Scattered Thoughts

"It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning."
-George Orwell

I gotta hand it to Google for taking on the Justice Department. If you don't know what's going on, the federal government has subpoenaed search results from the major search engines — MSN, Yahoo! and Google — in order to aid in a futile attempt to revive an online child protection law that has been ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. Yahoo! and MSN have already handed over their search records but Google is fighting.

Google's argument is that 1) handing over the search records is an invasion of their users' privacy and 2) handing over their search records will give away trade secrets that give Google a competitive advantage in the search market among other things.

I think the fact that MSN and Yahoo! have already handed over this paperwork is an egregious assault on online privacy. Sadly, the door to online privacy violation has already been left wide open so closing this door will be even more difficult.

Luckily Google has the resources to take this to court. They have a date set for a court hearing before US District Judge James Ware in San Jose. The date is March 13.

An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.
–Bonnie Friedman

Ok, new philosophy. For the next few weeks, I will not be in any sort of a hurry for anything. If it means that I will be late, sobeit. If it means I miss the bus, sobeit.

This is my last semester of school and I'm going to enjoy it, dammit!

A large part of the culture in this part of the country (i.e. the Midwest) is a relaxed sense of time. Outside the large city centers like Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, etc. (yes, Illinois, this includes you as well) life just moves at a slower pace. When you go to a restaurant, visits from your host/hostess — to take your order, bring you your bill, etc. — have longer periods of time between them. Speed limits are generally slower and people tend to drive at a slower rate — except those from higher population areas who drive 80 mph regardless of the limit.

It's a part of Midwestern culture that I haven't been embracing lately.

So there it is. I've said it, so now if you see me in a hurry, correct me.

I also have a new goal and that is to hang out with as many of my friends here as possible in the coming weeks. I will soon become a real person. I'll have a real job and have real problems (as if things aren't real now. Just sayin). Part of being an adult is being alone; you lose track of old friendships, lose touch with old acquaintances, etc.

I'm going to work to rebuild old friendships and strengthen my current ones so that when I am a real person, it's not as difficult to keep in touch.

Enough about that.

You might be wondering where my Monday post went. Well, I posted, but it's a private post. After I wrote it, I didn't feel comfortable posting it. It was mainly a lot of nearly-emo inner dialog and rather than make it public and bore everyone to death, I made it private and that way only I have to see it.

I applied for three more jobs with the university tonight. That brings the grand total of jobs applied for up to 5. I know that's a really low number, but I'm being picky. If I'm going to be working somewhere for the next few years, I want to be somewhere where I'll be happy; in a job that I enjoy going to each day. Most people who are leaving college spam employers with resumes and cover letters. I'm not a spammer, I'm more like Google AdSense — I only advertise to people who are already looking at something similar to what I have to sell. Spammers send their messages to as many people as they can find.

I'm rambling so I think this post is over.

Peace.
tm

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — Home — Mark Broussard

Hero of the Day — Girl Scout Cookies

Villain of the Day — someone in our neighborhood for working on his damn motorcycle all day so I couldn't sleep!

Current Mood — — Drained

Until the next post…

Mike Davis has finally decided to give Indiana back the basketball team that he borrowed for six years. He offically announced his resignation yesterday during a press conference in the Assembly Hall.

"I just felt like it was time for the former players, the fans, the alumni and anyone who loves Indiana basketball to be a part of Indiana basketball again. This is a great day for Indiana basketball. Trust me, it is."
–Mike Davis, 'Lame Duck' IU Basketball Coach

If you haven't heard already, he apparently told the team of his plans after the Wisconsin loss (at Wisconsin). He will be finishing out the season with the team, hopefully being able to at least milk an NCAA Tournament bid out of it.

I won't be surprised if we lose at Illinois, at home to Penn State and Michigan State, at Purdue and at Michigan to close out the season. For a team that was ranked as high as number 8 in the country, how far we will have fallen.

That's all for now.
tm

PS — I updated the Sideblog with an article about the new Mac OS X Maleware. You should check it out.

Well, I about gave myself a heart attack tonight on my graveyard. I went through and started deleting things from my root directory, i.e. my old moveable type install, my moveable type archives, random unused directories, etc. Well, somehow, I completely deleted my current page theme. Good news is that the entire theme is mirrored on /dev so it was only gone for a few minutes. Granted, I freaked out and had a panic attack. I thought I was going to have to start from scratch.

In other news, I set up Google Analytics a few months ago to start analyzing traffic that I generate with my site. Some of the things it's discovered are quite interesting and I'm going to share them with you.

1. 91.70% of people visiting my site have a broadband connection
2. 49.44% of visits come from Firefox, 42.7% from IE, 7.3% from Safari and .56% from Netscape
3. 82.27% of people use Windows, 15.17% use Macs and .56% use Linux
4. 12% of visitors use 800×600 resolution on their screens, the rest use larger
5. Most people visit on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but I average 50 visits a day (49.57)
6. I have people who read from eight different countries
7. Most visitors stay on my page between 5 and 10 minutes.
8. There are still people using Internet Explorer on a Mac
9. My third highest referring URL is murphwormjim.blogspot.com

Ok, now after reading that, you've probably got some sort of ideas floating through your head. Well, here's what I think about what Google says about my site…

1. Sweet! That means that I can start posting larger images on my pages. It's also a sharp contrast from just a few years ago when most visitors would have been using broadband.
2. Who is still using Netscape? I mean c'mon, who does that. honestly…
3. Windows still dominates, but Mac is making a dent. I bet I can guess who uses Linux…
4. Get with the times, people. Set your screen resolution to at least 1024×768 (which is the most popular on my site anyway)
5. People do read what I write. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. It also matches my average monthly unique hits (~1,500)
6. Apparently some of my international friends do keep up with me. Interesting…
7. Most people come to read one post or so. Some stay on the page for up to an hour or even more.
8. IE on a Mac? It's never worked well. How can people keep themselves so out-of-date
9. Murph has no life

The most used Firefox version is the latest, which tells me that most people do keep their software and operating systems up-to-date.

