Welcome Googlebot! Since I moved the site off of Tripod, I've been waiting for the Google bots to pick up the new site address and start re-indexing my site. Looking at my logs today it appears that Google's bots are busily analyzing my site again - so, welcome robots ;)

Check your variable names: I was coding some ASP to track sessions to see how people surfed through my site (or if they even did) and I used a Session variable to store some information. In the Global.asa file under Session_OnEnd I put in some code and it wasn't working. I left it alone last night and came back to it later today. It turns out that I used different variable names to store the data than to retrieve the data. Same 'contextual' name, just stated in a different manner. So, lesson for the day is 'check your variable names'.
In other news, know that the Response.Redirect directive stops processing your ASP code right then and there, so if there's any code that needs to execute, it needs to be executed before the Redirect. I had incorrectly assumed that Response.Redirect would just write out a redirect to the user, and continue processing the asp file, but I learned that it doesn't when I tried to do a Session.Abandon afterwards, and the Sessions weren't closing out on the server.

Clicks for the sake of Clicks? The more I look at all of the referral programs, the more I am drawn into the referral programs that offer 10,000 and 15,000 free hits just for signing up. To whet my appetite I joined one that promised 10,000 free hits - Raginhits, it's called. When you sign up and add your URL, you can apply your free hits right away and start getting traffic to your site - you can even choose only 'manual clicks'. Hrmmmm, wait a minute? They have an auto-clicking option? You can earn credits just by leaving a browser open cycling through sites automatically? What's the quality of those clicks? I might as well buy time on Cable TV at 3:30AM, on the TV Guide channel, no less. More people might pay attention to that than to a browser they just left open for the sake of it?
Quickly, I assigned my credits to manual mode surfers only. Perhaps one will stop by my site and like it enough to stick around. Don't know if I'm going to sit and earn credits there, though. Most every site I get sent to is yet ANOTHER click-for-credit/cash site. So, I don't think my time is well spent.
The one thing I've enjoyed so far about BlogExplosion and BlogClicker is that it feels more community oriented. I read about other people's lives, and they come here and read my random nonsense. I've even personally connected with a few of them by email. It's pleasant, and it's what I wanted out of my blog - personal contact - not impersonal advertising hype. If you have a blog, I'd suggest these latter two programs (links on the left under Thanks...). Talk at you later.

Home to some of the most useful software on the planet - and it's free, no less - Sysinternals Freeware is for the System Administrator that has almost everything. Their newest release is a rootkit detector for Windows. It will find hidden registry keys and files that may provide the hiding locale for hidden bugs on your system. A rootkit is installed software that hides from virus scanners and the like, and gives administrative control (root in Unix terms) to the programs it's running. The 'kit' means that it's a utility with multiple skills, and is installed all at once by hackers to attempt to take over your machine and hide itself from detection. My favorite software they distribute, however, is Process Explorer - it lets you get into the nitty gritty's of the processes running on your machine, and can help you debug some of the nastiest problems if you know what to look for. I highly recommend this site.

You know - the moon is an ugly thing when viewed close up. I took this picture at 1/1250 shutter with a 300mm tele (off-hand) - F/5.6 with the camera set to ISO 400 - cropped out all the black sky to make the photo 640x480. (Click for full size)

I'm going to turn on Blogger's Comments method and get rid of the Doodle Board - I think it'll be better for discussion of specific topics (wishful thinking on my part). As always, this blog is under constant construction.

Printer Cartridge Scams: Normally when you hear the word 'scam' mentioned, you figure there's got to be a con artist somewhere in sight. You don't normally expect to hear this word used in association with a big corporation like Hewlett-Packard. But this is exactly the word being used on the web today by people who are pissed off about some of the business practices of HP. Besides the Yahoo article mentioning the lawsuit, more pages are showing up on this thread at Slashdot. Some of the articles as old as 2001. I guess that the practice of expiring inkjet cartridges isn't news after all. Well, in the sense of it being 'new', anyway. The lawsuit may just cause some changes to come about, but it may take a while. Some of those articles are good reading, like the one that talks about how different cartridges can be used in different printers with a little bit of hacking, to maximize your bang for the buck when buying ink.
As consumers, what we'd like is for someone to come out with an inkjet printer that welcomes refills. It could come with an interchangeable print cartridge and a cleaning kit that would help you keep it in optimum working condition. You could buy the refillable ink, and soak the cartridge overnight to help clear up any clogs in the ink delivery.
Sooner or later, your cartridge is going to clog though, so I understand at least part of what HP is trying to do in expiring their cartridges. But we are a nation, nay a world, of penny pinchers. The freedom to use something until its dying breath is something we hold dear. Imagine being told that your car is no longer usable after 150,000 miles. For many, that seems quite reasonable. But to the guy on the bridge trying to get to work late at 9:30AM Monday, as his odometer rolls over? It's a different story. Folks, this should be an engineering principle. Never design something that forces the consumer to take an action that would deny them the freedom to ignore your 'suggestion'. After all, when's the last time you changed your oil at the 3,000 mile mark?

