SBD turns 1/12th

Snooze Button Dreams has been alive for a month now. My first luniversary! In that month I've:

• Had over 1600 visits. (And this is according to Sitemeter, which supposedly underreports badly.)


• Found 7 new regular blogs through looking at my referrers and checking who is linking to me.


• Learned to use the div tag and CSS (My html editor of choice is notepad because that was close to the best you could get when last I coded.)


• Been linked to a minimum of 48 times.


• Been blogrolled (on Blogrolling, that is) 6 times.


• Started participating in 3 different weekly blog submission memes.


• Had a blast writing again. Something that I thought I'd lost many moons ago.

When I first started this weblog I set a couple of objectives. The first was that, no matter what, I would stick with it for at least a month. I made that goal with no problem. It's been much more entertaining than I had feared and far more successful than I could have hoped. Between 60 and 90 visits a day? I've never had an audience that large before. Well, I should clarify that - I've never had a voluntary audience that large before. It's quite an ego stoker and to me it means I'm doing something right. I'm writing well enough that people enjoy my writing. That is very cool.

The other objective was to reevaluate after said month of blogging and decide what the blog was about. This is a tough one. Looking back at the things I've posted I like a lot of it and dislike some of it. One thing that stands out is that the humorous posts are easier to reread. They were also more fun to write. I think I'm going to bend in this direction and try to concentrate on witticisms, commentary and anecdotes of a humorous nature.

So, look for SBD to continue. Look for more (SBD) posts and less political ones (not that there were a whole lot of those anyway). Don't look for me to move the blog for a while. I'd like to get off of Blogger but it's free and that's infinitely cheaper than paying (and I'm a cheap, cheap, cheap bastard).

Thank you all for your support!

Posted by: Jim at 07:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The sun'll come out, tomorrow (SBD)

Tomorrow, Friday the 29th of August will be the one month anniversary of Snooze Button Dreams. Wait a sec. That doesn't make sense. Anniversary, by definition, can only be used for years. "Anni" is for "annual" after all. What would months be? "Moniversaries"? Nah, sounds like a problem ladies would discuss with their special doctors: "...and besides the discharge there's this odor. Doctor, do I have moniversaries?"

Lets check some synonyms for month and see what we can find. Dictionary.com gives us...nuthin'. Just synonyms for "indefinite time". Indefinite? Hello? Look at a bloody calendar. A month is pretty definite! Let's wander over to Merriam-Webster and see what they've got. "No entries found that match month." WTF?

(Note that the "F" in the above "WTF" stands for "Freak". I'm working on my potty mouth. You should too.)

Now I'm getting pissed intrigued. No synonyms for "month". Hmm... Let's try something cyclic but still representative of the time slice we're going for - the moon! After all, months used to be defined by the phases of the moon. "Mooniversary"? Nah. Too similar to "Moniversary" (go figure). Do I dare look for synonyms to "moon"? You betcha.

Hmmm. Merriam's has one entry found for "blue moon". Includes such niceties as "coon's age, dog's age, donkey's years". Hmmm... "Cooniversary?" I don't think so. I'd end up getting lynched. Dictionary.com has...holy frejoles! 21 entries! The mother load! Let's check these categories... Desire? Nope. Liking? Nope. Shape Entity? Heck no. Okay, after further review there is 1 out of 21 entries that may be workable - Landform. Options include "celestial body, crescent, full moon, green cheese, half moon, heavenly body, new moon, old moon, planetoid, pumpkin, satellite, Sputnik". Sputnik? This is a synonym for "moon"?

Alrighty then. I'm on my own. Let down by the most modern reference materials that have been developed since man first put brush to the cave wall. It's a sad, sad, day when I can't reproduce my precociousness through phony internet research. Sad indeed. The gloves are off now, might as well drop the pretense. What was supposed to happen here was that I would go through some make believe research, creatively "guiding" my choice towards what I had already really selected. It's "luna" or "lunar" I was going for. Lunaversary, get it? Like "Loony-versary". Loony = crazy. 'Cause it has been a crazy month and "Lunaversary" would also give an amusing self deprecating slight at my own borderline sanity.

How can "luna" not be related to month or moon? Thanks a whole lot, dictionary.com. You just screwed my whole freaking post. And don't EVEN talk to me, Merriam!

UPDATE: I apologize profusely for the gross stuff at the beginning. You know, the "discharge and odor". Don't know what I was thinking there. Yuck.

