Recently in Geekdom Category

I've got one of those nifty web statistics utilities going that gives me all sorts of useful/less information about who and how many are visiting my blog. Statistics is a rather absurd term for single and occassional double-digit numbers, but the geek gene runs strong in these veins and so I check the stats every few days anyway.

Recently there has been a major shift in the traffic to the site. In the past, most of my discerning readers came to me via Google searches for Bride of Chucky or ring-o-fire graphics and a disturbing number of these were from France. What French Bride of Chucky fans might look like (close your eyes and imagine a cross between Beavis and Charles DeGaulle with a Black Sabbath t-shirt and pierced eyebrow...) is something that causes me great trouble falling to sleep at night, but I was grateful for their readership in spite of the fact that the stats showed they spent an average of 12 whole seconds poking around.

Recently however, there has been a decided shift to referrals from Callalillie.com, where I have been known to post comments from time to time. Though sometimes these are positive, helpful little tidbits of knowing advice, more often they are snide/snarky attempts at humor. This is, of course, completely allowable in that I contributed exactly half the genes that Callalillie currently calls her own. That she should now be helping to inflate this blog into double-digit stats is the least that she might do until the time comes when she has to shovel babyfood into my slack jaw.

An unintended consequence of this situation is that I have actually developed a FAN, no TWO fans! - and they are women! The first wrote a piece about me on her blog where she called me a "cool dad", a species that is apparently endangered these days. Now a second has emerged, writing an email to callalillie asking her to urge bobtrancho to post more frequent entries because he is "SO witty" and makes her "laugh out loud" (not a good idea while working at that law office, Maura, they'll think your laughing at them - you know how sensitive lawyers are about lawyer jokes...)

I am, of course, flattered by this tidal wave of celebrity. I've started wearing sunglasses on my trips down to the Price Chopper and am trying to decide which agency should represent me.

But I may not be ready for this leap into notoriety. What do I do when screaming women tear at my clothes while I'm at the post office. How do I explain the panties tossed at me in the library? What if that site visitor from Holland sends me pictures wearing nothing but a tulip or two?

I'll just have to try to take it as it comes...

I'm back up on the new host server - only 12 hours after starting the switch. All the automated/"easy" options for migrating over didn't work so it ended up a manual process.

Now to get the photoblog up and running.

After the fourth server problem in five months, I've bitten the bullet and am moving to a new web host.

That means some down time over the new few days as the Internet digests my new web server address and starts to point to it correctly.

Once that occurs I'll need to reload the blog at it's new home. Hopefully, all will be humming again in 2-3 days.

During that time I'll be in full geek ranting mode, transferring the data from this blog and the photoblog, fumbling over typos, mySQL databases, and FTP transfers. Do I know how to have fun or what?

It took me less time to learn how to ride a bicycle than to use an electric toothbrush. When I was seven, I was able to stay balanced and steer my two-wheeler after about two days of effort. I�m 56 and have been using an electric toothbrush for several years now and it dawned on me this morning that it's only just recently that I finally got it nailed.

There are many modern conveniences that frustrate and madden us but few are purposely designed to make us feel stupid. The electric toothbrush is one of these. With its lure of 10,000 vibrations a minute promising to power off even the slightest traces of last night�s Dorito binge and a built-in timer that absolves you of the responsibility of determining if you�ve brushed enough, the techno-brush seems to be a positive boon to humanity. But I learned something different when I first brought mine home.

After anxiously waiting through the mandatory new battery recharge period I was raring to go. I placed a judicious tab of blue and white brightening toothpaste on the bristles and turned it on. MISTAKE NUMBER ONE. If you forget to wait until it is entirely in your mouth before you turn it on 10,000 vibrations per minute splatter 10,000 bits of toothpaste across the walls, ceiling, bathroom mirror, and your face, arms, chest and neck. Fifteen minutes of scrubbing and scraping ensued. For the sake of science I have recorded that an Oral-B can project a one millimeter blob of Colgate 11.5 feet (3.5052 meters). I expect to see one of these used on a cable home redecorating show soon for creating faux speckled wall treatments. They will probably use paint, though.