"When It All Goes Down"

I think I mentioned a few months back that my Long Island friends and I have a little running joke. When we want to buy outdoor sports stuff, we justify it by saying it will come in handy "when it all goes down" - a reference to the next big terrorist attack. For instance, if you wanted to buy a new hunting rifle and your girlfriend asks you "Why would you want to spend money on that?" you would answer "It might come in handy when it all goes down."

This is sort of a running joke, but lately, it's become halfway serious. Craig just bought a 31' camper, ostensibly to take the family on camping vacations, but it also could come in handy when it all goes down. I wonder if I could use this excuse to get permission to dig a bomb shelter in my back yard...

Happy Birthday To Me!

I made it to 32!

Dennis, Cami, Jen, Craig and Sara got me a cake on Saturday night and sang Happy Birthday to me on the beach in Montauk. Last night, Mom invited the family over and we did it all over again. I snagged a bunch of cool stuff, including a metal detector, a power supply for my laptop, new grills tools, an air purifier for the office and a bunch of other cool new toys.

Today is the real day, though, and I'm working from home, waiting for Time Warner to fix my Road Runner.

Yeah, Right. And I Suppose They Don't Comment Spam Either...

A series of blogs used in a cross-linking strategy to boost the Google page ranking of three porn sites run by adult site operator CyberQuest was the unauthorized creation of an affiliate, the company said Wednesday.

Read the rest of the article on Wired News.

It's always convenient for companies that get caught trying to spam or boost their Google juice to blame the affiliates. Plausible deniability indeed...

I dunno about other marketing companies, but in the rare instance that we use affiliate relationships for things like co-reg and CPA, affiliates have to sign a contract that states, among other things, that they won't use any unapproved media to generate leads and sales. Why can't everyone do this? Because they like to be able to blame affiliates when they get busted, that's why.

I really dug the PageRank concept until it spawned this crazy business of creating bogus links and spam with the goal of boosting one's PageRank. Someone should do a study to determine how much detritus is out there on the Internet for this sole purpose. There's comment spam, bulletin board spam, phantom links, phantom redirect pages, guestbook spam - all of this stuff can boost PageRank, and it probably wouldn't exist if Google didn't exist.

Not that I want to slam Google, but isn't there a better way to determine relevance other than measuring inbound links? And shouldn't Google perma-ban folks who get caught doing this?

The Internet Needs Bounty Hunters

Fifty-seven freaking "Casino Zeal" spams today. That's right, I said 57. Each one was from a different spoofed e-mail address.

This is why we need bounty hunters like Boba Fett that will hunt down spammers and annhiliate their mail servers with a well-placed backpack-launched rocket or a laser blast or something. This would be a great business idea. BobaFettSpamHunter.com could offer a service where for a $1,000 fee (plus expenses), some crazy guy in a Boba Fett costume would hunt down the spammer of your choice and blow up his mail server with a rocket launcher. You'd get a free .MPG of the look on the spammer's face as Boba Fett saunters into his parents' garage and blasts the living shit out of his spam operation. Or maybe a movie of Boba Fett running up to his door, lighting a paper bag full of dog doo on his doorstep, ringing the doorbell and running away.

Okay, so I'm fantasizing. Can you blame me?