UPDATE2: And those two so-called reference sites, those cast iron bitches of alliteration, don't have any synonyms for "luna" or "lunar" either!

Posted by: Jim at 02:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Pollin, Pollin, Pollin

PREVIOUS POLL

Would you let your kids go to this party? (Adult supervised, alcohol served)

Yes: 42 (76%)
No: 12 (21%)
Maybe: 1 (1%)

Excellent. That should mean that there's a decent chance I won't get arrested when I throw one for Bear in a dozen years or so.

NEW POLL

Why do Saturday Night Live movies suck so badly?
	Standup comedians not the best choice to cast as actors.
	Stretching a 3 minute sketch into an 80 minute movie defies the laws of physics.
	Obligatory "fart joke" is just so very, very tired.
	Lack of humor on SNL since mid 90's has resulted in a dearth of good material.
	Lack of anyone funny on SNL since mid 90's has resulted in a dearth of good actors.
	Saturday Night Live puts out movies?
	All of the above.
	Other (please comment)
	What the heck are you talking about? SNL movies kick ass! Roxbury forever, man! Woooooh!!

Posted by: Jim at 10:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Blog, blog, blog

Wow, I'm really blogging today, aren't I? Two referrals in less than two hours. I'm not sure if I've had two of those since I put this site up.

Anyway, I've got a couple of nice "(SBD) style" posts that I'm working on but you won't see those or much of anything else from me for a few days. My little bro is in town visiting from the apple state. I haven't seen him since he was a kid (he's 26 now) and I just saw you today so you can see why I've got to give him the preferential treatment.

Have a great weekend everybody. Don't wait up, I'll be out late.

Posted by: Jim at 04:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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BlogSpot is pissing me off

I know, I know. It's free so what do I expect?

Well, I'll tell you. I expect it to work right! I expect it not to introduce problems in other applications. To be honest I expect it to function perfectly as it's designed. You see, I'm fairly anal retentive. Little things that most people shrug off irk me. When I see something slightly "off" it begins to invade my thoughts in a pernicious and aggravating fashion, growing in scope beyond all rational boundaries until it becomes an obsessive need to fix or destroy. This is actually a positive trait in my line of work (software quality assurance, otherwise known as bug hunting). This isn't an all encompassing character trait though. I don't obsess about a clean desk or a tidy silverware drawer. My anal side manifests primarily when I'm dealing with something that I'm personally responsible for - something I've created.

My own blog is now putting me into the throws of obsessive behavior because of some screwed up crap in Blogger that I can't identify. Look at my right sidebar. Notice the 2 pixel wide line of white along the right side? That's not supposed to be there. In fact, according to the template coding it isn't there. Can't possibly be there. When I preview through Blogger it isn't there. When I take the html and display it on a local page it isn't there. It's only there when it is BlogSpot that is serving the html.

What the hay? The sidebar is also wider when BlogSpot is the host. By a good 30 pixels. What the heck is going on here? Is that intruded BlogSpot banner ad screwing things up?

So what do I do now? The situation cannot be allowed to continue. That's simply not an option for my sick mind. I can either change the template again (but I like this design!) or move off of BlogSpot to a host that won't screw with my html when they display it. A new host would be nice but it has to be free. It's also a hassle of immense proportions compared to the size of the problem.

Crap. Guess it's time to monkey around with the template again.

Update: All better now. I moved the sidebars in so it doesn't matter if there's a wacky 2 pixel screwup off one side of them. Nice little whitespace addition. Sort of makes the blog look more "magaziney", if you know what I mean.

Posted by: Jim at 07:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Move 'em up, move 'em out, rawhide!

In my drug induced delerium I have decided that now is the perfect time to dismantle my computer and all its periphery and move them to a more secure (read: childproof) location. If protracted silence from this corner ensues you may safely assume that I fucked it up.

Posted by: Jim at 06:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Construction in progress

Finally decided to take the plunge and start messing around with the blog template. I'm going with teal as the main color. Although my prefered colors are mostly blues I've always liked teal on web sites and other electronic media. Blues tend to be too bright, too pastel, or trying too hard to be teal. Future improvements will include a real live graphic for the site name, another sidebar (links will go on the left, a picture and all the other junk on the right) and more whitespace. Or should that be tealspace? My writing tends to be longer than that seen in a lot of blogs so more empty space will make my stuff look less intimidating.

Any suggestions or requests are quite welcome.

