Tuesday, November 29, 2005
T.O.
While I was taking a look at ESPN I noticed a story about Arlen Specter and Terrell Owens. The gist of the article was that Sen. Specter saying that there might be some sort of anti-trust issue at stake between the Eagles and Owens.
Terrell Owens might be a great football player, and he might have some great talent, but that doesn't make up or excuse the way that he treated his team and the Eagles organization as a whole. Owens, in my opinion, seems to be a very "it's all about me" type of person. He even got miffed that the Eagles didn't recognize a certain milestone recently. He seems like a person that just likes to run his mouth whenever he feels like it and doesn't care what he really says and what sorts of repercussions his words and actions might have. I know that if I did and said some of things he did and said at my job, I'd be out of work in a hurry.
I guess what bothered me about Sen. Specter's comments is that it seems to me like there are a lot more pressing matters to be looked into than Terrell Owens' lack of a job.
Our country is facing some tough times on a lot of fronts. We're being forced to take a stand for what we believe in and not waffling no matter what our detractors might say. It's high time for our country to return to the roots that it was founded on and not the garbage that passes as "acceptance" and "tolerance" today. By that I mean the acceptance and tolerance that forces those with Christian convictions to feel like they are the perverts, the haters, and the weirdos because they will not accept every perversion under the sun.
There's my little rant for the night :).
Terrell Owens might be a great football player, and he might have some great talent, but that doesn't make up or excuse the way that he treated his team and the Eagles organization as a whole. Owens, in my opinion, seems to be a very "it's all about me" type of person. He even got miffed that the Eagles didn't recognize a certain milestone recently. He seems like a person that just likes to run his mouth whenever he feels like it and doesn't care what he really says and what sorts of repercussions his words and actions might have. I know that if I did and said some of things he did and said at my job, I'd be out of work in a hurry.
I guess what bothered me about Sen. Specter's comments is that it seems to me like there are a lot more pressing matters to be looked into than Terrell Owens' lack of a job.
Our country is facing some tough times on a lot of fronts. We're being forced to take a stand for what we believe in and not waffling no matter what our detractors might say. It's high time for our country to return to the roots that it was founded on and not the garbage that passes as "acceptance" and "tolerance" today. By that I mean the acceptance and tolerance that forces those with Christian convictions to feel like they are the perverts, the haters, and the weirdos because they will not accept every perversion under the sun.
There's my little rant for the night :).
Interesting
Today I looked at my Google Analytics data for yesterday. In one of my posts I mentioned that I wasn't sure if anyone actually reads this blog or not. Well, I guess I was wrong, at least for yesterday. I had "readers" (I'm not sure if they were search engine spiders or not) from Canada, England, and several U.S. states.
The thing that caught my eye was that one of the "readers" was from Redmond, WA, which is the home of Microsoft. So, I don't know who was reading, maybe it was Bill Gates, but I highly doubt that.
It's just interesting to me to see what kind of voice you can have on the 'net. You never know who might be dropping by to take a gander at what you have to say.
The thing that caught my eye was that one of the "readers" was from Redmond, WA, which is the home of Microsoft. So, I don't know who was reading, maybe it was Bill Gates, but I highly doubt that.
It's just interesting to me to see what kind of voice you can have on the 'net. You never know who might be dropping by to take a gander at what you have to say.
Monday, November 28, 2005
What I Do
People have asked me a lot recently what I do at my new job at Intelligent Direct. Well, I do a couple of things.
1.) I'm working on learning/doing Search Engine Optimization. This is the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks better in the different search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) without doing things that will get your site banned by any or all of the engines. It is definitely part art, part science, and a little part unknown I think. It's a very interesting field, and the industry of search seems to be an ever-evolving field.
2.) I'm also working on some web statistics stuff for our different sites. We use a program called Deep Log Analyzer that takes our log files from our web server and puts them into a Microsoft Access database. My program I'm working on uses custom SQL queries to pull out the pertinent information from the database. That information is then transformed and put into an Excel spreadsheet. Some of the things we are looking at tracking are: paths for visitors that made orders, paths for those who didn't, and some other visit information. It really is quite fascinating once you start looking at the data and seeing how people actual traverse your website. Sometimes people do stuff that you wouldn't guess at all.
The other parts of my job include writing Visual Basic programs to automate reports that I run (like a report that tracks our websites' positions on the big search engines) and supervising a student from Mansfield. He works on making changes to our different Pay Per Click accounts.
So that, in a nutshell, is what I do at my new job.
1.) I'm working on learning/doing Search Engine Optimization. This is the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks better in the different search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) without doing things that will get your site banned by any or all of the engines. It is definitely part art, part science, and a little part unknown I think. It's a very interesting field, and the industry of search seems to be an ever-evolving field.
