jr conlin's ink stained banana

Yeah, ok, i'm not a political blogger, but this is really starting to get on my nerves.

i'm not a big fan of a two party solution, but i know full well that a three party one will never work either.

See, the problem with a three party solution is the fact that you don't have three groups of people. Take me, for instance. While i've got some liberal tendencies, i like to think i'm actually reasonably conservative about things. i believe in paying taxes for the services i get, things like a sufficiently supplied military to defend me, roads with pavement, police, firefighters, rescue equipment, and electricity and reliable communications. That sort of stuff. You know, the dues for being a citizen. i also believe that if two people are so committed to each other that they're willing to support each other out of it, i'm for that too. Heck, i'm married and not contributing to the population growth either.

But i don't want things like a soviet style government that believes the best way to deal with terrorism is to lock up it's own citizens (that's becoming both parties by the way), that science is wrong and misguided, and that $50,000, three ton SUVs need tax breaks.

Personally, i think that there needs to be four parties. Republican (See current party), Republican Lite (who believes in less government control and accountable spending), Democratic Lite (who believes in balanced social reforms and increased welfare programs) and Democratic (See San Francisco). The idea being that since having one party in office all the time is "a bad idea" (see history), the four groups would generally switch off governing with the radicals getting less time in office than the more normal groups.

Sadly, even with their own parties, the extremes wouldn't be happy. They'd still creep in and figure out how to "correct" the platform in increasingly substantial ways because their parties were just ineffective in the past years votes, and the folks running for election would be too freaking spineless (see current election) to just stand up and say, "Uhm, no. We gave you a party. Go away and play with yourselves."

But if they did, man, that party would win by a landslide.

i'm headed east for about a week starting Wednesday. Although the payroll department is considering it a vacation, rest assured, there's family involved so it's not going to be one.

That's beside the point, however. The one thing i've never understood is how, whenever i have such a trip planned, my work load seems to grow. Yes, i know i'm not going to be around, so i need to get a few things done ahead of time so that they can be deployed while i'm out (and i try to supress the cold shivers i get thinking about that), but there always seem to be even more projects tossed on my plate with the foreknowledge that i've got to do things like pack when i get home.

i mean, where are these projects when i grumbling that i don't have that much to work on and lots of time to do them? Yes, i like working under tight deadlines, but crimany!

Ah well, enough slacking for today. i didn't need to eat lunch anyway.

i decided to replace my wife's (and mine when i'm on the road) computer with something a bit more up-to-date. The fact that i had a week long trip back east and wouldn't be able to play City of Heroes on the old laptop had NOTHING to do with this decision.

(Having a laptop with built-in wireless, 60GB drive and something faster than a 850 P3 did, however)

Naturally, it being an OEM laptop, it came with all sorts of stuff i happily deleted as soon as the general configuration was gone. AOL, MSN, iTunes and the lot all hit the digital dustbin without me skipping a beat. That, of course left a fair amount of stuff that polluted the start bar.

Mind you, some of it was for stuff like MS Office 2003, Norton Anti-virus, and a few others, which i sorta thought might be useful.

HA! Fooled me!

Turns out that while they were installed all right, they weren't licensed. For that honor and glory, i'd have to fork over a couple of hundred bucks (by the time i was done) extra and get the various keys to their domains. Uhm… no.

Look, i just dropped over a grand for a laptop. i'm not a fan of dealer add-ins for cars, particular when they're not cheap to begin with.

Ah well, it just meant that after i installed Open Office 1.1.2, Avast Anti-virus, Zone Alarm, Xara X1, Jasc PaintShop Pro, Nero and the usual programs, i had to spend a few extra minutes uninstalling the bo(g|n)us software.

It seems like such a waste to simply trash these CDs since i'm never going to install them. i wonder if i can return these disks to their corporate owners? Postage Due? Duct taped to farm machinery?

i'm actually pretty sure it's not that uncommon. i mean i'm sure that some folks who work at KFC are constantly asked what the eleven secret herbs ans spices really are, or folks at Keebler are asked if there's really elfen magic inside their Double Choco-Fudgies (or whatever). Fact is, no, no they don't.

So it should come as little surprise to any former or current fast food employees that i have no better idea how things are ranked than anyone else does. Granted, unlike fast-food folks, i'm actually very interested in what those secret ingredients are, because understanding them makes the (micro)company i work for score higher than our competition, and considering that we weren't even showing up in the top 300 pages (not results, PAGES) for most terms a year ago, i'd say that being in the top ten for most results on almost every search engine is fair testimony that hard work pays off, even if Jeremy thinks i'm evil. (i'm not evil, i blame society.)

One of the cardinal sins of SEO is "Thou Shalt Not Create A Page Full Of Irrelevant Links". This is considered building a "link farm" or a page that's designed to be attractive to spiders, but full of just random ass links to anywhere. It's guaranteed to give your site a rank of zero.

Naturally, i knew this going into the Official "Official" Registry of the Internet, and it came as no surprise that after a week of being listed, it suddenly vanished from the listings. Yep, the mighty PR0 had decended upon it like the rightful hammer of the gods.

No big, it's a joke, not a business.

In fact, that's what i was thinking when i got a request this morning from a guy who wanted to be the Official Graphic and Web Design Site of the Internet (i was tempted to give it to him solely because his site is awfully green. Still It didn't figure that he'd actually want to be associated with a site that was effectively black listed, and i was in the process of telling him, when i noticed something odd, very odd, very odd indeed.

Apparently, something twonked and now that particular list of links is less of a link farm than it used to be.

Of course, i have absolutely no idea how the hell that happened, how to figure out what magic occured, or who to send the check to.

i still have no interest in designating the official teen pr0n v1agra casino of the internet, since i'd rather be associated with equally meaningless designations, but now i'm wondering if this is a bug and when it might be fixed. (Me? Paranoid and pessamistic? The devil, you say!)

Ah, the fun of the Intarweb.

One of the first things i usually tell people in arguments is that "Everyone has an 'agenda'." That's not a bad thing. Everyone is the product of their personal beliefs and studies and having an opinion is not only your right, but your obligation.

The problem is when you don't believe in your conviction enough to let it stand on it's own.

You see, having an opinion means you're wiling to defend it against attack as well as being able to argue it's favor. It also means recognizing that you may be incorrect in your belief and may need to alter it. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, it's called education and even the greatest minds recognize it.

If someone doesn't have a strong enough opinion that he or she can defend on it's own, i've always found that person more than willing to use something else. i've seen folks use "improper grammer", "patriotism", and (of course) "independant surveys", but it's always entertaining to watch someone go at it anyway.

For folks usually interested in how they sound and appear to others, are these folks even thinking about what they're saying?