Back and Forth

I’m really feeling drawn towards starting the next music series or getting into the graphic novel series, even though I am not finished with my initial research for either. I’m just not feeling covering more tasks though, perhaps because I haven’t completed any of them. Instead, I am going to bop around with new material on old postings.

First of all, there is another Youtube commercial that’s really annoying me:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/05/commercials-that-annoy-me.html

This new one is actually a series of short ads. Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction is talking about how awful fear is, and how it can keep you from living your life completely, and there’s nothing worse than that: Dobel Tequila

What a great message! What could possibly help a person more on the road to self-fulfillment than alcohol? What could you possibly do without having liquor as an emotional crutch? Just face your fears like a madman? Pshaw!

Okay, I realize Dobel is sponsoring Lollapalooza, and while I refrain from drinking as part of my religious beliefs, I do not object to others drinking, especially when they do not share my beliefs. What I am saying is that I do not object to him doing a series of ads for the tequila, but I think the content is done in a very irresponsible manner. It is worse than those commercials that just show people having a good time drinking because it is giving a higher meaning to the drinking, and being said oh-so-seriously. I strenuously object (and I understand that no one involved will care).

Next item: I forgot one of my technological accomplishments yesterday. I am slowly going through a major decluttering, and I was collecting all my e-waste for Julie to take in. I have so many leftover screws and standoffs and IDE cables, and I am just never going to use them, and I don’t want to. It was mostly parts, plus one old hub and an old IBM T600e laptop that I had bought used ages and ages ago. I wanted to remove the hard drive, and I successfully located instructions for doing so and completed the process. I still need to dispose of the drive.

I also got rid of the fifteen-year old mouse, which I had been holding onto for sentimental reasons. By complete coincidence I ran into an old friend who is now working for Logitech, and I told him about it. His response was “We made it too good.” Yes, yes they did, but I am still impressed, and hey, I will always buy Logitech, even if I don’t buy frequently.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2009/12/requiem-for-mouse.html

This last update is going to seem like it’s going back to my attempts to understand where my readers come from, but there’s more to it.

One thing I like about Blogger is that it now shows the page hits for specific posts which is interesting, but sometimes it makes me feel bad for certain posts. Like I thought Geek/Nerd/Dork was pretty good, and maybe the post on Moog wasn’t great but I still wanted people to be reading about him, and they did not get many hits.

My page hits are still largely a mystery in terms of where they come from, and why. I think I may be getting some hits from Twitter, because when the key words are better I do seem to get more hits, and those tend to open up in a separate window, so maybe it doesn’t look like a link. The biggest referrals recorded come from Blogger and Networked Blogs.

The search information is a little more helpful, but also has its sad moments. Like I am glad to see people searching on Charlie Sexton, and unless the person searching on “my chemical romance fangirl” was looking for a specific fangirl, they did come to the right place. However, going back to “I may just be shallow”, people have searched on David Giuntoli a little and Jim Caviezel even more, but no one is searching on Jeffrey Pierce and he deserves it. Give the man some love.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/05/i-may-just-be-shallow.html

Recently, a search that surprised me was “matt wingard screwdriver willamette week”. I thought it was odd that someone was searching for that. My initial post on it was from 2008:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2008/10/please-do-not-vote-for-matt-wingard.html

Then this story broke:

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/06/matt_wingard_leaves_oregon_hou.html

Suddenly, it all made sense. There have been a few more searches on him as well, not mentioning the screwdriver. Actually, there may be some very interesting key words being used that would not specifically lead to my page. I will just make two points.

First of all, if anyone is surprised by this, they have simply not been paying attention. A tendency to manipulate, coerce, be punitive, and avoid responsibility has been there all along when you put together the story of the screwdriver and how he gained his position in congress.

Secondly, with that information out there and ignored, I had this odd thought of whether or not the voters bear some responsibility in what happened to this girl, and to the one who won’t come forward because she is scared, and for the minors supplied with alcohol, and any bad consequences that came of that. Someone who was unfit for power was granted it, and therefore had a chance to abuse it.

It’s a hard question. Often our choices aren’t that great among the different candidates, and being informed takes some effort, and it is many votes acting together that makes a difference, so if you voted for someone else and it didn’t work, believe me, I know how you feel.

I’m not saying voting for the republican because he is the republican makes you guilty of sexual harassment (and probably other things that will never be charged)—there’s obviously more to it. However, we do need to take our responsibilities as voters and citizens and as human beings seriously. Our actions have multiple impacts all over, and we should never forget that.