BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I’m officially back in my room for the evening. Opening ceremonies are over and the groups have split off to engage in FRPG’s, MMORPG’s, and the like. Others are exuberantly bouncing around the campus sticking battery powered LED’s to metal rafters by attaching them to magnets and launching them at the ceiling. Have to admit, the student center is pretty colorful right now.

Unfortunately, I just don’t party into the night as well as I used to. All part of that aging thing I suppose. At any rate, here is my evening report from the WillyCon XI Odyssey.

@mrsellars – Noon noms, more good chow. Szechwan chicken stir-fry with lots of veggies and a small spinach salad with some sunflower seeds and beets.

@mrsellars – Wish I could afford to eat this healthy at home.

@mrsellars – Where the hell is my flash drive?

@mrsellars – Dammit… That flash drive has manuscript stuff on it that doesn’t need to be released just yet…

@mrsellars – Shit. Must have lost it when I was walking this morning.

@mrsellars – Walkies… Lookies…Walkies… Lookies… Walkies…

@mrsellars – [Back at room] Well hell… hopefully someone turned it in.

@mrsellars – Hey… What’s this in my coat pocket?

@mrsellars – #fuckme

@mrsellars – Universe is definitely making sure I get that exercise… What next? Am I going to end up shoveling snow?

@mrsellars – Forget I said that… Srsly. Just pretend it never happened.

@mrsellars – Did the big cheese leave a badge for me?

@Con_Registration –  Yeah, Murv. Number 2.

@mrsellars –  No thanks, I did number 2 this morning. I probably need to do a number 1 though.

@Con_Registration – O_o

@mrsellars – [Watching a segment of Omega Man with Charlton Heston] [shakes head] I just can’t watch this without expecting him to say, “Get your hands off me you damn dirty ape!”

@Con_Registraton – LOL

@Movie_Watchers – O_o

@mrsellars –  I wonder why that maintenance guy is cleaning that rock with a wire brush?

@mrsellars – Went to campus coffee shop. Business so slow today they didn’t make any more coffee.

@mrsellars – Young lady behind counter made me huge espresso latte thingie for same price. She is now my new best girlfriend.

@New_Best_Girlfriend – [Notices my badge] Are you a speaker for WillyCon?

@mrsellars – Yes. I’m actually the author guest of honor.

@New_Best_Girlfriend – Really?!

@mrsellars – Yeah.

@New_Best_Girlfriend – What do you write?

@mrsellars – Books.

@New_Best_Girlfriend – O_o [Pause] LOL! No kidding?

@mrsellars – Why would I kid you about that? (grin) But seriously, I write Paranormal Suspense Thrillers.

@New_Best_Girlfriend – Really?!

@mrsellars – O_o

@mrsellars – Watched part of Logan’s Run. Jenny Agutter was kinda hot.

@mrsellars – E K needs one of those outfits…

@mrsellars – [wistful stare]

@mrsellars – Ahem. Ummm. Need to stop thinking about E K in one of those outfits.

@mrsellars – Watched part of Family Guy Star Wars spoof…

@mrsellars – All kinds of wrong happening on that screen.

@mrsellars – Really liked lightsabre = bug zapper gag. LOL at that one.

@mrsellars – When visual Doctor Who reference happened, excused myself for dinner.

@mrsellars – Not very hungry at dinner, but it was my last chance to eat for the day. Just had a couple of fish sticks , a small scoop of rice, and some coleslaw. Still very good.

@mrsellars – Fruit punch and Sierra Mist. Not bad. Bet a couple of shots of Vodka would make it even better.

@mrsellars – Dry campus.

@mrsellare – Do I really need to use the hashtag at this point? Y’all already know what I’m going to say…

@mrsellars – [mingle] tell stories [mingle] brag about kid [mingle] brag about wife [mingle] re-tell stories and chat [mingle]

@Darth_Doodie_Shirt_Girl – So, what kind of books do you write?

@mrsellars – Scary shit.

@Darth_Doodie_Shirt_Girl – Cool. I like scary shit.

@Attendee_on_Balcony – Mister Murv!

@mrsellars – [looking upward] Hi!

@Attendee_on_Balcony – Mister Murv, you need to change your Facebook photo.

@mrsellars – [still looking upward] Why?

