My view of the world

I was talking to a friend about nothing in particular when I happened to mention Dubrovnik. I really have no idea why the subject came up, except that an old friend from Odessa had gone there on business and said he wasn’t going back to the Moscow office until spring.
The Odessa he’s from is the one in the Ukraine not in Texas, he’s been to both and says he prefers the original, there are no 10 gallon hats, no mechanical bulls, the phrase yee-haw has never been uttered in the history of Eurasia and the wind doesn’t blow nearly as much, since he was born there I guess he might be a little bit prejudiced.
Anyway, Dubrovnik is one of those places that we almost never hear about over here and yet in Europe it’s a very popular tourist destination.
It sits on the Adriatic Sea at the southern most tip of Croatia and as near as I can tell, it’s the only part of Croatia that didn’t get blown up after the wall fell.
As far as tourist places go I hear it’s nice, they have tour boats that go out to the nearby islands and sailboat rentals. In the old part of Dubrovnik there are tours of the forts that are left over from the many invasions that any seaport in that part of the world had to endure.
I’m also told that the food is good, and somewhat mediteranian in taste. For me this is a major consideration, after all, after a long day of doing touristy things it’s good to have a drink, and a meal that you can enjoy, to help you relax and think of a reason not to play tourist, but instead to just watch the boats and let other people fight the crowds and get sore feet.
If you learn to sip your drink you can hang around in one of the local bars and let someone practise their english, or french or spanish on you, or just people watch, drunks are funny in any language, just remember not to get caught laughing at them, make them think you’re laughing with them, and if you’re talking to someone for a while you should at least offer to buy a round,( since I’ve never had anyone turn it down perhaps “offer” is the wrong word,) regardless, relax, enjoy, make a few friends, and the girls really do get prettier at closing time.
One person I know well enough to trust his judgement says he likes to stay in old town, the rooms aren’t as modern as the new sections, but it’s more “old european” and in spite of the tours to see the forts etc. if you stay off the main drags the people are friendlier and therefore it’s more comfortable for someone who grew up on the shores of the Adriatic.
Dubrovnik is on my “someday” list, but I’ll probably hit New Zealand instead and settle for looking at other peoples “and this is our favorite fort” pictures.

I just read an article in the NY Times that said that someone in Baltimore is stealing street lights, not just the lights, but the entire pole. It seems that theses poles weigh about 250 lbs each, are 30ft long and aluminum is being sold to salvage yards for about 35 cents a pound, so, for about $87.50 these guys are sawing down the poles, hauling them away and carefully taping the electrical leads so no one gets hurt.
The powers that be, say it will cost about $156,000 to replace each pole, so far they’ve misplaced 130 of them.
It seems to me that the thing to do is to find these guys and ask what they would charge to install new poles. Obviously their operation is a great deal more efficient that the City of Baltimore.

Last year, Baltimore, with a population about one-twelfth that of New York City’s, had a homicide rate more than five times as high. The city has a population of about 650,000 with an estimated 40,000 addicts, it seems to be implied in the article that it’s the druggies looking for some fast cash that are doing this, however, having known a number of addicts, it’s my opinion that this is much too organized and way too neat to be any tweaker I’ve ever met.

I’ve got a couple of websites that I’d like to get higher page rank on ( imagine that), the trouble is that Google is the number one search engine and they change the way they rank pages almost every 3 months.
I’ve made a deal with a friend who has at least one page rank 6 and effective control of a couple more. If we can get my sites up to a page rank 5 or better this will help him which in turn will help us.
Google has some rules about reciprocal links and the number of back links and which text they read on your page.
As I understand it, they don’t like a one for one link exchange, so the first site should link to the links page of the second site while the second site links to the main page of the first site.
The spiders seem to only index the first hundred or so words on a page.
You need a link back to your main page from every other page in your site, you also need the proper “alt” text on images.
ad infintum.
This whole thing is a major P.I.T.A.

I was reading Michaels’ blog over on Pioneer Loan when I was reminded of a couple of things. The first and formost is that Michael can’t spell to save his life, the next is that most people get a blog and then forget about it.
The Pawnshop blog gets updated evey so often, they say it’s going to become more regular, Michael updates his every couple of months and everyone else forgets theirs exists.

I was just perusing the Las Vegas Blog When I ran across this article on Heidi Fliess and her intentions to open “Heidi’s Stud Farm”, a “house of ill repute” for women, ….only in Nevada.

I just turned 54 and I’m feeling my age. I went out to one of the many PTs with a woman who’s half my age and of course I felt obligated to keep up and keep it up.
I got home just in time to take a shower and go to work, as a result, so far today, my mind refuses to function. I keep forgetting what I’m supposed to be concentrating on. Yes, I know. “And how does that make today different”?
Now, I’m expected to go out again tonight.
In the words of every guy who’s ever tried to convince himself that he’s still 20 and bulletproof–Shit!
Oh well, ain’t nothin’ for it but to try and keep up and pretend like I’m not up past my bedtime.
Tomorrow I get to get up and go to work, I not dead yet, but I seem to be working that direction.

