Daily Archives: August 24, 2005

Current Events

Interesting Headlines

2 Comments

Two interesting headlines that I stumbled across while working today..

The first one comes from Hawaii.

Its about a woman who tried to stop someone from stealing her car. She did this, by jumping up on the hood. The really interesting part? Apparently, the woman was buck naked while clinging to the car hood to get the thief to stop.

A woman, who was naked, jumped onto the hood of the car, trying to stop the thief, a man who was camping nearby, witnesses said.

(If for nothing else, read the article to see further quotes from the witness.. I found the way he was ‘talking’ to be hilarious)

Now.. what the article doesn’t mention..

  • Did she know the guy?
  • Why is she running around Hawaii naked?
  • Was it even her car?

Seriously.. I mean.. if it was her car, then I can understand it.. but, if it wasn’t my car, I think I’d be inclined to at least put on some pants before jumping on top of a moving car!
And the second, comes from the “people will complain about anything” category

Seems this lady went to the Dr about her health.. and while there, the Dr told her that her weight could cause health problems, and that she needed to lose weight… and this upset the lady so much, she complained to the State Attorney General..

Apparently, even though she knows she’s obese, she doesn’t want to be told she’s obese, and the Dr is bad for telling her. Of course, this means she is also probably one of those people, who if she got seriously ill (like diabetes or something) due to her being obese.. would probably sue the Dr for not telling her she was fat and needed to lose weight…

I Like the quote from one of the Dr’s other patients:

“What really makes me angry is he told the truth,” patient Mindy Haney said. “How can you punish somebody for that?”

Site Stuff, Tech

Adsense Changes

Google has made some changes to their Adsense program..

  • They’ve changed how they match AdWords up with Adsense ads.
  • According to some people, they’ve made changes in how they figure out how much you get per ad view/click through
  • You can now have up to 200 channels

None of these really matter to me, as this site isn’t here to make money off of. Sure.. I’m going to make a few bucks each month between Google and the iTunes affiliate program..but not enough to quit my job for..

The change they made that interests me?
You can now specify to Google’s bots and spiders, which content on your page should be considered when matching ads up to your page. The benefit? no more ads for blogs, because its looking at the sidebars (or, at least..that’s the idea)

To tell Google what content to look at just add:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>
and
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

around the content you want included. Next time Google checks your page, more weight will be given to this content.

This should help improve which ads show up when…and for those sites that are ad-revenue driven, it’ll help them make more money.

Tech

Google Talk!

Late Tuesday Google quietly introduced their IM client, Google Talk. Apparently, the official release is set for Wednesday. A quick glance at their client page, shows that once again, Mac users get the shaft… no “official” Google Talk client.. however.. in this case.. its not as bad as it sounds.. in that we can use iChat..or almost any other Mac based IM client, since Google’s IM is Jabber based. So.. here’s what you need:

  • A Gmail account (If anyone doesn’t have one.. I’ve got plenty of invites if you want one)
  • Setup iChat following these instructions. Which basically amount to:
  • Create a new Jabber account in iChat’s preferences
  • Username/password are your gmail account information
  • Server name is talk.google.com
  • The defaults work good for the rest of the setup

Then you’ll need someone to chat with.. my Google talk (and then obviously, one of my email addresses) is tepper(dot)dan(at)gmail.com (obvious formatting changes to try and at least slow down the amount of spam that’ll hit that account now.