The Google Gods were not kind. As mentioned, this was the first month I really paid attention to Google placement. Less than a tenth of my traffic comes from Google. Anyway, it looks like each of my pages dropped a good ten spots for each of the keywords I checked. I think I will just go back to ignoring Google. I have a feeling that they will go the way of Yahoo–the only people who get listed are those that pay to play or those that do slimy things to bump up their results.

I am doing a little bit better in All The Web. Since all the big players are optimizing for Google, All The Web will probably start being the search engine with the best results. I guess I can chalk up search engine placement as another thing I am crappy at.

I saw Bush's speach marching us ever closer to war.

While the president is getting a great deal of criticism in all the blogs by arm chair presidents, the thing most of us miss is the fact that the present crisis has been in the making for decades. Conflict with Iraq has only been on the forefront of bloggers' minds for a few weeks. The problems of a rogue nation that is aggressively building weapons and torturing its people has been building for decades. Regardless of the White House's time frame, we the blogging public wouldn't think much about the conflict until days and weeks before the end of the ultimatum.

On the downside, I cannot help but feel that the ex oil man Bush is blinding by black gold and the love of cheap fuel. Things are not good in this great big world of ours. I simply hope that freedom survives the threats of the Islamic fundamentalism and the homeland security forces raised to fight terrorism.

Like millions around the world. I patiently wait for Google to Dance. Apparently the Google Dance is the term webmasters have given the monthly update of the Google Index. I really hadn't paid much attention to search engine optimization. This is actually the first month I even tried to optimize my pages for the Google.

As you see, last month, I did searches on the most important keywords for my site. Very few of them came in before page 7 in the Google listing. For example, my listing of Salt Lake Restaurants was on page 9! for "Salt Lake Restaurants."

A few searches on search engine optimization found that tens of thousands of other people in the same plight...They are all wondering if they will get a good ranking. The funny thing is that, the very first month that I specifically made changes so Google would like my sites better, the Google Dance is late! I have wasted hours checking to see if the changes I made had any impact, or if I am still relegated to page 9. The search box below should list the first 100 items for "Salt Lake." Where is slsites.com?

On the home front, my niece Tessa uploaded her pictures of Italy to Yahoo.

The problem is, of course, that I am just not doing anything. I have tons of things in the to do list, but no gumption to finish them.

I guess I have to say something each day. Recent Readings: Being trapped at the tail end of the Baby Boom*, I enjoyed reading the book Baby Boon by Elinor Burkett. It is a tale about how the Baby Boom generation sold out its ideals of youth, the women's revolution, etc., for tax breaks and new family perks. It was a fun read. Sure enough, I usually am the only person working on X-Mas and July 4th (when I am fortunate to have a job). I have no doubt that one of the reasons I was on the layoff list was that I was single.

Of course, the book I am currently reading is even better. The End of Certainty by Ilya Prigogine is about time, irreversibility, thermodynamics and other hot topics in modern physics.

I am only on page 100. So far, it has been a great read. My only disappointment is that the author incorrectly portrays past scientists as too caught up in determinism. His argument for this is that Newtonian physics used linear equations that were by nature reversible. The truth of the matter is that the scientific method had always held experimentation and verification in higher esteem than the logical models of the scientists. Prigogine tries to portray previous generation of scientists as old codgers who were absolutely certain of their pronouncements, when in reality, they were probably more open minded and less certain in their findings.

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NOTE:I was born in 1962, I am part of what Coupland originally called Generation X. Generation X originally referred to the tail end of the baby boom. It was too cool of a name for that group of losers, so the younger crowd hijacked the name and it now refers to people born between 1965 and 1980. I think some others use GenX for people born between 1970 and 1990. ¿Quien sabe?

Mormons for Equality and Social Justice spoke at the Intelligent Inquiry meeting. MESJ (pronounced Message) is a basically a group of Mormons who want to be liberal democrats. This will be an interesting group to follow, since they are not stepping in line with the political views of the hierarchy. Of course, the LDS church used to be entirely Democratic–until the seer and revelator had a revelation that he would have more power by subverting the Republican Party than by trying to subvert the Democratic Party. It is amazing how Utah so quickly switched from being the most Democratic state in the nation to the most Republican in a single election.

It is quite ironic. When I was a kid in the 70s, the Democratic Party was the party in favor of massive government controls and uncontrolled spending. Today, I am seeing more and more Democrats arguing for fiscal restraint and personal liberty. While the Republicans are falling more and more in line with the views of the Dixiecrats and Mormons...ie, massive uncontrolled federal deficits and extreme restraints on personal freedoms.

There does not appear to be a way to change the template for this site. Rats!

Silly little things, like the Archive link is so tiny and right next to the home page link that I doubt anyone would ever know it is there. Hmmm, it might be best to do a blog on my own site.

BTW, the DSL is working better today. I figured that fixing the problems would be a simple matter of waiting until Monday.

Yesterday, I took a quick series of photos of the New Salt Lake City Library. I spent most of today adding captions to the photos. It takes substantially longer to add captions to pictures than to take the blasted things.

Odd news on the DSL front. I cannot access Blogger via DSL. I had to log in via a modem to blog!!!! There is something screwy at qwest.

Yep, I'm a stats addict. The February total for the websites was 60694 sessions for a total of 199194 page views. The session count is screwy because many of the sites fit together seemless. It probably represents 20,000 people who look at more than one site. I figure that a good 25% of the page views are from robots.

Still having problems with the DSL connection. I can't seem to connect to any site using SSL. I guess I will have to wait for digital paradise to come my way.

I tallied up the take from theold web sites. February's total was $250. Not enough to pay rent in even the smallest studio aparment in Salt Lake. The actual amount of checks received was $66.00...that isn't enough to pay for the web hosting. I hate this dilemma, a web site either has to bend every single thing they do to selling, or go bust. For example Protophoto dished out over 3GB in traffic in 15,000 session. It netted less than $10.00 in revenue.

Well, all is not happy in DSL land. I don't seem to be able to get consistent connections. I am thinking the problem is between Qwest and xmission (my ISP). That would be understandable, the service is new in the area. They might be working the kinks out of the routing still. It is really weird, but I can see some sites and not others. I was not able to see blogspot for most the day. Now I can see it, I can't see Amazon, or my home page.

It is sad, I finally get DSL at a time when I really an just sick of computers.

Tant pis.