An Enormous Post

Fake Steve Jobs (aka Dan Lyons) wrote an amusing piece in his blog today. As you may have seen, Microsoft was planning to sponsor an entire episode of Family Guy. It was to be 30 minutes and sans commercials. The payoff for them was having all sorts of Windows7 references built into the show. Microsoft, aka The Borg, has pulled out. Fox claims they've got a new sponsor -- it would be ironic if it were Apple. 

I continue to not "get" Twitter. In my last blog post I wrote "I still find no point at all to Twitter. Do I have one? Sure, but I don't use it much. Does one really need to delve into the minutia of someone's life to the minute." My friend, Daniel Haun, left a snarky comment about that on Facebook. He said, "The point to Twitter is ego masturbation." I liked the comment so much I Twittered (Tweeted?) it. I think that's a bit ironic.

Another friend, Liz, commented "If you really still think that about Twitter, you're definitely not following the right people I don't know who else you're following, but you're following me. Don't I post interesting stuff?" Yeah, a lot of your stuff is interesting. But that's not the point. It's the insane minutiae that people post on a daily basis. I figure at least half the posts most users make, shouldn't be made. I don't care, nor does anyone, that you've been waiting in line for dinner for 5, 10, 15, 20, etc minutes. Yet people insist on posting stuff like that. I don't "get" it.

In regards to commentary (again on my previous blog post), I am going to start correcting my posts when there are errors. Broken links, I'll just fix when people point them out via email. If they're pointed out by comment, I will still fix them but post a comment that it's been corrected. Simple typos will be fixed. But if anything needs to be corrected correcting and it's significant, I will use the time honoured strikeout feature. As always, any new commentary to an old post (a rarity) is clearly marked with the date added. To be clear, I always appreciate corrections to the blog, through prefer e-mail. Comments are for comments and discussions.

In news almost nobody will care about, I've added a classifieds section on the PHMB but it's in the members only area. Because I was feeling contentious, I called it "YormarksList" (as in CraigsList) because everything in the topic is for sale -- and that's Yormark, everything is for sale. These are all advertisements of a sort and what better name than his? If you're a hockey fan, please take a moment and join the board. I really do think you'll enjoy it. When the official board changed to the new format about a month ago, our traffic spiked. Bad for them and good for me: they forgot the one thing that was most important. They forget "know your customer and what (s)he wants" and their activity has plummeted from what was in the off-season. Yeah, the season started and traffic went down instead of up. Censorship and a bad user interface is a guaranteed fail.

I have been thinking of taking up a collection to get a Panther jersey with the name "Yormark" on the back and "666" as the number. With everything it'll be around US$160. Everyone who contributes will be allowed to wear it to games. As John mentioned if we all take turns wearing it, at some point he'll wonder how many of them are out there, even though it'll be only one. The point will be at every game, someone will have it, wear it to the game and take at least one lap of the lower bowl before the game, and at each intermission. I will keep the jersey in the off season and be responsible for care and cleaning -- if you want to clean it during your possession, that's up to you. I'll have to get XL so everyone can wear it. I might be able to squeeze in a L if nobody needs the XL. In the corner where the "C" for captain goes, we'll have the official logo of Yormark (for which I will pick up the cost.) If there are leftover funds, they will be donated to Habitat For Humanity -- in Mr Yormark's name -- and everyone who donates will be given a full accounting of every last penny. If I do not collect enough, your money will be returned.

Dave sent me this link about the New Facebook (which is replacing the old New Facebook.) Users are totally up in arms. I really hate it, but just don't have the energy to do anything about it. You know, the bottom line is if they want to fuck up their service, let them. I don't like it because Facebook now unilaterally decides which posts you see from which friends. You can block someone, but if someone's not blocked, you don't see everything they write. If you go to their page, you'll see you've missed stuff. Of course you can use the live feed which picks up more, but even if you select it, it eventually returns back to the new news feed. Which is what everyone hates.

In regards to my Saturday post about AvMed. I got my prescription today. It's amazing what a very firm, demanding, and polite but threatening letter will do. I demanded a written apology, told them I am their worst nightmare and will dog them relentlessly as long as their 'staff' feels they know more than my doctor. I told them every time they fail to comply with my doctor's orders, I will file a formal written complaint with the state (and you all know I will, too). They, as I said, figured out that they should go bother someone else. Again, I am not asking them to do anything that I asked: I am asking them to do what my licensed medical doctor asked. I do not feel anyone that has not personally examined me and my case has the right to override what my doctor says. And this was stupid. The new pill costs half of what the old one cost. Seriously. How stupid can you get? Oh, and the lady never called me back as predicted. As a side bonus, the pharmaceutical company that makes the new drug picked up the tab on this first order (well, all but $5 of it).