@Darth_Doodie_Shirt_Girl – No he doesn’t.

@Attendee_on_Balcony – Yes he does… Wait, I’ll come down.

@mrsellars – Okay.

@jeopardy_theme – Do da Do da Do da Dooo, Do da Do da, Doop da do do do do…

@Attendee_from_Balcony – Hi. Nice to meet you.

@mrsellars – Hi. Nice to meet you too.

@Attendee_from_Balcony – So, you need to change your Facebook photo. It makes you look like a dork, and not in a good way.

@mrsellars – O_o

(Note: @Attendee_from_Balcony had some valid points if looked at from her point of view, even though @Darth_Doodie_Shirt_Girl didn’t agree with said points.)

@mrsellars – Heard that weather service is now predicting a possibility of 16 inches of snow starting tomorrow night.

@mrsellars – Have elected to form a survival plan.

@mrsellars – Might be able to find the necessary items in this dorm room to make snow shoes. Maybe even a sled.

@mrsellars – Currently investigating what will be involved with disassembling the bunk beds on the other side of the room in order to begin construction of aforementioned items.

@mrsellars – Heard several dogs barking earlier. Will investigate in the morning in case I need to assemble a sled team in a hurry.

@mrsellars – Side benefit of sled construction: leftovers from bunk bed frame can be used as firewood.

@mrsellars – As of now @skippy_the_squirrel and his friends are considered livestock.

@mrsellars – Will steal salt shakers from cafeteria tomorrow in order to preserve  them.

@mrsellars – Using pages from convention program book to make pattern for squirrel hide snowsuit.

@mrsellars – Just to be safe, presently designing multi-tiered defense system for room. I know what happened with the Donner party, and I ain’t gonna git et.

More to come…

Murv

(Note: If you are reading my blog for the first time please understand that what I post here is not only observational humor, but satirical as well. For the record, the folks at WillyCon are absolutely wonderful, have been a joy to hang out with, and I am having a great time. Really.  And they didn’t even force me say that or anything… 🙂 )

In theory, I suspect I am supposed to be posting a blog about how Martians are attacking Grover’s Mill, or going on about Orson Welles coming back from the dead because he’s actually from Planet 10… Wait… That would have been John Lithgow, and he’s not dead yet… wait… I’d better go check on that… (insert Jeopardy music here)… Nope, not dead.

But, never mind that anyway. I’m not really all about the April Fools stuff, especially given the incessant foolery I engage in on a daily basis. No, this should actually be my “no fooling” day… April Serious day…

So, let’s get on with the show…

As to the titular objection regarding my personal relevance, I should probably point out that there weren’t really any lawyers or judges involved. No darkly paneled rooms. No halls of justice… Or, justice leagues… Or super friends either…

Nope, it was just me. Well, me and a search engine… (I know, I know, the grammar police are on their way to get “I” right now so they can rearrange my sentence structure, but “me” wanted to write it that way…)

But, let’s dispense with all this April Seriousness and simply start at the beginning…

There I was, minding my own business, as usual… Another Sunday morning had rolled around, and 5 AM had reared its ugly head. Well, actually, I don’t find 5 AM to be all that ugly myself… After all, I’m one of those early risers, so I think it’s kinda cool. It’s quiet, I have the office to myself, and there’s nothing to distract me, except for those pesky chickens. Either way,  at 5 AM, believe it or not, I can actually get some work done…

But anyway… I was parked in the office, as usual, sipping my first “coff o’ cuppee” of the morn, while paging my way through volumes of email. Once I had perused, with great relish mind you, all of the advertisements for Lithuanian brides, generic Viagra, breast enlargement, penis enlargement, singles, doubles, triples, financial advice, free cans of “colon flush”, and all manner of other “hard to pass up” offers, I moved on to approving blog comments and the like. You know the drill. Just another Sunday morning.

