Checking my Sitemeter logs, I discovered some oddities that I thought I'd share with you:

1) I'm #8 for erotic girl scouts

2) I'm #5 for Michael Jackson games

3) I'm the top four searches for Physics Geek

Pity. It should have been the top ten. But I'll get there soon enough.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:40 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Found a quick and dirty IQ test via Susie. And while I don't drink coffee, I did have some caffeine today. Here are my results:

Your IQ Is 140

Your Logical Intelligence is Genius Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Genius

Posted by: Physics Geek at 01:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So Tiger's novel is available for purchase. Kudos. And it's scifi, no less, which is pretty much my favorite genre. That or fantasy. Either way, I win.

Check it out.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 01:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Or extreme stupidity. I have a feeling that the commercial mentioned in this story wouldn't go over so well in the US. Excerpt:

A spokesman for the company said Regional has no plans to apologize for running a television commercial that said the difference between a wife and a lover was 30 kilograms (about 66 pounds), the newspaper El Universal reported.

Women called the advertising misogynist and demanded.

The Regional spokesman said the company wouldn't apologize unless it is forced to do so by the courts. He added: "I bet all these women's groups are run by women who are at least 30 kilos overweight."

Posted by: Physics Geek at 12:09 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Edloe has passed away. Stop by and offer Laurence your sympathy. Excerpt:

Think about an empty collar at the pet store. Will it look good on the cat? Will the cat like it? Is it a safe collar for the cat to wear if they get tangled in something?

Sometimes, a collar wears out. Or it breaks. Those empty collars are just junk, and you just toss them away.

But every now and then, an empty collar means something else:

A friend is gone.

The front page is a memorial for Edloe.

Your pets aren't animals that happen to live in your house; they're members of your family and should be grieved for as such.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 10:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And Stuart Dahl is buying.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 01:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Interesting link here. Depending on what browser you're using, this site can tell you:

1) your connection speed

2) information about your hard drive and CD-ROMs installed

3) spyware or parasites infecting your system

4) and a lot more

Worth checking out, even if several of the tests only work in IE.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 12:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'd been having problems renewing my XXXX account online, so I finally called the help desk. The woman was very cordial and accepted my payment information gladly(unsurprising). She also noticed the problem with renewing my account. Something to do with the "current through" date being set to sometime in 1899. She said that my account have been submitted to customer service to correct the database snafu, and that I should call back today to verify my account had been corrected.

I called back and the fun began:

Me: "Hi. I paid to renew my account last week. The phone rep had asked me to call back to verify that everything was okay."

Rep: "I see. Sir, your account has expired."

Me: "I know. That's why I paid to renew last week. There was some weird database issue and I wanted to know if it had been resolved."

Rep: "Sir, your account has expired and you need to pay to bring it up to date."

Me: "I paid the account last week."

Rep: " The charge didn't go through. You need to pay to renew your account."

Me: "I'm sorry, what?"

Rep: "You need to pay to renew. The charge didn't go through."

Me: "What do you mean, it didn't it go through? You would have told me if the payment failed."

Rep: "It didn't go through. You can pay to renew if you want."

Me: ::peeved:: "I paid last week. The rep was unable to update my account due to the expiration date being in the 19th century. '

Rep: "Your account has expired, sir. You can pay to renew right now if you want to."

Me: ::voice rising:: "Listen closely. I can pay AGAIN to renew this account, but if two charges show up on my bill I will call back and demand to get my money back, and I won't expend a lot of energy being polite about it!"

Rep: "Hold, please."

--> While the Muzak played, I considered the possible error of yelling at the phone rep on the phone. She could put me on hold until the sun goes nova, if she so desires.<--

Rep: "Sir? You are correct. You DID pay last week and the funds have been applied to your account. And there is some odd technical issue with your account which our customer service reps are trying to fix."

Me: "So when should I call back to verify that my account has been fixed?"

Rep: "It should be okay sometime tomorrow. Why don't you try calling back then?"

Me: ::deep breath:: "Okey-dokey. Sorry for raising my voice to you earlier."

Rep: "No problem, sir. I wouldn't want to pay twice for the same service. I can see why you would get upset."

No shit. We'll see tomorrow if this problem gets resolved.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 05:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Harvey has compiled lots of great posts on how to get started blogging. Others are also on the job. Excerpt:

1. Determine a theme. Most bloggers take one of three approaches. Some write on whatever happens to interest them at the moment. In this sense, their blog is truly a “web journal.” Others, select a single theme and stick to it. Frankly, this takes a lot of discipline. Still others, like me, focus on a primary theme but occasionally deviate from it. If you want to develop a following of loyal readers, I think the latter two approaches are best. People who have similar interests will keep coming back for more.
...
7. Publicize your blog. You’ll want to make sure you’re “pinging” the major weblog tracking sites. Most of the blogging services handle this automatically, as do the offline blogging clients. Don’t worry if you don’t understand this process. You don’t need to understand it to use it. (Here's a simple explanation.) Basically, your service or software will send a notification to the tracking sites to alert them that you have posted a new entry. If your software doesn’t allow this, you might want to make use of pingomatic. This is a super-easy service that will ping fourteen different services. All you have to do is enter your blog address whenever you post a new entry. If you want to manually enter a comprehensive list of ping services, here’s a list to get you started.

8. Write regularly. This is the best advice I could give you for building readership. If people like what you write, they will come back. However, if thereÂ’s nothing new to read, they will eventually lose interest. So, the more regularly you post something, the more your readership will grow. I suggest you schedule time to write. It wonÂ’t happen on itÂ’s own. At some point, it comes down to making a commitment and sticking to it.

Read the rest.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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