The Foo is currently offline indefinitely due to an unexpected occurrence. Thinking good thoughts and wishing him to be back blogging soon enough. -J
This goes into my book of great engineering and architectural feats: The world’s tallest traffic bridge.
Designed by British Architect Norman Foster in collaboration with French bridge engineer Michel Virlogeux, the bridge is located in Millau, southwest of France. It helps traffic over the river Tarn within the Masif Central mountain range.
Opened in 2004, the bridge has 4 lanes for traffic, stands at 270 meters (886 ft) above the ground and 2,460 metres (8,071 ft) in length. Just to put in perspective how tall it is, it is 23 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower (at its highest point) and 38 meters (125 ft) shorter than the Empire State building. The total structure weighs approximately 36,000 tonnes, took 3 years to make and cost approximately 394 euros ($524 million).
Doesn’t this bring back memories. Can’t believe how much computers use to cost. This one’s a “lightning fast 20 mhz” and is dated 1989.
My time at the pet store (yesterday) didn’t start too well, when I had to chase down a sales associate to ask for something I couldn’t find at the pet store. He was laughing and walking around the store entertaining his girlfriend.
Me: Hi there, I can’t seem to find the litter locker refill cartridges.
Sales Associate: Ummm, what exactly is a litter locker?
I showed him the litter locker that was on display on shelf nearby. (Yes, I had to show a person working there where an item was)
Sales Associate: Ummm, isn’t that what you are looking for?
Me: No, that is the actual litter locker, I can’t seem to find the refill cartridges for them.
Sales Associate: Oh, lets see whether I can find them.
The guy proceeds to look around the same shelves that I had been looking at for in the last 15 minutes. He picks up a random item - happens to be a cat litter box filter. Duh!
Sales associate: Is this it?
Me: Maybe you might want to ask your manager where they are. I don’t think we are having much luck here.
Sales Associate: Ummm ok. I’ll ask my manager.
Manager comes around looking for the item. He seems to know where exactly it is.
Manager: Looks like we are out, let me check the computer for stock.
Manager checks it and sees that it is out of stock. It took all of 2 minutes to find that out.
Me: (Fuming and shaking my head) Ok, but I shouldn’t have had to waste 30 minutes for someone to tell me that.
Manager: Sorry for the run around, he is new. (referring to the sales associate that was dealing with me)
Me: Thanks for the help.
Something tells me that the new guy needs a lot more training around the store or he is not going to last very long there.
I happened to stumble upon a blog several months ago, it’s called JohnChow.com. I had seen some of his innovative Google ads on some blogs I read daily and couldn’t help but click through to his site. Thought I’ll also grab the chance of reviewing his blog too.
John Chow hails from Vancouver, Canada and is a self proclaimed “Dot Com Mogul”. His site talks mostly about how he makes money off his blog, tips to help one do it, ways to increase traffic and also miscellaneous stuff about cars, food and technology. He is an established internet entrepreneur owning the successful Tech Zone, a site that reviews, rates and compares computer products.
At first glances I wasn’t too interested in the site until I started reading some of his compelling posts. Articles like “The Importance of Deep Linking”, “Better Anchor Text= Better Search results”, “10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid” are a few out of the many good articles that serve to improve ones knowledge on optimizing a blog.
The title “Dot Com Mogul” comes from the fact that he has transformed his 7+ month blog into a money making machine i.e. making money blogging about blogging and monetizing a site. He tends to be pretty good at it, evidenced by his earnings disclosure every month. Within the past 4 months, he has earned himself a nice amount i.e. $2139 in Nov, $2790 in Dec, $3440.66 in Jan and $7011.05 in Feb.
In fact, his feats have caught the attention of the Vancouver Sun newspaper and several others as well. In addition to that, his daily traffic has increased tremendously to roughly 200,000 readers a month.
Through his increase in popularity, advertisers have recently asked him to do many reviews through ReviewMe - a little too much in my mind and I hope it would taper down. However, the viral and informational level of the site is still pretty high.
I believe blogging is an art form in itself. The tricky part is not simply to write a post but to get the readers to read it and make your blog interesting enough for readers to come back in the future. In my 8 months or so of blogging, I have found that the hardest part of blogging is just that. The best written articles would be worth nothing without readers, right? Not that I write the best articles out there but that saying does make sense. Therefore, sites like John Chow reveal successful tips to take that the blog to the next level. I am not so concerned about making money on a blog as that is not really what I blog for, but I do like to learn more about how to make a blog more attractive, increase traffic and where people will come back for more.
