Archive for February, 2007

One of the annoying and/or interesting things about running a blog these days are spam comments that you get.

I don’t mean someone who calls me a jerk, a moron or worse, I always publish those, I certainly wouldn’t want to stop my family and friends from commenting.

Seriously, as long as it isn’t obscene and is relevant to my posts, I’ll allow comments. I read and approve every last one — unless you’ve already commented and been approved (then your stuff goes up automatically). Frankly, I wish there were more nasty, mean comments, as it would suggest that my commentary is getting to someone.

Of course, I also know many of my political rivals never got past the Crayola portion of their education and are largely unable to get much past playing Mine Sweeper on their computer, which cuts down on the mean comments, although I do miss the "your fat (sic)" letters that used to come in when I was running for State Representative. Thankfully, the state of Pennsylvania has a jobs program for such people called the Legislature, to keep them out of harm’s way.

But still, I do get a ton of comments, from people trying to promote their porn sites — and you just never think to combine fat, dwarf, MILF, Crisco and latex in one sentence, but these spammers manage to do so. Or try to sell me (and you, if I approved the comment) drugs for any all maladies, including some not yet discovered by medical science. Or promote worthless penny stocks, hoping the shares will go up if enough people take the message seriously.

Maybe even better: these spam messages might be coming from your computer. Bots, trojans, viruses and so on are the primary source for this junk — so it’s possible you’re the one sending me the comment on performance enhancing drugs.

Even so, the comments remain better written and more intelligent than the press releases I get from the Pennsylvania State Republican House Caucus. In fact, maybe they need the performance enhancing drugs, since it doesn’t seem like they’re giving the Democrats much in the way of stiff opposition.

It’s unlikely that I’ve mentioned this here, but I have issues with PETA, People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, which of course, is an inaccurate name. It should be People Who Think They Can Read Animals Minds And Know What They Want. Of course, that wouldn’t fit on a t-shirt.

But these people think it’s their God-given mission to keep people from their cheeseburgers and leather jackets — and you’ll get my weathered old A-2 from me only by prying my cold, dead fingers from it — and they make the questionable argument that cows are smarter than wheat. There’s no real proof of that, hell some studies suggest wheat gets more upset when you yell at it than a cow does. And here’s the kicker…

Wheat. Can’t. Run.

Oh and plants never eat each other, while animals do it all of the time. So, based on their actions, I’m sensing animals are down with the whole carnivore thing. In fact, my current standard for irony is a PETA member being eaten by a mountain lion. Of course, your mileage may vary.

So these high-and-mighty moralistic avatars look down on us eating their tofu wrap, driving Toyota hybrids and acting all smug, when in fact they’ve aided and abetted the slaughter of innocent millions of plants. Just so we’re clear about this, PETA is pro-plant genocide…actively discriminating between animals and plants. I don’t know about you, but that strikes me as specieist and probably some form of hate speech. In fact, it might be time to set up a protest march in front of PETA headquarters and pour V8 juice on those going in and out.

So what does this have to with Web development, you might ask? You might also ask "is it really a good idea to write with a bottle of bourbon in your hand like that?" but I digress.

Well, my latest misadventure with Web design, and my new baseball site, FlushingUniversity.com, has left me wanting to go cow hunting with an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) which is the type of thing PETA members get their oversized cotton panties all in a twist about (and that’s just the male members).

I made the mistake of trying, and buying, a new PHP Web content manager: PHPCow. Let me just warmly endorse it by saying it is as good for Web development and your Web server as pancreatic cancer is for your pancreas. Yes, it’s that good. Calling it awful is an insult to awful products everywhere. I’ll spare you the details, but with less than a week before launching FU.com (and really, that’s why I get paid the big bucks, coming up with catchy domain names) it became painfully evident that PHPCow was a lot more like PHPBubonicPlagueRottingCowCorpse.

That led to a frenzied weekend of coding and moving the new site to a different framework, Big Medium, created by the insanely talented Josh Clark.

The brain surgeons behind PHPCow claim they don’t offer refunds, but I plan on demanding one, which should be entertaining in its own right.

Anyhow, that’s where I’ve been for the last week or so. No radio show tomorrow, I need to catch up on my other work. And I’ll be out at the RPG range, uh talking to some cows.

There’s a title for the search engines, right?

Anyhow, I’ve been a bad blogger — busy developing another commercial niche Web site. While this one is devoted to the New York Mets, at some point, we’ll be doing a Philly sports site, too, but now between TekTruth and the new site, FlushingUniversity.com (which remains in beta, and will formally launch on Feb. 16) — not to mention I Hate It All, which continues to grow, I’m a bit busy. Oh, and there’s the radio show, too, which returns Tuesday at Noon (EST) over at BlogTalkRadio (click on the button at the upper left to listen).

I am reaching the point where I could use some more writers — not for this page, as it remains, well, just me.

If you have an interest of writing about anything from politics to pop culture and why they’re lame, I Hate It All might be for you. I can give you fairly large exposure and a cross link to your blog — plus the opportunity to work with and be edited by a professional. If you want to become a professional writer and drive traffic to your blog, this is a good way to do it. If you’re a tech geek or a diehard baseball fan (Mets, especially), the same offer holds true for Tektruth amd FlushingUniversity.

Drop me a line at mike@mikemcgann.org if you’re interested. I can’t pay anything right now — revenues are too low — but I expect that to change within 18 months.