And, No, this is not a mid-life crisis. She’s good for the ego, the guys want to know how I managed it, and after the snide remarks, the women are curious what she sees in me, since I don’t have money.

She and I both know that this is just temporary, but the sex is good and it’s fun to watch the reactions of the rest of the world. It was especially nice to see the face of an ex when she saw us together, that alone was worth the bad jokes and catty remarks.

Just a thought in passing. From a guys perspective, as long as you get off, is there such a thing as bad sex?

I got the project for the Bosses daughter as done as I intend to do it. I modified a guestbook to fit what she needed. I like that approach, it took a couple of hours to modify, as opposed to a couple of days to write and debug. (I used the Purple Yin guestbook, it’s free.)

I’m still surrounded by people who think computers are magic and if you want something special, it shouldn’t take more than 5 or ten minutes to write the code or install the network.

Somedays I feel sorry for Michael (our programmer/IT guy), he has to write and re-write our software, depending on the changes in both the law and what the boss wants at this particular point in time. He’s a bit of an odd duck, lately, when I talk to him, he’s stressing about the fact that he’s stressing, which of course causes him to stress about the increased stress and so on.

A photographer from Card Player Magazine came by to take pictures of our World Series of Poker Bracelet. He says it’s become an urban legend. The more I think about it, the less I want to sell it. I’m curious to see how many “talkers” not “takers” the magazine article attracts.

Life is simple:
I’m surrounded by idiots,
everything’s an emergency,
I work too hard and get paid too little
and if for some strange reason I happen to watch a television show and like it, it will be canceled immediately.
A friend (yes, even I’m allowed to have friends) said I need a more positive outlook. Well, I’m “positive” the above is true.

I’ve got a minor project to deal with. The boss’ daughter called and she needs to set up an online list of organizations that only she can edit.
She has a domain name currently parked on godaddy. Her partner says he will provide the server space, but his people are much too busy to help with the project.
She has no idea what sort of operating system they use, she doesn’t know what sort of database they have, etc. etc.
If I write it for an access db and they have mysql or visa-versa most of the calls in the program will have to be rewritten. If I write in php and it’s not installed on their server they may not have the rights to install it and so-on.
Thus far I’ve recieved no information, and I fully expect a call from her wanting it yesterday.
She smart, outgoing and people like her, but she knows nothing about computers, she thinks of them as magic boxes you sit in front of and whatever you want magically happens.
I’m told she’s getting better, but in my experience, when she walks into the room, the computers cry.

There are some people in this world who just don’t get technology. They wonder why everything has to be done by computer. On the other hand if you can’t pull up their data in a few seconds they are unhappy. These people demand the speed and accuracy of computers and yet, can’t or won’t check their own email.
A customer wanted me to tell him how to program his new big screen tv. Not only didn’t I know how, he didn’t know what brand it was, so I couldn’t even look it up online to try to figure out what his problem was.
After some conversation I discovered that his problem was, that he couldn’t get cable on it. He hadn’t had them run the coax into the room with the new tv and he couldn’t understand why he was having problems. The salesman had told him it should be able to get the channels without the cable box, so he assumed he didn’t need the cable. I don’t think he believed me when I told him he’d have to run cable and he said he was going to call the store where he bought it and have them come fix it.
There must be a sign outside our door that says idiots welcome.
No I won’t be polite, this guy told me I didn’t know anything about it and then proceded to annoy me with even more stupid questions. I hope the store charges him for the trip out and then the repairman tells him, he has to use rabbit ears.
I’d even bet that he thought I was laughing “with” him.

It seems everyone has a blog. Most of them that actually get used are like mine, incoherent, disorganized and pretty much useless. This also discribes my life in general. I’d change but, the rut I’m in is worn to the point that it’s really comfortable. You know, like your favorite shoes or that shirt your S.O. keeps trying to throw away, broken in and loose enough for you to relax in.
I ocassionaly go into rant mode, but this is because there are a large number of idiots in the world and I seem to be destined to meet them all.
On the whole life is good, it’s not terribly interesting, much less exciting, but to tell the truth I’ve had the other and I understand the chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times”.
I think the lack of both a steady girlfriend and drinking buddies who insist on going out every night, has not only saved me a great deal of money, it’s saved a lot of wear and tear on the ol’ body. Nowthat I’m no longer young and indestructable, and it just takes too effin’ long to recover.
So, I guess I’ll sit in front of my computer and read somebody’s blog, assuming I can find one that’s actually being kept up.
The Las Vegas blog is starting to shape up, but it’s way too serious for a day like this. So, I guess I’ll wander aimlessly until I find something lighter that someone else I know is writing.