English is different, in that instead of tones, words can change meaning by moving the accent. We don’t need tone markings, as in Spanish or French. I’m trying to think of an English word that changes meaning with accent. I’m still thinking. Um, okay, how about the word “contract”? There you go.
My poet buddy was in again today, this is the guy with the dreadlocks I helped out a couple years ago to set up his blog and web page. My job ends when they have the know-how to publish. I cannot show them how to get traffic to their page, although I’ll coach them a little on advertising. This poor kid still can’t kick the idea that a web presence is not enough to drive customers to him. We’ve had that same conversation a few times.
Want to get noticed? Spray paint your URL on the side of the Federal Building. Ten thousand people will visit your page for sure. Maybe just to see what you look like without the cuffs. As a defense, try the angle that you thought since it was a public building you could advertise on it for free. But I don't recommend the Jason Derek Brown tactic of getting on the Most Wanted list just for being a suspect.
Seriously, I recall seeing a price of $80 to publish a twenty-word ad on papers with a circulation of one million. I can tell you what not to do: don’t advertise on the Internet. It has a bad reputation and your ad will just get smothered. Here is a case where you have to get creative to get noticed.
An unwelcome change in driver searches has me worried. Drivers are the programs that come on a CD whenever you buy new hardware. Printers, mouses (the correct plural here), webcams, scanners, optical disks, these all come with a driver. Of course, these disks get lost and outdated so most after-market drivers are downloaded from the Internet.
Some jerkface outfit has interfered with that happy scenario. Almost every search now goes to a piece of junkware that inventories your computer (an invasion of privacy), and offers to search the net for the latest releases. No thank you. I deleted it instantly but it seems to be the only thing at the end of every driver search.
You should avoid any search results that redirect your query. An example is Amazon. When you search for dog names, you want the names, not some damn bookseller. In the case of these drivers, when you think you have located the driver and download it, you are really downloading the junkware.
I’ll tell more as I test the system, but here is another time I regret I did not stick with programming. Sites which have the real drivers get squeezed by these con artists. Too many of the remaining sites now demand “memberships” to get at the free drivers, and some of them send you the junkware anyway. It is disgusting.
There was no time left over today to investigate the source of programming knowledge I’ve discussed recently (where are others learning net programming and setting up sites in a matter of hours, not semesters?). I’m first to note that working for a living doesn’t leave most people enough time to get ahead in the world. Like I told the poet, it is sad but true that the single biggest ingredients of success are still rich parents and luck, definitely not hard work and intelligence.
What is the market for intelligence anyway? The phone company doesn’t need any. Smarts will get you through college, but not unless you are the top 1% and the other 99% are back to daddy’s money. Where rich kids went from college to management, I graduated six long years in debt, a struggle which prompted me to take that job at the phone place.
Within a year the Student Finance Board was on my doorstep, I was four payments behind. The phone company HR department gave them my address. Don’t worry, I got them back for that indiscretion, big time. One should pay one’s debts on time, but if one does not, it is hardly the phone company’s business to act the vigilante. Do we see a pattern here? I see one. "Don't fuck with people who are even marginally smarter than you are."
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