Serendipity vs Stupidity

The year 2008 ushers me a new life that hovers between serendipity and stupidity. Looking at these 2 words makes me wonder: Where is the serenity that I thought comes with growing wiser?  Let’s have some play of words here. In serenity, just a little dip [mirror, please] of stupidity–then one has to rely on ser-en-dip-ity.

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely…that’s according to Wiki. Mr. Google seems to think hightly of Wiki as ‘he’ would always take you there first. Go and find the Prince of origin yourself.

Everytime I search for something, stupidity stares me in the face–today, plugins…feedfooter–making me feel I am reading words I thought were English but they sound “Greek” or some sort of mathematical transcription to me. If I’m inside the classroom being graded, I’d probably get an F in flying colors. The serendipity part of it though, I came across a blog: http://www.joostdevalk.nl/make-the-scrapers-work-for-you/#comment-33414 where they actually discuss the reality of blog scraping [this far, I think I understand]. At least I can justify to myself sometimes feeling on the verge of insanity. In some crazy ways, I am coming to terms I could make the scraper work for me !

There was also an interview with WP Matt Cutts by S. Spencer, which would have been interesting and informative if only I could understand half of what they’re talking about. Again, I used to trust my knowledge of the English language, and I seldom doubted my level of comprehension; however, I couldn’t seem to go beyond the word “link“. Should you be interested, you’re better off reading this yourself: http://www.stephanspencer.com/search-engines/matt-cutts-interview 

Serenity may not come yet until I learn the FeedFooter plugin or something to that effect. Second in the wish list is using some link within my site, but I’m not sure what link in that interview [should not be more than a hundred at least] is good for google PR. I don’t even care about page rank, I only want to declutter this blog. This may have to wait until I get to the Philippines…what year???

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Amazing Internet: Scam or Scum

It’s 3am my time here and I didn’t intend to stay up this late after my googling mood on my Survivor Philippines. Upon seeing surwar11’s posts mentioned at propeller.com , I couldn’t contend my curiosity again. I went back to http://www.propeller.com completed 82 pages [coercing myself to keep moving after pages marked supposedly as end of search]. I’ll report on my mind-googling experience once I’ve gotten my beauty rest since I’m feeling like a beast now.

This time when I got to propeller site, I typed surwar11 in the search box [top right hand corner]…I got what I wanted to find! And more…

http://search.netscape.com/search/search?query=surwar11&invocationType=net-home 

This is just for a starter!

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I finally got to sleep at 4am and woke up at 8am without even hearing a single thing. I have now fully awakened to an error in typing [http://propeIler.com] which I already corrected above. The [I] and the [l] just looked the same to me last night. This is just what I mean by the consequence of fatigue: the brain becomes incapable of checking the eyes and the fingers. No check and balance here anymore; doesn’t the government run this way? Hey…that’s a thought!

Let me go back and edit again. Yes, it’s still not connecting to the site…I hit save, refresh, open another window, transfer to another computer [which still shows my error -propeiler-the first time], so I’ll try putting the www which didn’t matter when I type the url separately not this link here. This reminds me when I was checking surwar11 [which my fingers sometimes insist on sanwar or sumwar] –the link that has no http before my url could not get back any result. Really…Ggrrrrr! Is it my computer or my…nevermind! If it doesn’t go through–type it, please!

This is one reason I should edit my about section as visitors are starting to check the lunatic in me. I assure you it’s temporary…I hope it’s temporary. Tsk…tsk…[accompanied by the slowww shake of the head]…this in Pilipino which means “poor you?”.

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UPDATE: 5/29/08

I used to check www.flyhotel.net every now and then as I was curious what would happen to it when I blog its blog scraping technique. Someone suggested that I should report it to google, but for some reason, I don’t think it was doing me any harm except that I was irritated to see my family picture on that website, and maybe because almost the complete blog was in his website. The comments were even turned off and no reference to the owner whatsoever…even submitting the blog to propeller.com as his own writing.

I’ve seen it having no more AdSense after a couple of weeks and I kept wondering why it continually runs the site. Today I couldn’t find it except for the previous google index that has warnings below the title– “This site may harm your computer.” I even went to my post here to get the link from within, and it gave me the same search result. Well, I guess it’s really gone after almost 3 months since my discovery. Maybe I will miss this routine of checking his site. I should probably be writing a separate blog for its demise.

*Originally posted @ https://zylla3.wordpress.com

One H*ck of a Bloggy Day!