Some time ago, I gave up my inkjet printer for a personal laser printer. I had gone to purchase some ink cartridges, and went home with the laser printer because buying a new printer was cheaper than buying the ink for the older printer. (I paid $99 for it) Competition is certainly needed in the ink cartridge business to bring prices down to a reasonable level. Either that, or the companies that design the printers need to make them refillable out of the box -
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OMG! ROTFL! :)
Ok, that's never going to happen! The company that does that will be cutting off its nose to spite its future profits, after all...Of course, they could go in the complete opposite direction and purposefully force you to purchase their ink cartridges to continue using their printer. But would they? According to: Yahoo! News - Lawsuit Says HP Printer Cartridges Die Before Use a woman is suing HP because, as she claims, the cartridges for her printer "expire on a certain date, in some cases rendering them useless before they are even installed in a printer". Now that's certainly one way to ensure future profit! I wonder what dumb, stupid, ignorant, son of a bitch thought up that one - and how soon he/she'll be fired.
Seriously, though, this is definitely an area where consumers need to force manufacturers to get in step with our needs. Hell, it's cheaper to buy a new printer FOR FREE!!!! from Tiger Direct after rebate than it is to refill the printer cartridges in your old one. How silly is it that we manufacture throw-away electronics? They're not only giving them away, but they have been for years! My first color printer was a free-after-rebate deal from CompUSA. Come on, people, there has got to be some economic common sense applied here. The economy isn't going to get better if we manufacture goods, ship them, support them, etc... and make no money doing it. And why? To make sure that you have to come back for more ink? Well, if your company gave me a printer for free, why wouldn't the other company give me a printer for free when yours runs out of ink? Don't you think that somewhere down the line someone's going to figure it all out? Why are we all so collectively stupid?

Meme of the Day: Shirt Folding - Just found a link to this shirt-folding video on the blog-verse (sorry, forgot which blog) - It's a really cool way to quickly fold your shirts so that they look neat and it's fast - really fast. I can only imagine that this might be a training video for some factory where they have professional shirt folders who do this all day long. In any case, if you ever have to fold laundry and want to shave off a few seconds, you should watch the video a few times and take heed.

I remember being introduced to the library in our grammar school when I was a child. I remember it because I wanted to read all of those books. Growing up, as a teen, I thought to myself that the perfect life would be to be able to live in a library, to have the chance to just read and read and read the combined knowledge of man. I've even extended that dream into one where I own a used book store.
The Internet is like a library on LSD. You can read the writings of others, in real time, indexed or not (through Google or Yahoo, for example), and you can get lost in it. The only problem with this is that the web is becoming more and more self-referential. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against the authors who have commented on the blogging phenomenon. But so much has been said about blogging - so many products and ideas support the phenomenon, that it's all becoming rather self-serving. There's programs where you can visit others blogs in return for having them visit your blog. There's comment software that allows you to obtain comments on your blog so that others can post comments and have links back to their blog, and so on and so on.
One thing that is the same as that visit to the library is the sense of over-abundance. There are simply too many books in a library or book store to be able to read them all in a lifetime. And there are simply too many programs and links on the Internet to follow them all. Too Much Information is more than just a witty saying; it is more a fact of life now. We are bombarded with media, opinions, left and right political agendas, self-referential writers patting themselves on the back, or media making fun of how liberal the media is!
Since I write a blog, I have been thinking, just what should my focus be? How should I concentrate my own writings on topics that are important to me, without getting caught up in the linking, referring, and cross-linking to other links that will lead you to other blogs, that will eventually lead you back here. Am I doing you a favor, or am I overloading you with information. Today, I signed up for several programs in the Blogverse - Blogazoo and Blogshares. As I thought of adding their links over in my 'Thanks' column, I visited other blogs through their links. I came across some that had reference/program links all over their page. And for every inch they had given up, their content was that much smaller. You have to wonder...is content king? If so, how much advertising is enough? Certainly there are bloggers out there who have overdone it. And do I really care if you visit my blog? After all, isn't just one of my hobbies?
Questions lead to more questions. Trying to find answers to all of this will drive me to read more. That reading will lead to more questions, and so on....welcome to my library. Good luck escaping.