I wasn't going to post Nucor news, but there is news and it's on the company Facebook page. I have no comment on an individual level. I only say, we're working on a filing if we can meet all the technical requirements. I've never seen anything so complex and confusing. No wonder those lawyers charge $2k or more per hour. Our corporate WiFi is working well (still) and from a technical standpoint the Vista and Windows7 laptops (our employees property, not ours) work with the least problems, though I am loathe to admit it. The Windows XP systems running XP Home are the worst.

I had mentioned visitors by country to the Interstate Screw Corp web page. Here's a summary from 1-1-09 through 26-10-09. There's an Excel version which is cooler because each country has the flag in front of it, but there was no practical way to post that here. I can e-mail it if anyone is terminally curious.

Countries		Pages	Hits
United States	us	54,820	355,033
Russian Federation	ru	4,470	5,330
China	cn	2,895	12,822
Japan	jp	2,325	2,839
Spain	es	1,542	2,612
Romania	ro	1,424	1,802
Canada	ca	1,402	6,782
Germany	de	1,159	1,885
Taiwan	tw	695	4,561
Great Britain	gb	524	2,533
Ukraine	ua	493	587
India	in	429	2,439
European country	eu	419	934
Chile	cl	419	3,567
Peru	pe	378	3,005
Jamaica	jm	345	2,461
France	fr	324	769
Colombia	co	314	2,037
Latvia	lv	310	353
Hong Kong	hk	304	1,136
Argentina	ar	297	1,891
Venezuela	ve	271	2,364
Mexico	mx	260	2,081
Netherlands	nl	252	493
Malaysia	my	216	1,534
Cayman Islands	ky	182	1,845
Sweden	se	171	590
South Korea	kr	165	1,082
Aruba	aw	163	1,395
Ireland	ie	162	2,190
Israel	il	158	712
Australia	au	139	996
Brazil	br	137	754
Panama	pa	131	1,138
Costa Rica	cr	129	1,351
Singapore	sg	128	762
Bahamas	bs	123	1,000
Antigua and Barbuda	ag	118	952
Turkey	tr	115	734
Dominican Republic	do	115	1,112
Italy	it	102	488
Austria	at	102	273
Guatemala	gt	100	636
Barbados	bb	98	686
Ecuador	ec	97	1,075
Thailand	th	97	536
Puerto Rico	pr	94	900
Egypt	eg	76	598
Ghana	gh	73	679
Hungary	hu	70	211
Suriname	sr	70	1,039
Greece	gr	69	529
Former Czechoslovakia	cs	66	192
Poland	pl	61	325
Portugal	pt	59	231
Haiti	ht	58	402
Philippines	ph	53	351
Trinidad and Tobago	tt	53	431
Czech Republic	cz	51	151
Iran	ir	47	264
Switzerland	ch	44	261
El Salvador	sv	44	324
Virgin Islands (USA)	vi	41	429
South Africa	za	41	189
Indonesia	id	39	207
Uruguay	uy	37	637
Finland	fi	36	245
Anguilla	ai	35	213
Turks and Caicos Islands	tc	34	287
Pakistan	pk	34	282
United Arab Emirates	ae	32	277
Denmark	dk	29	160
Nigeria	ng	28	196
Saudi Arabia	sa	27	101
Belarus	by	27	72
Moldova	md	27	27
New Zealand	nz	26	68
Qatar	qa	24	24
Bulgaria	bg	21	99
Belgium	be	21	136
Vietnam	vn	20	141
Nicaragua	ni	19	158
Norway	no	19	153
Guam (USA)	gu	18	138
Belize	bz	17	149
Guyana	gy	13	156
Slovak Republic	sk	11	68
Lithuania	lt	9	32
Slovenia	si	6	44
Angola	ao	5	15
Malta	mt	5	23
Luxembourg	lu	5	5
Senegal	sn	5	15
Ivory Coast (Cote D'Ivoire)	ci	4	4
Kuwait	kw	4	15
Bahrain	bh	4	4
Croatia	hr	4	39
Jordan	jo	4	13
Estonia	ee	4	13
Yemen	ye	4	64
Bolivia	bo	3	31
Georgia	ge	3	15
Cuba	cu	3	36
Namibia	na	3	3
Saint Kitts & Nevis Anguilla	kn	3	38
Lebanon	lb	2	2
Cyprus	cy	2	2
African Regional IPO	ap	2	2
Netherlands Antilles	an	2	12
Bosnia-Herzegovina	ba	2	10
Paraguay	py	2	12
Myanmar	mm	1	1
Syria	sy	1	1
Tunisia	tn	1	1
Bermuda	bm	1	1
Uzbekistan	uz	1	10
Afghanistan	af	1	11
Gabon	ga	1	1
Iraq	iq	1	1
Kazakhstan	kz	1	27
Morocco	ma	1	4
Ethiopia	et	1	1
Liechtenstein	li	1	1
Armenia	am	1	30
Algeria	dz	1	2
Sri Lanka	lk	1	10
TOTAL VISITORS -->		80,788	454,208