Alright, that's my uber-nerdom for the day. It's just interesting to see what kind of traffic you generate on your sites. I do have to say that I account for about 1% of the traffic to my site because of development, proofreading, writing, etc.

Let's see, what else is going on, you might ask. Well, a whole lot of nothing. After the weekend, I've been slowly getting the house back into order. Mojo left us about one and a half bottles of cheap-ass merlot which inevitably had a date with the PVC express out of our house. Neither Will nor I drink merlot, let alone cheap-ass wine. Someone left their toothbrush and deodorant in the bathroom. I would venture to guess it was Jimi since he forgot to pack everything that was necessary for the weekend, haha. Erin and I are going to be celebrating Valentine's Day on Thursday since I worked at midnight on the 14th and she works tonight. I've got some plans made; I just hope she doesn't think they're lame.

Contracts for the summer have started appearing in mailboxes. Erin is going to be the Assistant Aquatics Director and Hayden is on my staff. That's all I've heard so far, so if you know more, hit up the comment box and let me know. I will be the High Adventure Director, unless something has changed and they decide to make me Handicraft Director or something else. And by something else, I mean that I'll be working somewhere else because I won't be back as something other than High Adventure Director.

I'm not even going to talk about the recent publicity about Hoosier Basketball. I will, however, quote Peegs.com

Indiana Head Coach Mike Davis has long made public the fact that he has never felt fully embraced by the Hoosier fan base during his tenure in Bloomington. During Monday's Big Ten teleconference the embattled coach went one step further. He suggested that the negativity surrounding his team is killing any hopes for a successful season and that he is running out of buttons to push to get his team to play hard. He also stated that the only solution may be a change at the top.
–T.J. King for Peegs.com

I think that's about it for now. It's nearly 6:00am and I've still got some internet surfing to do.

peace
tm

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — Queen Anne's Revenge — Flogging Molly — The more I listen to their new album, the more I enjoy each song on it. You should definitely check it out.

Today's Moment of Bliss — I had a hearty chuckle at the "Let Windows choose what's best for your computer" option in the performance menu in computer properties… Like Windows knows best.

Hero of the Day — /dev

Villain of the Day — Myself for turning my alarm clock off in my sleep when I had it set so I could wake up and have dinner with Erin since it was Valentine's Day. It's a good thing I woke up around 11:00pm so I could make it to work at Midnight.

Current Mood — — Dazed

Until the next post…

Number One — The Indiana Daily Student
So I don't know where to start with this post, so I'll just dive right in with Indiana Daily Stupid commentary.

If you haven't seen the front of the second section of the IDS this morning, you should take a look. The leading article is this one. Now, just looking at the article online doesn't do the print edition justice. The words "MISSED SHOT" appear in nearly 250pt font at the bottom of the top third of the page. You would think that "MISSED SHOT" referred to a bullet intended for the Vice-President that hit his hunting buddy in the face instead…

…wait, that did happen this weekend, only it was the Vice-President doing the shooting…

My point is simple — The IDS sucks. Ever since I had a DB roommate who worked there, I've been ripping the paper apart with criticism. I fear for other college papers since the IDS is considered to be one of the best in the country in layout and quality of the writing. Granted, I have some friends who work there now, but they have no role in the layout or writing of the paper.

Number Two — Indiana University Basketball and It's Critics
Namely Mike Davis — A Critic of the Critics. After IU's last-second loss to Iowa this weekend, Mike Davis, in an interview with ESPN, criticized the sportswriters who criticize Indiana Basketball.

I watched [Saturday's] second half and you could see we were playing with no energy. It's really a shame. They have no idea what they've done to the players.
–Mike Davis

For a coach, he sure shifts the blame for losses to outside circumstances. It's never his fault, or the team's fault in a loss, it's either the fans' or the media's fault. That's just unacceptable.

To flip the coin, those individuals who wore black to the game on Saturday aren't true fans of Indiana Basketball. Wearing black to protest a team playing to tie first place… you might as well be Boilermaker fans (congrats to PU on beating U of M this weekend). Going into your home court with the goal of protesting a coach/team/whatever that is one game outside first place is appalling.

Number Three — The Ever-Changing Friends
I've struggled to find a good time to write these thoughts lately; a time when I won't offend anyone. I'm tired of waiting. If I don't write now, I'm going to forget what I wanted to say. This isn't meant to offend anyone, just some observations I've made recently.

People change; it's inevitable. We all go through experiences that make us different people. Sometimes the changes are drastic, other times they're gradual. I've been noticing a lot lately that people who I once considered to be close friends are turning into the people I don't want to associate with. For one reason or another, them changing or me changing, they really piss me off.

There are also those people who are changing with me and they are the ones I have been spending more and more time with lately. It's just an interesting study in human behavior and something I've been noticing a lot recently…

That's all I have for now. Back to work…

tm

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — Light of a Fading Star — Flogging Molly

Quote of the Day — "I think they get their commentary from fortune cookies…" commentator speaks again "…lucky numbers: 14, 38, 25, 16″ — Jimi while watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics.

Hero of the Day — Everyone who hung out this weekend for a great time.

Villian of the Day — Cold

Current Mood — — Exhausted from the weekend…

Until the next post…