2.) I'm also working on some web statistics stuff for our different sites. We use a program called Deep Log Analyzer that takes our log files from our web server and puts them into a Microsoft Access database. My program I'm working on uses custom SQL queries to pull out the pertinent information from the database. That information is then transformed and put into an Excel spreadsheet. Some of the things we are looking at tracking are: paths for visitors that made orders, paths for those who didn't, and some other visit information. It really is quite fascinating once you start looking at the data and seeing how people actual traverse your website. Sometimes people do stuff that you wouldn't guess at all.
The other parts of my job include writing Visual Basic programs to automate reports that I run (like a report that tracks our websites' positions on the big search engines) and supervising a student from Mansfield. He works on making changes to our different Pay Per Click accounts.
So that, in a nutshell, is what I do at my new job.
Google Analytics
I know that not everyone who reads this blog is what I would call a "techie" person, but this post is gonna be a little on the technical side : ). A couple of weeks ago, Google launched a service called Google Analytics. Last year (I believe) Google purchased a web statistics company named Urchin. The service used to cost $199 a month. Now Google has modified that service and made it available for free! By installing a little JavaScript code on your website, Google will track all traffic to your site and provide you with all sorts of cool looking Flash reports. I can now see where readers of this blog are located geographically, what kind of browsers they're using, etc. etc.
The service was sort of slow at first, since so many people rushed to sign up. They're not even allowing sign ups at the moment until the get the site a little more stabilized.
If you have a website that you maintain, and you'd like to know a little more about the people visiting the site (but no private information) definitely give Google Analytics a try.
The service was sort of slow at first, since so many people rushed to sign up. They're not even allowing sign ups at the moment until the get the site a little more stabilized.
If you have a website that you maintain, and you'd like to know a little more about the people visiting the site (but no private information) definitely give Google Analytics a try.
One Post a Day
I made it a goal to try to post to this blog at least once a day this week, just for something to do I guess. I don't even know how many people read this anymore, but it's still enjoyable for me to put my thoughts down here.
We spent the weekend with Danielle's family on a video game/feast after Thanksgiving weekend. Derek and I stayed up until around 3:30 Saturday morning playing various video games. It reminded me a lot of college. In fact, I don't think I've stayed up that late since college.
Saturday we went up to Danielle's Grandparents' for an awesome stir fry lunch. We spent the rest of Saturday just hanging out and having a good time until the Hooses came up for dinner Saturday night.
After church Sunday we hung out and watched the Patriots-Chiefs game. After the game was over, we packed up and headed back here.
After reading what I just wrote, it might sound like we had a boring weekend, but it was really a great time. I always enjoy going over to Danielle's house. I feel like I've fit in with her family since the very first moment I met them, which helped solidify in my mind the fact that I wanted to spend forever with Danielle in the first place.
Tonight, of course, is the big game between the Steelers and Colts. Hopefully the Steelers will be able to pull off the upset.
That's all for now. Until next time...
We spent the weekend with Danielle's family on a video game/feast after Thanksgiving weekend. Derek and I stayed up until around 3:30 Saturday morning playing various video games. It reminded me a lot of college. In fact, I don't think I've stayed up that late since college.
Saturday we went up to Danielle's Grandparents' for an awesome stir fry lunch. We spent the rest of Saturday just hanging out and having a good time until the Hooses came up for dinner Saturday night.
After church Sunday we hung out and watched the Patriots-Chiefs game. After the game was over, we packed up and headed back here.
After reading what I just wrote, it might sound like we had a boring weekend, but it was really a great time. I always enjoy going over to Danielle's house. I feel like I've fit in with her family since the very first moment I met them, which helped solidify in my mind the fact that I wanted to spend forever with Danielle in the first place.
Tonight, of course, is the big game between the Steelers and Colts. Hopefully the Steelers will be able to pull off the upset.
That's all for now. Until next time...
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Dad in a Podcast
In case you didn't already know, my alma mater, Mansfield University, is now doing a podcast, partly due to some conversations the P.R. director and I had this past summer.
It's pretty exciting for me to see this thing starting to come to fruition and being done right at the same time. The RSS feed seems to be working well, and if you ask me, that's one of the most important parts of podcasting.
The podcast website can be found at The M.U. Podcast.
My dad was featured in the first podcast and he also did a short Admissions podcast, so that was pretty cool.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Lending a helping hand
RSS is such a useful tool, if you can call it a tool. With it I can subscribe to someone's blog, read about a problem they're having, post a comment to their site, and within minutes they have a solution to their issue. It's kinda cool how the internet interconnects us like that.
On another note, I successfully ripped Napoleon Dynamite using HandBrake this weekend after ripping it once with the subtitles on. It came in just around 360 MB formatted to play on the video iPod (320 x 240) resolution. It really looks impressive on the iPod screen. I still wish I had a better alternative to connect the iPod to the TV (other than S-Video), but oh well.
On another note, I successfully ripped Napoleon Dynamite using HandBrake this weekend after ripping it once with the subtitles on. It came in just around 360 MB formatted to play on the video iPod (320 x 240) resolution. It really looks impressive on the iPod screen. I still wish I had a better alternative to connect the iPod to the TV (other than S-Video), but oh well.
Copyright 2005 Jared Barden
