My lifetime goal has been met

UtterlyBoring.com is now the number one result on Google for “Ortman“. Granted, I’m on page five for “Jake” but it’s better than it was. And I’m in the top ten now for “boring.”

On a side note, a trip through my server logs shows that Kster.com is taking my RSS feed and blasting it up on to their site as content. Hello to all the folks who are visiting from there! Be sure to stop by the actual site here so you’ll be able to make comments and such. Meanwhile, to whomever runs that site: Make it a little more obvious that the content on your site is from mine, would ya? Thanks 🙂

December 16, 2003

Google is indexing print media

Google’s branching out to search more than just Web sites. The Google Print FAQ explains that they’re experimenting with “publications” (what they mean by that, we don’t know, but it looks to be primarily books). They are, undoubtedly, using this to compete with Amazon’s full-text book search efforts, and become the one-stop-shop for searching everything.

They’ve already indexed thousands of books, including some popular ones. When you click on a book title, you’ll see information about the book: number of pages, excerpt, publication date, and its ISBN number. You even have the option to buy it at a few retailers (I could see Google add a referral code to those links to get them a bit of kick back — I know I would).

Interesting feature? Yes, indeed. With Google indexing IRC channels already, it won’t be long before they’ll be indexing everything. Now if they could just create a unified interfaces for all of their indexes.

December 16, 2003

It worked! Bush is officially a miserable failure

I posted a few days back about an attempt to make George W. Bush a “miserable failure” by tainting Google results. I’m happy to report that if you search for miserable failure on Google, it now shows the truth.

December 16, 2003

Fruitcakes Not Flying With Airport Security

Just an FYI: If you’re flying anywhere over the holiday season, don’t bring a fruitcake — they look like bombs in the airport security scanners. Thanks Barney for the link.

December 15, 2003

That’s one way to increase your ratings

Just put a penis into your nightly sports broadcast. That’s what WFAA did — I’m sure by accident.

December 15, 2003

Shave this woman’s head

It will only cost you $45,000 (starting bid). Needless to say, nobody’s bid yet.

December 15, 2003

Woman accused of hitting toy store customer with Legos box

Tonita Wiemels, 39, was arrested outside a popular Berkeley toy store after she hit a customer in the face with a box of Legos, shoved a second shopper and kicked a third, according to police. Full story. Link via Obscure.

December 15, 2003

Bad essays on weather

These are the weirdest, but funniest, things I’ve read in a long time. Link via Waxy’s links.

December 15, 2003

Your guide to e-mail scams

Bookmark this site. With all the various e-mail scams going around, it only takes a short amount of time before somebody gets screwed. Thanks to Chris for the link.

December 15, 2003

Microsoft is just a group of business Nazis

Why else would they have swastikas in their software? Needless to say, they’re getting removed.

December 15, 2003