Previously I wrote a piece about my suspicions on a series of websites I think are scams. So what happens? After proofreading my post, I happened to noticed that Google was displaying contextually relevant ad links… to one of the VERY SAME SITES I was writing about and suspected of being a scam.

Only me.

I immediately went to my Adsense account and had these sites’ links filtered out. Adsense however only allows you to filter out at most 300 links. And there’s what, a bazillion illegitimate websites out there? So what’s to stop another scamming site from advertising on my blog, especially if I’ve maxed out my blacklist?

Here’s Google’s answer: Absolutely nothing. Even worse, Google makes mad money off these seedy advertisers and businesses, so they’re not going to be in any hurry to clean up their links and do some form of serious quality control. It just wouldn’t make any business sense to them, ya know?

Unfortunately, the type of ad links that get displayed on my site is going to reflect on me, whether I like it or not. If a guy clicks on an Adsense link he sees on my site and purchases a product as a result, only to end up being the victim of a scam, that’s on me. I do feel I have a certain responsibility in granting advertising space only to those businesses I feel offer quality products and operate with at least some measure of integrity. That’s part of why I dropped Go Daddy as an affiliate, since they refused to even look into these websites that I suspected were trolling for suckers they could rip off.

So, after a little bit of soul searching I decided that I will no longer use Adsense, and will be removing all the code for it from my blog by the end of the day. My readers deserve better… (all three of you).

In the meantime, I don’t suppose anyone knows of any other service that also serves contextually relevant ad links, but where I have far more control over what gets served? …….. yeah, didn’t think so……

My boss had been playing games with me for the better part of a month now, from denying my proposed work schedule so I couldn’t attend law school, to threatening me over my request for accommodations because of my hearing disability. Naturally there have been days when I wished a meteor would land on his head (and those were the times when I was actually in a good mood too.)

For the past week he’s been AWOL as a result of training in another section for “overtime,” perfectly understandable to me given his 6 figure salary and his evidently pressing need to pay off his yacht and summer home. Poor guy. One particular night he left in a hurry without signing off his computer, and being the fine, upstanding person that I was, I did the only thing I could think of.

I fired up his inbox and quickly started rummaging through his emails and folders.

I could practically hear the digital clock from 24 thunderously ticking away in the background as I furiously performed a search query of all his emails, hoping to find something, ANYTHING, to give me an idea of what he might have been planning against me. I kept one eye on the doorway the whole time too, half scared to death that he would walk in on me at any moment, but I bravely (or maybe recklessly) pressed on.

Nothing.

I didn’t even show up on this guy’s radar. There were no emails about me, not even anything juicy about our division, even though everything in our section was falling to crap ever since he took over. Great, only in the movies can a guy pull a stunt like I did and be rewarded with some juicy intel, like finding out who REALLY killed JFK. @#$%!

I did find out that he was having an affair though. I guess that’s something.

God has seen fit that I should not make my journey through life without having a persistent, (and oftentimes irritating) conscience to guide me. Unsure as to how I could introduce this important figure on my blog, I decided just to name “him” Jiminy Cricket. And my old friend Cricket was at it once again when I took the stack of textbooks and primers I had bought some time ago to prep for law school, and started putting some of them up for bid on eBay.

“What are you doing?” Jiminy inquired.

“I’m selling my books. My law school plans are done. It’s time to move on.”

“Why don’t you wait a little while longer?? You might still be able to go!”

“Why?? My boss screwed me over, it’s already two weeks past the deadline to make a deposit, it’s finished!”

Ole’ Jiminy then hopped onto my desk. “Give God a chance to work, it’s not over yet. There’s still plenty of time, and God always tends to move when things look impossible.”

I threw my hands up in frustration. “Look, how long do I have to put up with this? My prayers haven’t been answered, in fact just the opposite of what I asked for happened. I’ve been running around in circles with this for over 18 months. I’m sick of it. I’m tired, and I just want to move on with my life.”

“You need to be patient, my friend. You’ve seen in the past that God is never in a hurry. Give Him space to work.”

“Space this,” I said, and shooed Cricket away as I placed 2 of my law books up on eBay.

I woke up late this morning, and not being in any hurry to get to work, I lazily surfed the Daily Blog Tips site, looking for advice and suggestions that I could apply to my own blog. I came across one post that linked to this article on how bloggers can use social networking sites like StumbleUpon to boost their traffic. So with nothing better to do 10 minutes before I had to head on to work, I submitted my blog post about women emulating men, yawned, then went to get dressed. My jaw unhinged and dropped when I went back to check my stats one last time.

