suacoustic

I may have failed to mention that I would be out of Kennett on business the 20th through the 24th this week to attend the Texas State Florist Association in San Antonio, Texas. This is the second convention that FSN has attended in an effort to make an outward presence known in the floral industry. I was so busy preparing everything to leave for the convention that I’ve failed to post updates to the site. I’ve also had a fair amount of hosting issues with Dotster - with the hosting CP being either down… or at the very least quite cumbersome to get everything on this blog working as it should. I will post updates nightly related to the convention though and maybe have a few pics when things get setup and I get settled in.

Day 1: Travel to San Antonio.

I used to tell my mother I wanted to be a truck driver when I was growing up - needless to say I’m glad I went to college and got my CIS degree from ASU - as the driving experience down here today was not ideal. Google Maps says it was a 14 hour drive from Kennett, and I have the greatest respect for the service in that they were just about right on the money. We were actually making much better time than the projected 14 hours until we hit rush hour traffic in Austin, Texas.

My wife and I drove one of the company vehicles down here to San Antonio with all of the convention materials in tow - at least they were in the back of the Yukon instead of on a trailer otherwise the trip would have been longer. It literally took us 1 1/2 hours to get through Austin - driving 5mph in a 70mph zone for over 40 minutes. This is why I’m glad we have chosen to live away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. I could feel my blood pressure rising and at 32 I don’t think that driving should increase your chances for heart attack - so I’m glad the drive down is over.

Needless to say we finally made it to the hotel - which is quite nice - got everything unpacked and up to the room with few problems. The hotel staff is very friendly and helpful which made things even better - our luggage porter got a BIG tip.

After we got to the room, I had to do a bit of emergency keyword research for an upcoming newsletter, then it was out for dinner and drinks at 9pm.

Back to the room, hot shower and to bed - glad the first day is over and I’ll be ready for Day 2 tomorrow morning about 6am to prepare everything for booth setup at 8:30am - I’ll post about the Day 2 events tomorrow evening.

Here is a link to a great recording of Senator Stevens speaking on Net Neutrality - I actually listened to the entire recording and I can’t imagine how this bumbling idiot got elected into office. Listen to the audio clip and read on.

Senator Stevens also claimed that an email sent to him was delayed for 5 days because of congestion on the internet caused by large file transfers, streaming audio and video content and the like. Boo-hoo Senator!!  There is no way that he can even begin to prove that the suspect email was delayed by any type of congestion on the internet - most likely this was an ID10T error on the users part or to get even more technical, I would guess a mis-configuration of an email server somewhere lost in the internet.

Just the way he references the web as “an internet” or “this internet thing” in the audio clip gives me the shivers.  I have to chalk this guy up to big time corporate money lining the pockets of our government officials for the benefit of big business.  Yes the telecommunications have provided a backbone with blazing fast access speeds to online content - but his concept of allowing a two-tiered internet sound more like an additional ‘tax’ to businesses that provide high-bandwidth applications and media content.  Both online content providers and consumers already pay a premium for high speed internet access - that is our choice.  I don’t think we need to give them any more power to throttle or censor content.

maybe this poor fellow is a fall-guy or close to retirement..

Sorry - I couldn’t resist the headline.

It seems that eBay has taken certain precautionary measures to hold onto market share in the online payment arena since the launch of Google Checkout.  With some quick upper level management changes they would seem to be running scared at this major product release from the search engine giant - they also wasted no time in adding Google Checkout to their list of ‘unapproved payment methods’ for the popular eBay auction site.

I found the most recent information and announcement from the WebProNews email newsletter that I receive - check out their site and article for more detailed info about the eBay changes and Google Checkout release.

Wow… That’s all I can say is wow…

Yahoo customer care actually responded to my inquiry regarding the 400 Bad Request SERP that showed up in their results pertaining to one of our client sites.  Of course, they botched up the description of the problem as “Slurp should not be indexing https pages from your site…” instead of failing to recognize that the crawler attempted to access a plain http URL on port 443 - a secure port.  Those are two entirely different and separate things.  Sometimes I worry about the people that respond to inquiries to these large companies - if you run an online business that is solely dependent on good rankings and traffic from the search engines, then you understand what I am talking about.

Well, they did say that they would forward it on to the engineering staff to look into the matter further, but I still won’t hold my breath for an applicable response.  Sorry to be pessimistic folks, but most of the feedback regarding customer care has been less than sparkling - a response, as poor and riddled with mistakes as it may be, is still a response.

Kennett Country Club has some good competition going in in the qualifying rounds for the 2006 Semo Cup team.  I didn’t post results here for the first qualifier so I’ll list results from the first two qualifying rounds.

Qualifier #1

Qualifier #2

Given the scores I’ve seen so far - I’m fortunate that I am exempt for the 2006 tournament along with 3 other players.  Here is a link to the 2006 KCC Semo Cup point standings on the KCC site.