For all my faithful readers…

all five of you:

Fair warning: you might wish to turn off the feed readers for a bit.

I’ve been investigating search engine querys that have hit my blog pages. Consequently, I’m going to be updating some of my posts with metas and tags over the next several days. The reason for this is that while some queries show up with a direct link to the page in question, others do not, and land on the blog’s front page, making finding the article difficult.

I know, I should have started this from the beginning, but who knew? Not me, obviously.

Of course, I would be most pleased if at some point you would turn me back on.

I’ll be using All in One SEO Pack for this — another plugin.

Sam the Record Man plays his last song

Sam the Record Man

“We are making a responsible decision in recognizing the status of the record industry and the increasing impact of technology,” said Bobby Sniderman in a press release.

What’s a record?

The store, located on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto since 1961, will close its doors on June 30. The founder, Sam Sniderman, began selling recordings in 1937 in the family’s radio store.

Will my vagabond days be over?

Yesterday I dusted off my résumé.

I know, I know, it goes against every single precept that I have been preaching to myself for the past seven years – or longer – but it’s for a position that I just can’t ignore. At least, that’s my story, and so far, I’m sticking to it.

It’s actually a management position, overseeing and directing an existing operation while developing, funding and implementing additional technology to complement the existing. I’ve done this before, so it’s not new to me by any stretch of the imagination; however, I’ve not done it on such a small scale as will be required. It should be interesting, to say the least.

Consequently, my operational background and experience shoehorn me into the somewhat enviable position of being capable of competing for the job – which, per se, isn’t really a job to me. It sounds as though it might be “fun” – which is how I characterize every job I’ve ever had.

For the most part, I have tended to look at employment this way: If I can’t wait to get to work in the morning, and, subsequently, can’t wait to lock the door and go home in the evening, then what’s the point of being there? And, in fact, that’s the reasoning behind why I abandoned my last period of well-financed career employment seven years ago.

I’m not counting chickens, though. I’ve been a vagabond for so long now that my work-related experience seems to me to be only a figment of an overactive imagination. Has it really been seven years since I was last gainfully employed in the profession that I chose as a teenager? It seems to me to be only a heartbeat. That seven year layoff may end up costing me, but then, that’s all right too.

If I’m fortunate, I’ll still get a bike ride to a job interview that’s over a hundred miles away, plus expenses.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

Post2Blog 3.0 is now free

It never ends. Just when I think I’ve found all the blog software and more that I’ll ever need, I learn of another useful little ditty that I can’t resist downloading and trying. That goes for this, too: Post2Blog 3.00 from ByteScout, which is now free for all.

Probably the sweetest surprise is that the software can be put on a USB stick and used in its portable version. Converting it over isn’t too difficult either. Simply go to the Start / Programs menu and select “Create Portable Version”. Yes, it’s that simple.

It interfaces with FireFox and IE as well as MS Word. It handles image uploading. For a complete list of what it does, scroll down to the bottom of the Post2Blog page and read up.

Oh, yes, and one more thing I must mention: the spellchecker is live! – which, of course, can be turned off.

Mad for mad cow disease

The New York Times has a brief article on how King George’s administration is fighting to keep American meatpackers from testing all of their animals for mad cow disease (BSE – bovine spongiform encephalopathy). Meatpackers presently test less than one per cent of beef carcasses for the disease. The problem is, as the USDA sees it, that wider testing could lead to false positives that might harm the industry.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m in favor of anything that will cull diseased products from the food chain. One would expect, in light of the failure of the inspection system to discover contaminated toothpaste, dog food and other materials – including contaminated cattle feed – in a timely manner, that the government would view favorably and not challenge a business that wants to put the safety of it’s consumer base first.

Alas, that isn’t the case.

The U.S. federal court system has ruled that the government doesn’t have the right to restrict mad cow testing; however, the USDA has appealed the decision which will delay implementing the testing by a small meatpacking company in Kansas – Creekstone Farms Premium Beef.

Cost is the argument being used by the larger beef producers against wider testing. I wonder what the human cost will be in the future for testing less than one per cent of the beef carcasses in the present?

More on WordPress plugins

Ah plugins. Where would we be without them?

Clean Archives, from Geek With Laptop, cleaned up my archives page instantly. I didn’t have to make coding changes, other than to insert the appropriate link on one of my sidebars and the bottom menu. The plugin comes with a configuration menu as well. It will put a link on the topmost menu of your blog, if in fact you use a top menu. Obviously, the plugin can be prettied by means of modifying the .css file. Check it out at the top of my page.

From Beast-Blog.com, I found a slick little email contact form as well. It too is very configurable. Take a look at mine, or go to Beast-Blog for the full monte.