Once finished with the comments and the like, I kicked back and surfed around. Being a bit of a “tweaker”… Not a mother tweaker, mind you. Just a tweaker. And, in case you are wondering, what I mean is this: I tinker about with my websites on a fairly regular basis to tweak them…

So, anyway, being a tweaker, once I was done with the comment stuff, I headed over to the listing of plug ins for WordPress. It wasn’t that I really had anything in particular that I was looking for, however, one never knows when there might be some kind of cool little widget, gadget, or flibbertyjibbet that would be fun to stick in the side panel. Or, more importantly, something that will make my life easier as far as maintaining my blog and website… And, let’s look at the facts here… I’m all about anything that makes my life easier. Of course, that begs all manner of questions, but we won’t go there… Not in this particular blog entry, anyway…

So, back to this whole plug in thing… As I scrolled through the listings, I happened to notice a “dashboard widget” for WordPress that was designed to let you know what your “Google Page Rank” happened to be. If you are unfamiliar with the Google Page Rank, it is a numerical value applied to your website by the search engine, Google… Hence the reason it is called a “Google Page Rank” and not, say for instance, a “Yahoo Page Rank”… Make sense? Yeah, I know, it confuses me too, but hey, it’s one of those things.

Anywho, the “ranking” is based on some manner of algorithm that I am not about to get into, what with mathematics not being one of my strong subjects. And, to be honest, much like the product ranking algorithm on Amazon, even Charlie Eppes from Numbers probably couldn’t figure it out, no matter how may chalkboards you give him. Suffice it to say, Google looks at your page, analyzes the meta data, content, links, images, linkbacks, embedded rhesus monkeys, flying purple people eaters, pocket lint, and every other damn thing it can find sitting there. Once it has done this, it assigns a numerical value that rates the “relevance” of your page.

Just for grins, I decided to install this little plug in. Why not? It didn’t take up much space, didn’t use any real intense system overhead, and wasn’t going to require much in the way of user intervention in order to get it to operate. Besides, it would be fun to see where Google had me ranked, right?

So, I did the clicky-clicky thing with the clicky-clicky thing attached to my computer. Lights flashed on the DSL modem, stuff flickered on the router, and somewhere in all that techno-garble, my computer did the download thing. I clicked install, a few scripts ran, and then the dashboard widget appeared.  Yippee! I must have done something right for a change. I had a look at the results and noticed immediately that it said, “mrsellars.com/mrblog has page rank of  zero“…

I paused. Certainly that couldn’t be correct. Just to be sure, I refreshed the screen.

The widget still said, “mrsellars.com/mrblog has page rank of  zero“…

Now, I have to be clear on something… While I’m a tweaker, I am not some kind of page rank whore. I will readily admit to being a marketing whore. I will even fess up to being “E Kay’s Bitch” most of the time.  That’s why it actually says “Property of Evil Kat” on one of my T-shirts. But, page rank whoring just isn’t my thing… Still, one would think that a domain named mrsellars.com, which has meta-tags about M. R. Sellars, a meta description talking about M. R. Sellars, with content about M. R. Sellars,  a blog authored by M. R. Sellars, internal links to stuff about M. R. Sellars, and external links to things that have to do with M. R. Sellars… Is anyone else seeing the pattern here? Good. Anyway, one would think such a pile of data  would probably have some manner of relevancy where M. R. Sellars is concerned. Know what I mean?

However, with a page rank of zero, basically Google was saying that mrsellars.com is in no way relevant to the subject of M. R. Sellars.

Of course, this seemed a bit odd to me. I figured that the plug in must not have been working. But, rather than delete it immediately, I decided to go check. Jumping on the next swell of DSL to come by, I road the crest, shot the tube, shredded the wave and surfed myself right on over to Google and ran a check.

Much to my surprise, according to Google proper, my page rank is zero…

So… I guess it’s official. I mean, what with Google being the benchmark… The yardstick by which all other search engines are measured… Hell, it’s even a piece of our vocabulary and culture… A proper noun that has been morphed by society into an accepted verb, adverb, adjective, and overall linguistic addition, which is now so deeply ingrained into our culture  as to define a generation.

Yeah… Google… (Insert heavenly sounding music here…) The  multi-colored, content caching, logo changing, power that be on the world wide interwebs…

And, so, Google has decided that M. R. Sellars is irrelevant. I feel so… um… so… well… I guess there’s no other way to say it. I feel irrelevant.

You know, in my way of thinking, this whole irrelevancy issue doesn’t seem all that fair. I mean, I’ve always spoken so highly of thos Googlites…

Hmm… I suppose I should start using a different search engine. Maybe they will appreciate me…

More to come…

Murv