The result of that seemingly innocuous submittal was the biggest traffic count I’ve ever seen since I started this blog. I generated over 50 visits in just under 15 minutes, and it was still going strong by the time I left for work.

I think I may have stumbled onto something here (uhhh, no pun intended). To be honest though, I wasn’t able to wrap my head around the appeal of social networking sites, partly because I couldn’t understand exactly how some of them worked. Sites like StumbleUpon, Flickr, YouTube and Last.FM (all of which I belong to) were easy enough to figure out, but places like Del.icio.us, Digg and Reddit made less sense to me. I think part of it might be because I wasn’t interested in what the most “digged” articles or highest ranked posts of the day happened to be. That perspective might change though as I give these sites a harder look. But one thing that will never, ever change is my utter disdain for places like MySpace, and other social networks that emulate them. The ilk you find at these online ghettos is something I just can’t abide by.

After thinking about what I wrote earlier about being set apart, I realized it isn’t people I don’t want to associate myself with: it’s ugly people. Not physically ugly mind you, but people who just don’t know how to be civilized. You see it all the time on MySpace and YouTube sites. People who drop f-bombs in comments for YouTube videos that show nothing more than a harmless clip of Big Bird singing on Sesame Street. People who feel the compelling need to take snapshots of their hairy buttingtocks and moon me on MySpace. Why? Why do they do this? Why must people always be so utterly depraved and tasteless? All I want is a little civility, to be able to enjoy surfing to a Peter Cetera’s MySpace page without seeing disgusting, lewd (and illegal) photos in the comments, or enjoy a YouTube video without some schmuck cluttering up the comments with mindless f-bombs. Crikey mate, get a grip you psychotic blokes.

Fortunately, though, I may have stumbled (again, no pun intended) onto a way to draw some of the better quality Internet surfers out there to my home on the web, all by making legitimate use of the social networking tools. I have to figure by doing so, eventually a few gems will end up at my doorstep and become regular readers, even if it means they had to ride a wave of sewage to get here.

Paradoxically, the kind of people I’d like visit to my blog would actually be those who are unfamiliar with Internet usage. I know it’s strange, but I think I’d enjoy the perspective of folks who rarely use computers (much less the Internet) more than those who basically spend their entire lives online (like I do). My hearing loss precludes me from being able to enjoy a healthy and active social life, so to compensate I do a lot of my talking through the keyboard. Still, I think it’d be nice to meet people (specifically a hot babe), who could pull me into the real world, and help me enjoy all that it has to offer there.

But until then, gotta keep on surfing.

After years of computer use, you’d think I would have learned by now that it’s not always wise to upgrade to the latest and greatest software the minute it comes out. It’s just bad hoodoo, dude.

But of course the second Wordpress 2.1 had been released, I just HAD to download it and install it right away, thinking my blog would run twice as fast due to the much touted bugfixes and cleaner code 2.1 offered. I imagined angels singing and the sounds of songbirds chirping as visitors would come and gape in awe at the newfound speed and ease at which they would surf my newly upgraded website.

Nope. Instead, it broke a few of my plugins and then torpedoed my blog’s skin. I furiously deleted everything and uploaded my backup copy as soon as I could, then sat back with a tear in my eye as other bloggers happily went onto 2.1 nirvana.

But I noticed in the brief moment that I did manage to get 2.1 working, that my first reaction had been: “Gee, doesn’t seem to be any different from 2.0.” And now, right on the heels of 2.1’s release, the developers are planning to soon release 2.2. After looking at the features THAT release will offer, I realized it didn’t really offer anything that I didn’t already have with the plugins I was currently using now. So truthfully, other than updating Wordpress 2.0.X with security fixes, there really wasn’t a pressing need for me to upgrade. I also knew with each upgrade it would take days, weeks, months (and maybe never) for developers to update their plugins in order to ensure compatibility with the latest version of Wordpress.

So what’s the hurry really? My blog is working fine as it is, and besides it seems like every time I upgrade, some major component gets totally hosed, forcing me to downgrade once again. If it ain’t broke…

I’m sure eventually I’ll have to upgrade my blog some day, especially once the developers stop supporting security fixes for my now grandfathered version of Wordpress. But until that happens, I ain’t gonna do nuttin’. Nuttin’, you hear me? Nuttin’!!!

Instead, I cleaned up the backend by removing some useless or rarely used plugins, then installed and somehow managed to get WP-Cache working without a hitch. That should cache my main pages and hopefully speed up load time for visitors. Aren’t I thoughtful? My blog now seems to be running smoothly, all my plugins are functional, and I’m finally starting to enjoy blogging for real again. Life is good.

Now, if I could only get me a woman…