Do I really want to be a blogger? I have already put in my 8-hour shift, and I have to start this post again? If I don’t though, I won’t have a good night rest. Should I count my part-time morning stint for my husband: packing and mailing drum parts? On the way home, I had a little ‘Target’ shopping break just to pick up a few things to replenish our refrigerator supply–not to forget a quick check of the 60%-70% clearance sections.

Noon came and no calls had come in yet. Exceptional Saturday–no one remembered us–not even my Filipino phone telemarketers. Nope! I’m not being redundant…my name is floating in 5 phone companies and 10 agents hunting for me, to say the least. There are times when I feel they sign in with my Phone #, and even when I have said ‘no’ will sign out with my # just in case I changed my mind. ??? Freaky…I was typing the# and my phone actually rang once…then stopped as I was getting ready to pick it up.

Within the past 8 hours…so many things encountered; so little time to learn! How many times have I tried to get away from this computer? Let me count the ways…ice cream break, coffee break, maybe I’ll get to dinner break later. I still have so many questions unanswered:

1. Why is www.flyhotel.net persistent in scraping blogs? He has no more ads. –I know I should really learn to use that Feed Footer plugin (yes, Mixxy, and I still don’t know how to link to your site). At 6pm today I saw my Survivor Philippines, Reality post there (4:27pm), even before my edit  to add there really was Turtle Island, Philippines — http://philecotourism.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/my-turtle-island-birthday-prayer/ . Serendipity is getting to be a part of my life! I was just cheking my blog at WP and there below it was this one–like an answer to a prayer. I guess flyhotel has its own purpose for being, too. Come to think of it, it skipped 3 of my posts between Dancing… and Survivor…! That’s why I just keep blogging ‘whatever’ though I can’t complain when Cheryl Burke’s another website: http://cherylburke.net/ [that I didn’t even know] unexpectedly brought in some traffic.

2. What do I know about ZenZuu? How did it come in? I know maybe one day I could monetize my blog ‘when it grows up’ but …not sure about this. I have many social networking sites that are parked in my email I didn’t know what to do with them. [The only My Space I want is My Fairview]. I even went to Mr. Google but ?????!

3. Did Squidoo visit me? [I even have a hard time with my contact lens]. Though it has that charity thing to choose from, obviously–my charity is….Well, I’ll probably go back to the site one day when my brain is not so fuzzy anymore.

4. How do I keep up with these barrage of information? I haven’t even mastered my dashboard yet, and was it just yesterday that WP changed the layout? Thank goodness…I was amaze with myself that I was able to upload the pictures for Survivor Philippines post. [Actually it seems easier once I found it.] My dashbord is evolving to be an amazing source of my amusement…pathetic, huh? At 10:30, I really need that dinner!

5. How many more unanswered ?????????????! I can’t count them all.

*Originally posted @ https://zylla3.wordpress.com  

Dancing with the Stars: Cheryl Bautista Burke

I didn’t mean to write about ‘Dancing with the Stars’ again, but Cheryl on the TV morning news teaching teenagers to do ‘the moves’ caught my attention. Then, I thought…that’s nice! [I’m a frustrated dancer, so DS is one of the very few shows I’d like to watch on TV.] Then I remembered my Filipino friend once mentioned [the 1st time she won] that she’s partly Filipina. I didn’t think much of it then, but now I thought…something related to the Philippines.

My friend is right! Wiki: …of Filipino & Irish descent. Bautista is Filipino last name [Spanish origin]. She grew up in Atherton, CA. –Hey! There’s an Atherton School next to my house in the Philippines.– It’s in Wiki too that she had helped a couple of schools with their fund raising. Whoever is Matthews Lawrence, my husband is Lawrence Matthew. Coincidentally, today she’s having the Grand Opening of her ballroom dance studio: Cheryl Burke Dance, San Francisco. Google brought me to her website: www.strictlycheryl.com 

I’m on the “google stage” at this point of being a DSL learner [Digital is my Second Language]. Everything amazes me from my WP dashboard (which seems to look different today) to whatever I find in Google World–[sigh] if only I could upload my ideas here by saying, “Beam me up, Scotty!” If I’m not quoting this right, I can always use the ESL excuse [English is my Second Language]. Hay, naku…tama na (in short, enough is enough)! At the end of my Google session, I’m so bogged down by the information from the technical to the human aspects of what’s out there. Indeed, what a tangled web enough to choke even an old woman’s innocence! [wink, lol]

*Originally posted @ https://zylla3.wordpress.com

 

Dancing with the Stars

Dancing with the Stars is over and it’s 10:04 by my stove time, but www.flyhotel.net doesn’t have my newer post yet. Let’s wait until I’m done with this post. Dancing with the Stars had made my surveillance less painful but now it’s over…hmmm..etc. etc.–it’s almost 10:30pm–not there yet.

