. Your stack or stand pipe may drain directly out to the street sewer. Putting a check valve or flapper in the way means that when the system hits load those houses refuse service and the overall pressure on the system will increase precisely at the time it is stressed. If you don’t have a flap then super tough on you, the effluent has to go somewhere. A product that creates its market. Once everyone has flaps there should be popped flaps or broken pipes. Flaps are necessary on flood plains. As flood plain construction is common it is difficult for other municipalities, such as Oak Park, to deny their use. Chicago used to require a basement floor drain. You were expected to share your suffering with your neighbors. Most people have their stack drain into their own sewer that then drains into the street sewer. This is a nice fea...

  It is a cruel twist of technology that librarians have become one of the most computerized professions.   Whether transporting their bibliographic files across platforms or navigating all the varieties of text processing and information retrieval the technical expertise expected of them seems totally disjointed from the personalities that this profession should attract. Like Amazon, librarians rarely touch books. What librarians want to do, and are rewarded for, is party: events and fund raisers.   The only people in the stacks anymore are kids playing and making out.   Similarly, authors are now plunging the depths of HTML to properly format their works.   Books have become video graphic experiences.   I fully expect hypertext markup language to be taught in Humanities. Professors make use of services to check for plagiarism, grammar and composition. Except perhaps for Prince, who cut all his own tracks, most people work with others. Authors have const...

BlogSpot just created a beta software update for statistics. BlogSpot used to pollute my view count with my own visits.   It offered an option to turn that off but then it didn’t keep it clicked. Why would someone want to count their own visits? Now it throws me into Analytics which seems overly concerned with Google users. I used to be on Open Salon.   When that closed I chose BlogSpot believing there would be permanence. It was tedious cutting and pasting my entries. Who thought there would be so many? I lost my dates and comments. You would think that there could be an easier transition. That may be working now. Why is it so difficult to have an index or table of contents? I had AdSense on Open Salon. BlogSpot sent me over to AdSense with a new ID which AdSense rejected. I am now trapped in a perpetual user ID embrace from which there is no release. Please don’t send any scripted solutions unless you have tried them yourself.   AdSense sucks as well. You ...

I recently attempted to drive clutch again. For those who can, it is perfectly easy to depress the clutch while pressing the gas. For the rest of us, it is difficult. Without automatic transmission the roads would be far safer, bicycles and public transportation far more popular and spouses more faithful.   Whether or not you do so, if you can’t drive stick you are not a competent human being and shouldn’t have a car. Guns today are different than they were. That is why all the quick draw McGraw’s and shootemup   Joes are out there. I don’t mind the people who have been raised with guns and understand the culture and behavior that requires. But those people are a very small group, and you probably won’t hear from them. All guns are artillery in the sense that their projectiles have a parabolic trajectory. In order to have any range bullets have to go up and come down. It is horrifying to see the Drill kids, called that because they are proud that they don’t know how ...

In 2007 I got a peculiar diagnostic on my PC, which led to my replacing the battery on the motherboard.    It was slow booting up as well.    The two primary choices were getting another PC or a laptop.    With a laptop, you don’t need an UPS (uninterruptible power source) since it comes with a battery.    It also has a much smaller footprint.    Still I would feel like a chump when something broke and I had to send it in for fixing.    Lap tops have even tinier little connections and all sorts of gotchas when you take them apart. Usually by the time that happens, it’s time for a new one.    There is the possibility that I might actually carry it around with me.    I determine to get a lap top. There are two choices Dell or HP.    They both have nice web sites.    HP is offering 64-bit machines, Dell isn’t.    Why would I want to have fewer bits?    I’m an American;...

I may be one of the last people to listen to radio in my car.    As that may be, there is one radio station that really upsets me.    I love the WBEZ jazz shows that are on late at night.    Every so often, the station choice rotates around and I find myself listening to the NPR news feed on WBEZ.    Understand that I have invited you into my car but I may not have chosen to give you my undivided attention.    For one thing, I am driving.    Admittedly, I also hate beer commercials, opera; many things irritate me.    However, no one else makes purposely-rude and dangerous noises just to attract my attention.    If something you say interests me, I will attend to your program.    Being rude will not help. When I hear a soft car horn within my car, the implication is that there is a loud car horn outside my car.    When it turns out that the segment is trying to convince me that they are...

January 30, 2003 -            I would like to be a plumber. My heart lifts at this comment by Joshua, my fifteen-year-old son..    Parenting is a constant balance between insane euphoria and abject terror.    I reply cautiously. -            You have to be careful about electrical shocks.    It’s common to ground electrical equipment through the plumbing.    You should also keep your tetanus and hepatitis shots current.    There are opportunities to own your own business.    Like anything else, if you’re good you should always find work.    The hardest part is walking into the bathroom and saying, - -This is going to cost twenty grand. My kitchen faucet has been dripping.    It’s getting steadily worse.    I have become adept at moving the faucet to minimize the noise it makes.  ...