Author Archives: Randy Peterman

Happy Birthday Abby!

On August 22nd, 2004 at 2:12 (14:12:00) Abigatil Ruth was born to our family. Today she’s two, tomorrow she’s 2 and 1/365th.

This last week she used several funny phrases but one that cracked me up was her excitement about "Schunday School."

Table Tennis. Is it an Olympic Sport?

You’ll see here that today Table Tennis was played as an Olympic sport. Or all of the marginal sports in the olympics, I think it ranks pretty high along with Beach Volleyball and Handball. I think we need to add Foosball and Pool to the list of Olympic sports. While we’re at it why isn’t programming an Olympic sport?
<imagination>
"We’re in the C preliminaries and we’ve got Dennis Richie here to help us understand this sport. Dennis when you invented C did you think it would ever come to this?"

"No, I’m ashamed and I can’t believe they’ve turned something so refined as programming into a cheap, patronization or valuable skills"

"You’re right Dennis, but we’re here and they’re ready to start. What libraries do you think the judges are looking for the coders to include, Dennis?"

"Shut Up."

"Right. I think that Dave’s variable names are going to get points deducted, they’re not very intuitive. The judges are going to mark him down for that!"
</imagination>
And as you can see I have an overactive imagination.

I Have a Problem

Matt writes that milk gives him a pretty serious feeling of time passing.

You know, my daughter will be 2 tomorrow and she drinks so much milk (my wife insists it is good for her, something about strong bones and lots of calcium) and so the milk never spoils before we drink it. But like a smoker with smoking, it’s hard for me to quit looking at the date when I buy it. Does that make me a milk dater? 🙂

[later at my MDA meeting]
"My Name is Randy Peterman and I date milk."
"Good Randy, admitting you have a problem is the first step"
"It’s just so hard! If I don’t check the date I lie awake at night thinking: Don’t cry over spoiled milk. It’s just no use."

I have a problem.

Abby Vacuum

We got Abby a vacuum, well not really, she had one of those, but her grandparents pitched in and got her a matching table and chair and kitchen set and this morning as she walked down the hallway towards our room she stopped at the kitchen, which I had strategically placed where she would see it and never made it to our room, which was fine because I was hastily reading the Three Musketeers and Jessica was working on sleeping so that she would be well rested for the next part of the last-minute preparation and then be ready for the party.

If that run-on sentence was the most running you’ve done lately, shame on you for not exercising more often. I’ll report more and post pictures after said birthday party (Oh, and for the record her birthday is actually tomorrow but Sundays are busy).

Error Correcting for Search Engines

I just got a link through from one of the major search engines with someone looking for "Abby Earler". Apparently this gal Abby is a body builder. Apparently people are looking for pictures of her. I had a typo on my site that put the name Abby close to what was supposed to be the word "earlier". So I fixed it in the article and that way someone looking for Mz. Abby Earler will get sent to sites that feature her and not mine [of course by writing her name I’ve really made that tougher on myself – the engines will now find the words juxtaposed].

The point is to reduce the number of bad searches that come to your site in favor of correct searches. Earlier in my postings about accuracy in search engine results I had mentioned "Powdered by WordPress". It amused me and so I shared it, but I think it is key that when you find errors in things being linked to your site you correct them [my typos are notorious – something I need to work on]. Whether you concern yourself with Google, Yahoo! MSN or the like ranking your content it is courtesy to other surfers if you correct posts for their sake. The next time they spider your site they’ll see that the content changed and update their databases.

By targetting the content on your site with accuracy you’ll most likely rank higher in the search results for those terms because the correct term shows up on your page whereas incorrect spelling and terminology may very well dilute your content to the 'eyes' of a search engine.

It’s a simple concept but one that I’m working on myself and one that I thought I’d share. If you’ve got other tips on search engine friendliness please post them in the comments.

Browse Happy – Pick Any Browser but Internet Explorer

BrowseHappy.com is a web site dedicated to telling you about the alternatives to Internet Explorer. The thing that struck me as powerfule is that it’s not Windows Specific options for Mac and Linux are given [granted IE is not available for Linux].

Take a look and consider that if you’re using Internet Explorer you may be getting shafted when it comes to surfing the 'net.

Hat tip: Digital Web

Telejournalists – the Next Faith-Based Religion

As is obvious in this documentary:'George W. Bush: Faith in the White House' we see that with enough money, quality editing and political slant you can create a "counter documentary". Hopefully one to offset the harm done to the Bush campaign by Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" documentary.

OK, here’s the part I don’t get: Why are people so easily persuaded by the television medium? I don’t believe anything I read on the internet [a comparable medium] just because it’s published on the internet. I look at the source, I evaluate the source, I evaluate the quotes and context of the story and then I add it to the information I’ve collected on the subject so far and then I do some calculations to adjust my opinion on the subject if needed.

I recognize that no one is completely non-partisan, no one is unbiased (despite a desire to be so) and in short no one stands on neutral ground. However, Television all too often trusted when it needs to be very carefully screaned for accuracy when it comes to news, politics and religion. The news producer wants the following things to keep your attention:

  1. Extreme statements to get your interested
  2. Process it so that you don’t have to think very much [pre-interpreted news is opinion]
  3. Foofy content so as not to really get you thinking about the deepr, longer term impact of events

And that list could go on much longer, but I think that summarizes some of the weaknesses of the current media situation.

So, if you watch the news, and you believe everything they say at faith value but you consider yourself an agnostic, athiest or ignorant – you’ve got a faith just like me – it’s just in something other than Christ.

Viewers of Olympic Swimming Confused by Acronym

Many viewers of Olympic swimming were confused by the Men’s IM 200 event. When announcers said, "Up next, the Men’s 200 IM event…" blank stares popped up all over the United States and Canada as men ran to their computers to load up AOL and begin instant messaging.

I wanted to support Team USA so I loaded up my AOL and looked for the first buddy who was online to IM for the Gold.

NBC reported that the second reason people stopped watching the Olympics last night, behind the first reason, poor commentators, was the switch to computers. One person interviewed, who wouldn’t give us their real name but did give us 'CybrGrrl034' said, “I can download MP3’s and keep track of the medals at the same time. OMG! [Oh, My God] I have to go, K-Slice just said Justin likes me.”

Search Engine Optimization and Standards

Eric Meyers wrote an article regarding Search Engine Optimization: SES San Jose Corrections that points to an example of using structural markup for search engine markup (which I can’t seem to get to) that doesn’t work. Since I can’t get to it I can’t rebut the report directly. However, let me say that I have top positions (or have had for some time – I don’t keep track too closely) for the phrases "Women of Walmart" and "Women of Home Depot". I was and am in no way trying to be a source of pornography or adult content, however, because I wrote articles against WOW and WOHD and because of the site structure of WordPress I rank highly for those terms.

As an example I offer these results from StatTraq for the month of July. The following table represents the top 5 search phrases from the top three search engines that were passed in referrer strings.

# Search Term Referrals
# Search Term Referrals
1 Y|M women of home depot 500
2 Y|M women of walmart 271
3 Y|M home depot playboy 208
4 Y|M Banana phone 147
5 Y|M playboy home depot 136