Requenes.com

Sell out

Long time readers may have noticed that a few months ago, I started running banner ads on all my sites. I was getting several thousand hits a month, mostly from EmmaCrosby.com, so I wondered how much money I would get from plastering my sites with ads. The answer: not much. I only get paid for ad clicks, not ad views, and not surprisingly, not too many people click on ads. Please don't take this as an invitation to click on the ads, as I'm not allowed to solicit.

Baby Paranoia

About the same time that I started running ads, I got an idea for a website/forum/portal thingy that would be entertaining (in my usual sardonic fashion) as well as hugely profitable for all the ad revenue it would generate. This was BabyParanoia.com. Unfortunately, the content got more serious than I intended and I spent too much time wrestling with various Content Management and Forum systems (Drupal, Joomla, Simple Machines Forum). So I lost interest. Also, nobody to whom I mentioned the idea really seemed that taken with it.

Card-carrying Slashdot reader

In Februrary I took a giant slouch towards geekdom by becoming a paid subscriber of Slashdot. Subscribers get to see certain stories a few minutes earlier than the non-subscribing masses. Those crucial seconds can mean the difference between loading a linked-to web page and getting no response from a Slashdotted server. Also, the preview stories come with a wicked cool bright red (#cd3031) title bar.

Breakdown of Society, Part 2

There are a couple of things that guys do with urinals that I really don't understand. One is, while urinating, they carefully spit into the urinal. I guess they're taking advantage of the plumbing to clean out their own plumbing. Personally, I don't often have the need to spit. And if I did, I'd be a bit curious if it always coincided with voiding my bladder. Two is, when it's time to flush (if they bother), they get all Chuck Norris with the handle by smacking it down with their fist. I'm grateful for indoor plumbing, so I don't know why someone would want to abuse a defenseless chrome and ceramic appliance. The other day, I'm in the Loews Lincoln Square john, relieving myself, when a tall lanky dude wearing a blue jeans, suede Hush Puppies, and a brown vest takes the urinal next to me (I figure he's a Kazakhstani Comp Lit major) and does the punch-the-handle move! I think punching the handle just jumped the shark.

Breakdown of Society, Part 3

I'm sitting on a plane on the way to Austin, when a man in the seat behind me starts clipping his nails. Not biting. Clipping! By the way, it's not a typo. The items above are a follow up to the original Breakdown of Society post.

Separated at birth

Don't Dennis Miller and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad look alike?