Update - help needed: Got the second sidebar working but a problem has become evident. Specifically, it looks like crap where the left sidebar cuts off. I like the way the two sidebars look, framing the posts, but my anal retentive nature can't allow that messy transition when the left sidebar ends. Anybody know how to force a CSS element to take 100% of available height? I tried specifying exactly that (height:100%) but it had no effect.

Update 2: Got the picture up. My wife has taken just about a gazilliion pictures of me and the kids and this is the only one where I don't look like a total dork, just a partial dork. Maybe I'm just not photogenic. Or maybe I'm a dork.

Nah.

Posted by: Jim at 09:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Talk about feature rich...

PBD has a poll. Check out the sidebar. Cool, eh? Courtesy of Pollhost, I'll now feature a new, exciting, topical and amusing poll each and every month (except when I can't think of anything or I forget about it or get too lazy).

Posted by: Jim at 08:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Search Engine Hits: 101

How to get more search engine hits? Do a piece on the search engines! Hehehe. Sometimes I'm so clever I shock myself. I'm sure nobody has ever done something like this before. [/bragadoccio]

Seriously though, I started peeking around at what people really are searching for and was a bit surprised. First off, most of the search engines give you a peek into what is being searched. Take a look:

Altavista Top Queries
Top 5 Gaining Queries
miss universe
amber frey
amelia vega
miss universe 2003
martha stewart
Top 5 Declining Queries
memorial day
Matrix Reloaded
Bob Hope
indy 500
VBScript.NET

Ask Jeeves IQ
Top 10 Searches
Bob Hope
Uday Hussein
Neil Armstrong
Kobe Bryant's accuser
Lara Croft
Seabiscuit
Governor Jane Swift
Internet dating services
Dubai
Atom bombs

Lycos 50
Top 10 Searches
Kobe Bryant's Accuser
Kobe Bryant
KaZaA
IRS
Clay Aiken
Dragonball
Pamela Anderson
Brooke Burke
Britney Spears
Las Vegas

Yahoo Buzz Index
Top 10 Overall Searches
Britney Spears
Kobe Bryant
Angelina Jolie
Atkins Diet
Kazaa
NASCAR
50 Cent
Christina Aguilera
Jennifer Lopez
Playstation 2

Google Zeitgeist
Top 5 Gaining Queries
lance armstrong
seabiscuit
bob hope
angelina jolie
eiffel tower
Top 5 Declining Queries
british open
celia cruz
ronaldinho
orlando bloom
beyonce

What does all this tell us? Most obviously it screams out that internet users as a whole are primarily entertainment mongers. The astonishing thing it says is that users of Ask Jeeves are generally looking for more serious news related items than users of the other major engines. The other really astonishing thing is that sex searches aren't nearly as prevalent as generally believed.

Credit where due. Most of these links were found at Search Engine Watch

Posted by: Jim at 11:58 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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PBD Found by Googler

This is neat. PBD has been found by somebody doing a Google search for 9 minute snooze. This blog is the number 1 return for that search; ranking above the price comparison shopping that you get on every bloody search result now. It ranks above the "find this totally unrelated stream of disparate words at Amazon.com". It even ranks above a couple older blogs (none has Snooze Button as their overall title or description).

Now, how do I get more Google hits? Hmmm...I'll have to think on this.

Posted by: Jim at 11:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It all starts coming together...

De caught Snooze Button feva. Venomous Kate bit me (it hurts so good). Who's next? Come on, you know you want me on your blogroll.

I've got De in my own daily reads now but I almost missed her. Thanks to Site Meter I caught referrals coming from her blog and went to check her out. Good stuff. That sort of figures though - If I'm entertaining to her then there's a decent chance she'll be entertaining to me. That goes for all the rest of y'all too. Lemme know if you roll me cause I want to check you out too. (I'm paranoid that way.)

Unrelated but important:

Per Venomous Kate's frighteningly legalesque disclaimer she will no longer be refered to as The Venomous One in these posts. I may, if deemed necessary, continue to misname/describe her as Adorable and/or Callipygian with the knowledge that the party of the first part (once removed, on my Mother's side) (that's me) would then technically be classified as an asswipe, per disclaimer item 1 as set forth postwith and heretofor relayed by said party of the second part (Adorable Callipygian Kate).

Posted by: Jim at 11:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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How'd he get so good so fast?

Excellent suggestions and hints from Sheila and a very helpful FAQ blog. Bookmark the FAQ and go visit Sheila.

Now!

Posted by: Jim at 09:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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