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Ten thousand visitors

I missed the big event! At 7:49 am yesterday (Pacific Time), this site had its ten thousandth visitor. The lucky person is from the Russian Federation Zone 5 time zone and uses IE 5.0, but is otherwise anonymous.

To be honest, the visitor counter is a completely arbitrary number. After all, I started the counter back in February when this site had nothing more than the LEGO Mindstorms robots on it, and that was several months after I started the website. If I wanted to provide something more meaningful in terms of the blog, then I could say that at 9:03 am today, the site had its six thousandth visitor since August 16 (when I changed to a new web counter). The lucky six thousandth person was from Germany and landed on my NQC page.

The count is probably wildly inaccurate. According to my web server logs, half the visitors to this site don’t get counted at all.

Be that as it may, the counter rolled over to 10,000 yesterday morning. (There was much rejoicing.)

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When Google searches go terribly wrong!

When I woke up this morning, my mind was a blank. That’s right… I’m a walking zombie. No amount of coffee can start my brain working. I have no opinions on anything this morning, which means there’s nothing much to blog about. Which means it’s time for the secret weapon: When Google Searches Go Terribly Wrong.

Here are only a few of the searches people have used to find Cubicle Dweller:

significance of 7 eleven

I don’t know, maybe it signifies overpriced snack foods and aging sandwiches. Hardly a deep philosophical question.

penguin recipe

At last, a search request I help someone with! See my blog on the Cubicle Dweller Sandwich.

describe penguin meat
Well, I hear it tastes like chicken, and it’s good in a sandwich.

lamp shaped like a chicken

Sorry. I just have a lamp shaped like a thingy. And if Baldrick were here, he’d point out how ironic it is that he’s got a thingy shaped like a lamp.

anal alien abductions painful

Yes, I’ve heard that kidnapping uptight aliens can be painful.

monkeys flashing people animation

Why?? WHY??

view the person without using the webcam

Well, if you’re in the same room, try looking at them. Otherwise, it’s called telepathy.

Blackadder ‘Poo poo’ script

Typical Blackadder… the humour is as subtle as being hit by a truck. Hmm. “Truck”. That sounds a little bit rude. It sounds a little bit like f—

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Somebody give Blogger a swift kick

For the last few days, Blogger has been completely uncooperative. First their servers were down for maintenance, and now FTP won’t work unless I use their old “pro1” server. Now I discover that if it does upload to my site, it inserts the paragraph tag in my entries, causing the left alignment to go wonky (that’s the technical term).

Is anyone else having bizarre problems with Blogger? I’d love to try Movable Type, but the installation is completely baffling.

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Blogger is down for repairs

Well, Blogger.com may be down for repairs, but that won’t stop me from squandering my precious coffee break for some blogging fun. Nosiree, something like that isn’t enough to stop the likes o’ me from adding an entry to my blog. While all you other Blogger.com users are down for the count, this guy is still writing.

So. Here I go.

Um. Okay, well I don’t have anything to say, actually.

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[censored]

I unexpectedly fell face-first into the issue of ‘net censorship this weekend. And it looks like I’m the villain.

In principle, I have always been opposed to censorship. When I think of censorship, I think of a tight-lipped, tight-assed old lady (or man) who takes a black marker to any library book that she doesn’t throw on the bonfire. Censorship inhibits free expression and the exchange of ideas.

Having said that, I have to admit that I just deleted someone’s comment and the link to their site. My reason? Although it was a perfectly fine (but weird) comment, I was worried that it wasn’t appropriate for non-adults. And I have reason to believe that my site is visited by younger types who, in my humble opinion, probably shouldn’t be exposed to certain subjects just yet. His link I removed for the same reason.

To me, it’s a matter of responsibly gauging the audience and presenting material that is not offensive or even traumatizing for the wee ones. The last thing I want is for a 10-year-old to link to my site from a Lego fan site and get smacked in the face with inappropriate adult conversation topics. If there were no such links to my site, I wouldn’t censor a thing, unless someone called me a “poo-poo head” or something else (that I probably deserve).

Now that I’ve done this, how do I feel about censorship? I’m still opposed to censorship and suppression of ideas, but this kind of self-censorship is different. It’s more akin to avoiding the “F” word in front of children.

Then why do I feel like the tight-lipped old man with the black marker?