Thank you google, for nothing as of yet August 27, 2006
Posted by Aaron in : General , 3commentsSo I installed google analytics last week on the site just to see some other pretty graphs of visitors. Apache’s logs indicate an average of 106 visits a day, 20% of which are from people using Firefox. After a few days of running Google Analytics, I’d accumulated 8 visits total for the period, all of which are IE. I did a bit of checking and discovered that there seemed to be a glitch in the javascript that google had provided, so being a good “netzin” (net citizen for all you folks who abhore eWords) I contacted google’s support. Support responded with a generic email sending me a dozen links that upon visiting them didn’t even seem to be related to my original request except maybe by random selection of keywords. So I responded and more or less said “yeah guys that didn’t do it, here is some more information about my browser/system config”. If the support ticket still seemed to be open btw I would be patiently waiting to hear back rather than complaining in a somewhat public manner. But friday I received an email directing me to fill out a support issue completion survey to give google an idea “how they had done”… Huh? did I miss something? Nope, problem still exists. I just got around to filling the survey out, and I was polite in the text areas, but I was very clear that the technician hadn’t even tried to resolve my problem.
I’m going to wait to see if there is a new response to this come monday though, with any luck I’ll be able to update this post with news of the problem being resolved.
Update 1: The saga continues, it seems that the issue hadn’t actually been closed, and a tech responded today. Analytics is starting to show a couple hits from firefox, but both the individual browser & the total hits are far lower than what awstats is reporting (7 visits over a six day period instead of the average 100 visits a day that awstats reports, even if they are filtering out non-unique visitors, I get enough hits from people searching for information about small dogs and php errors in hebrew a week to account for that, let alone other readers). So the saga continues, though I am still hopeful for a satisfactory resolution.
The Latest and Greatest in the Free-Sex Movement and Other News August 24, 2006
Posted by NL in : News, This should not be happening , 2commentsAt work today I heard on the news that Plan B has been approved for over-the-counter sell to non-minors. This is great news for those of you in the Free-Sex Movement (if there is such a thing); in fact it is great news for anyone who thinks kids are a waste of time and money… or that the world population is getting out of control (though much of Europe and China are experiencing quite the opposite). With this new reason about which to have nothing to worry concerning sex — that is concerning with my responsibility to fathering any children that should result of said ‘relationship’ — I now have free reign to, well, ‘love’ any girl that should also mutually want to ‘love’. Since until now I had no other significant plans for this evening, tonight I will go see if I can find two or three women with whom to spend some good, quality, ‘romantic’ time. Particularly now that there is no need to worry about with whom I should do the deed, thanks to the evolutionary world view I was taught in school, “Let’s just love each other, Baby!” And, thankfully, the baby will not be crying out to us in nine months.
I love doing this sort of satirical work. Honestly, this seems that it might go hand-in-hand with other news about which I heard today — safe embryonic stem cell research. These embryos only have 8-10 cells, they don’t have many cells to give up. Now I’m not in the research, but why can’t they use stem cells to create more stem cells? And secondly what’s so great about embryonic stem cells? — do adult stem cells not produce the same results? Adult stem cells occur in the umbilical cord… those people dying to do stem cell research should open delivery rooms in the front of their buildings and harvest the umbilical cords. Adult stem cells occur in our fatty tissue… — this one is great — those people dying to do stem cell research should start giving away free lyposuctions! It’d make a great commercial: “Fat? Overweight? Want to loose some pounds? Those diets not working for you? That burn-more-fat pill not doing it? Well, we have the solution for you. We can help you take off those pounds and you can help further medical research, save countless lives and support stem cell research in the process! Stop suing McDonalds because it makes you fat! In fact eat at McDonald’s and Burger King for every meal. We’re giving out free lyposuctions — you heard us correctly folks — free lyposuctions to the first 100+ million people who call us now at 1-800-555-LTWN [Loose The Weight Now]. But you have to call within the next fifty millennia. That’s right we’re not restricting this offer to the next twenty minutes, we’re extending it to the next fifty millennia. Call us now at 1-800-555-LTWN, that’s 1-800-555-5896, 1-800-555-LTWN. [Then speaks the guy who can a hundred sentences in the time you can say one...] This offer is good only for those people who clinically have more than 3% body fat because having less is just not healthy at all, for those who are mal-nourished or for those who live underwater. You must call within the next 50 millennia to schedule your appointment. Patients are reminded that lyposuction is required so there are no pills or diets involved. We encourage patients to continue eating in such ways that they could return for a second or third or more-th visit since the constant supply of stem cells is required for the research.”
If you think that programming is just jiberish… August 24, 2006
Posted by Aaron in : Play , add a commentSometimes you are right (courticy of Pete):
Supper break August 20, 2006
Posted by Aaron in : Work , add a commentWell I’m at work right now putting in some hours toward my upcoming vacation over labor day. I just went around making sure to check if I was the last one left (there were 3 others at one point, and I got here at 1 so possibly more) and turning off lights as I went. Supper at this point consists of tootsie rolls left over from candy that was brought in on Friday, though when I go home in about an hour I’ll probably eat something real. Last night I sat down to write a post about the canoe trip but was too tired to finish it (you try paddling a kayak by yourself for 3 or 4 hours and see how motivated you are to use your arms in any fashion), so it languishes in draft-land right now, I really haven’t much more to add to it so I’ll try to remember to get it up later tonight.
Sweet August 14, 2006
Posted by Aaron in : Play , add a commentNow anyone can spell with the 
Oh you’ve got to be kidding me August 12, 2006
Posted by Aaron in : General , add a comment
Summer Update August 2, 2006
Posted by BatWeasel in : General , 1 comment so farSummer had her first doctor’s appointment today. She has already regained all her birthweight (9 pounds) and is very healthy. The doctor said she has all the strength and reflexes of a one month old - probably because of the exercising she before she was born! Tomorrow she has her hearing test and I get half my staples out, both appointments about an hour’s drive away so that’ll be our first big excursion. I’m really not looking forward to it but I’ll have Jerod and my sister along so they’ll get us through.
Something I finally found out August 2, 2006
Posted by Aaron in : General , 1 comment so farSo I don’t know about everyone else, but I’ve always wondered what Mr Mister was saying in their song Kyrie, but never actually gone out to look it up because I never knew how to spell it. Well I happened to stumble across the phrase again ( Kyrie Eleison in case you are wondering) and so armed went hunting for a wasckally wabbit. It turns out that Kyrie Eleison is greek for “Lord have Mercy”. Here are the lyrics for the song, and here is a more detailed explaination of the phrase.
Missing MST3K? August 1, 2006
Posted by Aaron in : Play , add a commentCheck out RiffTrax. Started by Mike Nelson formerly of, you guessed it, MST3k, this site just released its 2nd track. The basic concept is to provide an MP3 that is as long as the movie (and has some help synchronizing with it from what I hear. They cost $2 each, but it sounds like it’ll be worth it, the first two movies they’ve done (just released a 2nd today) are Road House and The Fifth Element. Both should be comedic gold, and the advantage of doing it as MP3s is that they don’t have to get the permission of the film makers since they aren’t distributing it.