RACEGUY Rants

Seven Days Can Make One Week Weak

A little more than one week – seven short days – 168 even shorter hours – that’s how long (or short) it’s been since I decided to go ahead and put this little project together and take it “live” to the internet. Since I pushed the magic “Publish” button for the first time, I’ve gotten a boot-camp style education in “the internet – how it works and why it doesn’t”.

OK. I know. I’m supposed to be waxing poetic about our weekend in Kingston, but if you’ll just bear with me, I have to get this out of my system. Thank you.

Here are some of the lessons I have learned. Hopefully it will be a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of “just putting a little thing together for the fun of it.” This post could save a life!

Lesson one: It would appear that there isn’t really anything fun about it, probably due to lessons two through ninety-one. Lesson two: When the host site goes down for more than 12 hours in your first full day on line, there isn’t a swear word in the world that brings it back up. Lesson three: When the problem that took the server down requires the host site to recover their clock back a day and a half, see rule two. At this point I can confirm that neither your best curse words OR your favorite prayer will bring it back. Lesson  four: When any of the above occurs, you can count on losing countless hours of writing, page design, and most important, SLEEP! (If you look just above this column, you will see tabs that say things like “Breaking News”. When clicked, they take you to page upon page of information. In the process of you learning the first four lessons, these will completely disappear and will require total reconstruction from the tabs themselves to … yes… page upon page of information.

Now that I’ve depressed all of us, (OK, now that I’ve depressed me), I’ll leave the remaining eighty-seven lessons for another day and mention a couple of points of internet interest.

I mentioned the TABS just above this column. On a site like this, the host site makes room for up to 10 of these tabs, max. I now know there can never be enough tabs. In coming months I will use up my quota. I also learned that the more complicated and lengthy the upload, the greater the chances that something goes wrong during the upload. (see lessons one through four)

What does Scott Josey's Gas Gas have to do with

any of this? Nothing. I just like the pic

This site has been viewed almost 1600 times in less than seven days. I want to thank every single soul who gave it a click, even though the site is still under construction. I especially want to thank Mark, Jessica, Peter, Pam, Kurt, and Curtis for having faith and following me early. Following the site will cost you nothing. A couple of minutes and a few mouse clicks will get you on board and it results in absolutely zero spam. It gives you identity security that allows you to “comments” which you’ll see below this column and it allows members to communicate, while allowing me to communicate with you. There is also a “follow by e-mail” field to the left. It will send you automatic notification when anything changes here on the home page – but only this page. Contents behind the tabs can change by the minute with no e-mail notification, so you still have to come in and click to see what’s new there.

My point behind talking about “view counts” and “follows” and such is that these are the measuring tools of the internet. These measurements can determine a sites ability to stay “in business”. They are directly linked to the other element – the advertising. No matter which web site you go to, the ability to stay up and running is determined by the ability to generate “clicks” for advertisers. In a roundabout way, what I’m trying to say is, find an interesting ad and click it. You can then immediately hit the back button if you want. Your click is counted. From personal experience, though, I can sincerely say there is often some very cool (and very strange) stuff in Google Ads.

I was also surprised to discover that Google tracks our poll (bottom of the page at the left hand side) and keeps it secure from vandals or anybody “stacking the deck”. It also keeps me from knowing who voted how, although I have a very good idea where the first Matt Goerke vote came from. Next to the poll you see “My Hookups” which are all active links to some of the most useful MX sites on the continent. Just click to go directly to the pages of my internet friends. I know I’ve missed a couple, so watch for that list to grow.

Just one point about the “comments”  button at the bottom of this article. You can read and leave comments by clicking on the word. I also offer my most humble apologies to the lovely miss Longname who is one of the original three followers and the second to leave a comment here. Unfortunately, it was wiped out when the host site had to set the clock back! Which brings us all back to the starting point. RACEGUY Rants…and my rant + my guided tour of the site = rambled on too long, and I haven’t even talked about Kingston yet, although the scoring summary and Top-5 points are as close as the Tab at the top of the page.

I promise to get that up here by Saturday. Until then, unless you registered for e-mail updates, you’ll just have to keep coming back here to see what’s new. Oh…and you can even click an ad while you’re here.

Up Next - Komments from Kingston