Barbara Walters with that doctor on healthy eating habits stuff is not going to keep me awake longer. What now? I’m tired wandering in his (?) site. Like I said in my previous comment today, I don’t see the ads anymore. Then I cliked the ‘about’ page and it’s still the WordPress sample with ‘Hotel’ Categories (615)–yes, that many–and his archive just started this February…just about when I restarted after Christmas [Feb.24]. I’m really getting tired checking almost every 10 minutes now. I’ll check again when I wake up tomorrow. I guess it could have been more than an hour as I wasn’t checking it constantly. Just too bad I won’t see the actual time when it will come up in his site.

I guess the 7-hr time difference between my stat posting record and my actual ‘stove’ time is the DST here that changed earlier and the GMT that WP is using. Now I won’t have any idea where his time is coming from but it’s now 11:24 about 2hrs and 20 mins since my posting. It’s just baffling to this simple mind of mine!

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Whooaa…wait-a-minute–let me edit 2 more just came in [11:36 here]–his top entry ‘Teacher’ [showing 4/1 at 11:06] (interesting list of—), the other one ‘Place to Stay in Thailand’ [showing 4/1@ 10:23]. Time to say good night!

Thanks ‘mmagpale’ for the brilliant idea:  Originally posted @ https://zylla3.wordpress.com

April Fool’s Day? donotcall.gov

Another cell phone moment? I’m not in any mood to blog again since I’ve just finally published earlier the post I started about suspending my misplaced cell phone. I’m still fuming seeing my post in his www.flyhotel.net. I have not really paid attention to the time stamped until this moment. Now, I have another aspect to track down–the actual time! I know that what he has stamped April 1 @ 3:51 pm, and right around the hour of my posting.  However, my computer stat was showing 9:51pm and my stove clock (actual time here in CA) is only 7:30pm. The comment I just posted was at 2:08 am and 2:29am of April 2 already. Now I’m going to be ‘time’ detective. Is time change here messing up my computer time? Is this Philippine time…wordpress time? I’m getting headaches figuring out these things. I’m trying to keep track of this blog according to my ‘stove time’ which is my actual time here in California.

My husband just said something about the email from his co-teacher where you can enter your phone number in the ‘do not call’ list as the telemarketers can now call your cell phone. It’s 1 (888) 382-1222 and he had been entering all our numbers. You can check out for yourself at www.donotcall.gov –I have to end this now as ‘Dancing with the Stars’ is already starting. Stove time is showing 9:04pm.

Thanks mmagpale –Originally posted @ https://zylla3.wordpress.com

Truly My Penance, or My Angel Must Be Working Overtime

“At first I was pleasantly surprised that somebody has my add, but when I tried to dig further my whole sight was hacked I suppose. The I googled ‘what is flyhotel.com and it took me to another web site: http://travel.propeller.com and I saw my blog articles under surwar11 and before I finally decided to print the page(s) I was able to print the remaining what-makes-this-week-holy and after I have checked the 27 pages I tried to back track from page 6-1 and I couldn’t track it anymore. Must be the name propeller.
 
It’s past 3am and I’m still awake! This must be my penance for the Holy Week. Take care everyone — Me” 

—————(Answers appear at the bottom)——————————————-

I’m am ssoooo ashamed of my email misspellings above! I sent it to my sister, her husband, and my nephew with the heading I am so mad! and I should have said I am so tired and soooooo sleepy but I just couldn’t stop. This is exactly why I couldn’t emphasize enough to my students, the importance of proofreading…now I plead guilty.

Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve…I could have corrected my errors for the world not see it, but I want it to be just another lesson. Maybe I would even include it here as another category: errors, corrections, what else? Just another lesson in English! For now I am consumed with getting back to this wonderful-piece-of-whatever…I know–sigh!–I have to remind myself it’s still Black Saturday and I must have some angels already working overtime, more than what I’m doing.