His success (besides his informative posts) is apparent in the way he sets about getting his the readers involved i.e. the contests, the rewards of SE link backs by being his top commentators, the way he speaks to the community and how he is not as detached from readers like many blog writers are. These are the things we could all emulate to make our blog a better one.
So don’t take my word for it, why don’t you hop on over to JohnChow dot com… you might learn a thing or two.
Hope I didn’t yell, shout or scream too much. I was taking a nice long hot shower yesterday when the water turned ice cold half way through it.
In my soapy and cold state, I put my robe on and walked out the bathroom angrily. It had seemed that my water heater had gone out on me. “Perfect timing! With freezing weather outside, in one of the worse weathers of the season, my water heater dies on me…” I mumbled.
It has never happened to us in the past 6 years, so I was prepared for the worst. I ended up resetting my heater and by the end of the night, everything was back to normal again. Thank goodness! It just looked like Mr. Water Heater needed a little kick in the butt.
Cold showers aren’t for the faint hearted. If you want to torture or get back at someone, have him or her have a nice shower and turn the heater off half way through (or flush the toilet if the water pipes are connected). You’ll hear the screams like it’s Halloween.
J and I tried a new restaurant for dinner yesterday. It was a buffet style all you can eat Chinese restaurant.
They had an wide assortment of Chinese dishes, seafood and dessert to choose from. With over 80 different dishes, it’s probably one of the biggest buffets we have been to. Fried noodles, Coconut shrimp, Honey Chicken, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Beef with green peppers, Stir Fried green beans etc. .. they were De-Li-Cious!
The steamed crab was one of the most popular dishes and the moment the cook brought it out and placed in inside the warming tray, you could just see the diners flock to it like vultures (with an almost riot-like pushing and shoving to get to the front of the line). It took just a couple of minutes from the time the cook came out, placed it on the warming tray, till it was gone. Those who didn’t get it, waited around the tray till the cook came out with his next batch and they were prepared to wait for a long time, selfishly pilling up their plates when it did come.
The problem with buffets is that you tend to eat too much — even if one promised not to. At the end of the dinner, I did get a stomach ache from eating too much. It was my own doing, but how could I resist the temptation of so many dishes and delicious food around me and not trying them. As usual, J was the sensible one and she knew when to stop when she was full. We ended up spending too much time at the restaurant and missed the movie (Wild Hogs) that we were supposed to see by about 20 minutes.
Solution: Never go to a buffet again.
I was reading the Business2.0 magazine today and was amused at their list of “101 Dumbest Moments in Business: The year’s biggest boors, buffoons, and blunderers”.
It was a pretty long list but nevertheless a good read. 4 stood out for me:
TextTrust Typo
Dam thatt spel-cheker, part too…
TextTrust, a company that uses a combination of software and human editors to scour the Web for spelling errors, issues a press release on the most commonly misspelled words it has found “on the 16 million we pages it has spell-checked over the past year.”
NTT Hackers.
You are entering an easily hackable page. Would you like to continue?
After NTT, Japan’s leading telephone company, introduces a system called Net Cash to protect customers from identity theft while shopping online, a hacker steals the ID numbers from more than 80,000 accounts. The information is used to spend $28,000 of NTT customers’ money.
Tearing Picasso a new one…
After striking a deal to sell Picasso’s “Le Reve” (”The Dream”) for a record $139 million, casino mogul Steve Wynn decides to show the masterwork to a group of visitors in his Las Vegas office. As he gestures, Wynn hits the painting with his elbow, causing what’s later reported as “a distinct ripping sound.” Wynn cancels the sale and spends $85,000 to have the painting restored.
Cryonics pioneers
I knew we should’ve gone for the freezer with the lifetime guarantee…
The bodies of Raymond and Monique Martinot, pioneers of the cryonics movement — which seeks to freeze the newly dead in the hopes that future scientists will be able to revive them — thaw after a freezer malfunction. Son Rémy has them cremated.
And they are paid big bucks for…? 
Here is a blast from the past — digging up some old posts from the old dusty Foo Logs archives that were well received and ones that you may not have read yet. I saw this done of a few blogs and thought it was a good idea to revive some old worthy posts.
Hope you enjoy them!
