Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Author: Jon

  • Much Ado About nofollow

    Watching the various debate about Google’s nofollow initiative has been enlightening. Ostensibly, it was supposed to be a way to fight comment spam on weblogs, but predictably it took no time at all for people to figure out how to game the system. Also predictably, anti-nofollow support launched equally quickly.

    I won’t use it. At all. Why? Mostly because it’s such a non-issue (it won’t do a thing to comment spam), but a large part of the reasoning is that I won’t be held hostage to what I can write and link to by any one search engine or technology. Nor am I going to let the ranking alorithm of one search engine make me do its work for it, especially if PageRank is broken like some people believe.

    It’s a misnamed attribute, actually. Google says links with it “won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results,” but the “nofollow” label makes it appear that Google won’t actually follow the link itself. Not so. Google will follow the link, it just will not confer ranking.

    More bothersome is the fact that other search engines (Yahoo and MSN, notably) have signed on to this. Why bothersome? Well, because Google’s PageRank algorithm is supposed to be a Trade Secret, and theoretically other search engines’ technologies are Trade Secrets also, so who knows how the others will actually implement processing of this attribute? Will they choose to actually not follow such links, allowing sites to potentially drop out of their indices? There’s no guarantees. But if they’re all similar to PageRank, and PageRank is broken, then they may all be broken and this won’t fix things.

    Oh well. My various megalomaniacal rantings won’t change things in the world at large, so I’ll stick to what I can do on my own site. :)

  • Super Wal-Mart

    So there’s supposed to be a new Wal-Mart Supercenter coming to Bend. The Bend.com story is here. It’ll be located at the northwest corner of the intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road, and is supposed to be a gargantuan 200,000 square feet in size.

    I can’t say I’m thrilled. Why?

    • Bend and Central Oregon already has more than enough box stores, including two Wal-Marts.
    • Likewise, Bend already has plenty of grocery stores (for those who didn’t know, Wal-Mart Supercenters include groceries). Buying groceries from Wal-Mart seems way too sketchy to me.
    • It will make a bad traffic situation at the north end of town 1000 times worse.
    • It will always be crowded, making it too inconvenient for quick stops. Combined with traffic, this will make it far more trouble than it’s worth.
    • It will be ugly. Remember the hooplah that surrounded the building of the driving range at the north end of town?
    • That north end of 97 is already a stripmall, boxstore eyesore. I don’t even like going there (well, except for Food 4 Less, but even that’s not totally convenient).
    • It will drive smaller local companies out of business. This will happen.
    • While it will supposedly create 400 new jobs (according to what I heard on Z21 news), these will be barely minimum wage jobs (according to the Bend.com article). That can’t be good for people who need living wage jobs (especially in this area) or the local economy.

    Now, I used to go to the Wal-Mart at the south end of town. It did the job, but I don’t get down there anymore. It served its purpose. But I really see no reason for a Supercenter to be built. None at all.

  • Trackback spam

    Woke up this morning to find 116 notices of trackback spam littering my inbox. Out of the blue, and I notice that a whole bunch of other weblogs got hit today, too. It appears some spammer finally wrote a script to exploit trackback. Ah, well. It was easy enough to fix; do a quick mod to my add_trackback.php file, redirecting bad traffic, and a quick SQL query on the database to clear out the offending spam, less than 10 minutes. Gotta love having absolute control over my system.

  • Free beef!

    Well, it’s that time of year again: In one of the strangest (yet surprisingly most effective) promotions ever to grace marketing, it’s Free Beef Month at Les Schwab!

  • Iron Chef America

    I’m really digging Food Network‘s new Iron Chef America series. It’s just a lot of fun to watch, and at a more accessible time than the original Iron Chef (9pm versus 11pm).

  • Blog desert

    Yeah, I know, but I just haven’t felt the need to blog much of anything lately. My ambition to post has waned, and the empty stretches between entries grow larger… It won’t last forever, though. I know this much.

    Meanwhile, Central Oregon has been experiencing unseasonably warm weather, and they’re saying it’s going to be a drought year because there’s been no snow. Not that I mind the springlike weather overly much, but could we at least wait until it’s spring? I like having seasons, and it seems vaguely ridiculous to be washing the car by hand in January (which I did last weekend).

    Damn global warming. :)

  • Is this cat stoned?

    Is this cat stoned?

    (Thanks, Jake!)

  • 11

    Since about the first of the year I’ve been dieting (with much prodding from my wife). It’s nothing formal, mostly I’ve just been cutting way back on portions, avoiding junk food entirely and balancing what I eat much better. Even with going to Portland last weekend, I’ve somehow managed to lose 11 pounds already(!). To put it in perspective, I started at an unhealthy 228 pounds (six feet tall), so either I’m doing something right, or I have cancer.

    Kidding!

    The other day I picked up the book Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating from the library to go along with this change in eating habits. It’s quite a good book, I’d highly recommend it to, well, everyone. It lays out a scientific, common-sense approach to healthy eating that I think lacks from most “formal” and fad diets I’ve seen. Check it out.

    In the meantime, I’ll post occasional weight loss updates. I’m curious to see if the rate I’m losing weight will maintain, or if it will slow down. And in case anyone worries that I’m on the bleach and fiberglass diet, rest assured that my daily intake looks something like: 2-3 starches, 2-3 fruits, 2 protein, 4+ vegetables. Some dairy, too. So it’s all good.

  • New Bend blogger

    Found on ORBlogs: The Grumpy Forester, a new Bend blog. Well, Lapine, I guess, but that’s okay. And “new” is relative, the archive go back to January 22 of last year. But it’s new to me! Welcome!

  • Jumping from a taxi?

    Speaking of the ice storm, what’s up with this story out of Portland? Woman dies after jumping out of taxi:

    And a taxi passenger died Saturday after she jumped from the vehicle as it approached her home on Mount Scott.

     

    The victim, Nancy Johnson, 61, was returning to her home on Southeast Johns Court from Portland International Airport when the Green Transportation Co. cab started sliding down the steep street.

     

    She was pinned beneath the cab’s rear axle as it slid more than 100 feet. The cab driver called 9-1-1 to report the incident at 10:34 p.m.

     

    Johnson “just flat panicked. I think she was worried that (the vehicle) would go out of control,” said Capt. Jamie Karn, Clackamas County Fire District 1 spokesman. “This was just a freak accident.”

    I mean, who the hell jumps out of a moving car at all? Especially when it’s sliding out of control and you don’t know where it’s going? I’m sorry, but people need more common sense. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this show up as a Darwin Award.