I was going to go through the effort of coloring in today’s FoxTrot (which Bill Amend admits he screwed up on one of the calculations), but somebody beat me to it.
Month: April 2006
Bend.com Founder’s House Burns To The Ground
While Bend.com founer Spencer Dahl and I have had our issues with each other publicly (read the comments on this post and this post), I would never wish this on anybody.
Needless to say, Bend.com is down right now. And Spencer, I know you and I have had our issues with each other, but if you need a place to temporarily park the domain until you’re back up and running, you know how to get a hold of me.
Running Google Analytics
Like Dave, I finally got an invite to Google Analytics, and it’s now tracking the traffic on this site, Sunray‘s (with some advance tracking there for when bookings are made) an Bend Blogs. I haven’t quite gotten used to how their back-end works, but the stats are certainly presented in a nice, easy to use, interface that will make non geeks like it (especially more so than AWStats, which track all the sites on this server). It has lots of pretty pictures, charts, graphs, and reports catered to the Webmaster and the executive type. So for a corporate environment, and to track folks browsing through a site, it’s going to work well (which is why I immediately put it on Sunray’s site). It also has nice Web interfaces for filtering, so I can very easily turn off counting of accesses for Sunray’s office, which has the page set as their home page.
But I’ll post sometime down the road when I get more traffic into it to see what kind of reporting it really can do.
For The Ladies, During That Time Of The Month
A fairly comprehensive review and comparison of feminine hygiene products (don’t worry, no graphic pictures, just scientific experimentation).
Leave It To The Aussies…
…to come up with such wonderful products as combination blender and telephone, kangaroo crap in a jar, and a Mr. T rubber ducky.
The Best Yard Furniture Ever
I really need to get a Chia Chair for my backyard.
The Grass armchair is self assembled, each pack contains 14 corrugated cardboard frames and 100g pack of grass seeds. You will need about 240 litres of soil, to fill in the frame. First find the right spot, because once the armchair has grown you won’t be able to move it!! You can put up to 20cm of gravel with in the frame then the soil. Spread the seeds evenly using only 4/5 of the bag of seeds. Press them in and water slightly so that the soil is humid. Water the armchair everyday. If it rains cover the armchair until grass has grown, to avoid the chair becoming waterlogged. After 10 days the grass starts to grow. If the grass has not grown evenly use the rest of the seeds to even it out. Once the grass has reached 10cm, cut it to 3cm, and keep it to this height. Now you can sit back and relax!
I doubt the thing would ever survive in Central Oregon (can you imagine what this thing looks like during a winter when all the grass is dead?) but it’d still be stupidly cool to have.
Thanks Cheryl for the link.
Macs Can Now (Officially) Run Windows
There have been folks out there that have tried their butt off (and some have succeeded) in getting Windows XP to boot on the new Intel-based Macs. But now Apple’s going to make it far easier by providing step-by-step directions and software to do it.
A Joke For Tax Season
Thanks to Pat for this one:
At the end of the tax year the Tax Office sent an inspector to audit the books of a synagogue. While he was checking the books he turned to the Rabbi and said, “I notice you buy a lot of candles. What do you do with the candle drippings?” “Good question,” noted the Rabbi. “We save them up and send them back to the candle makers, and every now and then they send us a free box of candles.” “Oh,” replied the auditor, somewhat disappointed that his unusual question had a practical answer. But on he went, in his obnoxious way: “What about all these matzo purchases? What do you do with the crumbs?” “Ah, yes,” replied the Rabbi, realising that the inspector was trying to trap him with an unanswerable question. “We collect them and send them back to the manufacturers, and every now and then they send a free box of matzos.” “I see,” replied the auditor, thinking hard about how he could fluster the know-it-all Rabbi. “Well, Rabbi,” he went on, “what do you do with all the leftover foreskins from the circumcisions you perform?” “Here, too, we do not waste,” answered the Rabbi. “What we do is save up all the foreskins and send them to the Tax Office, and about once a year they send us a complete dick.”
On a related note, despite having to claim my Google income this year, I still manage to get a tax refund this year: $891 from the Feds and $9 from the state for a grand total of exactly $900. That’ll be going right to some bills, savings, to fix some stuff on my car that really needs fixing (like the brakes — those are kind of important) and now some tires on my wife’s car, as one of them is totally hosed I just found out.
KTVZ Has T-Shirt Removed From Local T-Shirt Shop
I certainly don’t know the whole story to this, but either KTVZ thinks they own the rights to Bob Shaw‘s likeness (which they might by contract, but satirical cartoons of public figures, even if it is for profit, is protected speech, as far as I know — it’s been a while since I’ve studied this kind of law), or they are claiming they own the rights to “Have a Sparkling day.” Either way, there’s one less t-shirt available to buy.
Who Was The Winner?
UCLA wins! Oh wait, no they didn’t. Whoops….