 Hmmm…Mixxy must be one of my angels. I just stumbled on her blog before all my discoveries and when I decided to do some email venting I found her comment too. If you scroll a few entries down to–What Will PhP5000 Buy You in the Philippines?–you must read her comment(s)! The first one warmed my heart, and I found it at the right moment. It made me sleep better when I finally hit the sack at 4am.

I can manage the sleeping at 1am and waking up at 5am on work days, but after 2am you might as well have given me a glass of wine. I never had the hang-over effect; I can only guess it’s very much like it–not fun. Waking up I can tell I will virtually experience the Black Saturday phenomenon. I’m looking forward to my spring break coming up.

Though today I must go through the day as best I can. Ohhh…I have my husband’s drum parts to mail (another post), but maybe the main post office might just observe Black Saturday. Move on to the next agenda; blog, blog, blog the B! Just  then Mixxy has an answer again, and another one…very important lesson learned! That’s why she’s my God-sent angel while Jesus is dead. Oh, boy…I know He died for me too, but does He have to include saving these riff-off artists?

It makes me feel better I’m not the only one (strength-in-number kind of feeling), and surely I’ll look into her suggestions. Not just now that I’ve already calm down, and starting to really feel that general heaviness in my body: my stiff fingers can hardly hit the right key, my drooping eyes ready to close, my spinning head almost banging the key board, and I still have to wash the bed sheets for my brother-in-law and his son as they’re staying here tonight. I must wait…I need a clear head to do all the plug-ins. (Last night reading about ALink in Bob Martin’s blog, I was about to install it…light bulb moment I’m not ready to sweat it out.) I guess my night was meant for a different purpose.

A quick break, please! Goodness Gracious…past 1 pm, and my 10-year-old neice is not hungry. Both her parents are working. Again, it’s Black Saturday. I also discovered the mail carrier came by, so the post office is open. Off to drop off the packages; post office is open until 3. A curse and a blessing–curse to work, blessing to get things done. The latter is what I’ll miss in the Philippines; the former is what makes me want to brave going back home.

Back to the scum of the earth (Mixxy enriched my vocabulary in her comment about Blog Scrapers). Just as that scammer who responded to my apartment ad (my first Craig’s List responder) gave me the idea to further talk about our apartment in this blog, I will do the same for that riff-off blog scraper. I’m not going to report him right away (not just yet), so he can scrape this blog a few more times until he/she/it realizes:

                * the world is learning his idiotic way of earning a living scraping blogs

                * others have the chance to find their sites at www.flyhotel.net  

                               (maybe more posts at (http://travel.propeller.com)

                                You will notice there that the comments are off,

                         and even in some,  it looks like you can leave

                                 a comment–click it but it won’t go through.

                 * he’s giving me topics to blog with all the joys of exposing him,

                                  or should I say ripping him apart

                 * his evil deeds are turning into positive acts — the other side

                                   of revengeeeeeeeee!

I’ll be following/stalking him too. I’m somewhat energized now–Happy Easter and to some I know you will be waking up to the Easter dawn soon.  I need my sleep before that. Blessings to all!

 —-(I didn’t forget the answer to your proofreading exercise.)—

“At first I was pleasantly surprised that somebody has my ad, but when I tried to dig further, my whole site was hacked I suppose. Then I googled ‘what is flyhotel.net and it took me to another web site: http://travel.propeller.com where I saw my blog articles under surwar11 and when I finally decided to print the page(s) I was only able to print the remaining what-makes-this-week-holy.  After I have checked the 27 pages, I tried to back track from page 6-1, but I couldn’t track it anymore. Must be the name propeller.
 
It’s past 3am and I’m still awake! This must be my penance for the Holy Week. Take care everyone — Me” ———————————————————–

UPDATE: 5/29/08

I used to check www.flyhotel.net every now and then as I was curious what would happen to it when I blog its blog scraping technique. Someone suggested that I should report it to google, but for some reason, I don’t think it was doing me any harm except that I was irritated to see my family picture on that website, and maybe because almost the complete blog was in his website. The comments were even turned off and no reference to the owner whatsoever…even submitting the blog to propeller.com as his own writing.

I’ve seen it having no more AdSense after a couple of weeks and I kept wondering why it continually runs the site. Today I couldn’t find it except for the previous google index that has warnings below the title– “This site may harm your computer.” I even went to my post here to get the link from within, and it gave me the same search result. Well, I guess it’s really gone after almost 3 months since my discovery. Maybe I will miss this routine of checking his site. I should probably be writing a separate blog for its demise.