Blog: Ramblings and Rants

I’ve been curious about this for a while, watching my referrer logs (where visitors are coming from) fill up with apparent referrals from site with obvious spammer domains—I won’t use the words, we all know them. These sites should have no interest in referring to my sites. What does a gambling site want with QuarkVSInDesign.com? Why would a porn site send 500 people a month to The Design Weblog? Why would a site advertising the hair-growth medication Rogaine link to I Am Pariah.com? Granted, I’m not only a client of the Long-Hair Club for Men, I’m also the president, but still…

When I found this, it all made sense.

If the amount of comment spam a blog receives equates to the popularity and success of a blog, I Am Pariah is pretty successful.

This blog ranks very high on Google for a number of popular search terms, as it also does on Technorati, Bloglines, and other places. In some way, this indicates the success of a blog, if page rank is one’s motivation.

I often work with the television on as background noise. At the moment, I’m writing a tutorial for the (Unofficial) Photoshop Weblog while watching “Silence of the Lambs.” At the point where Hannibal Lechter makes his escape from the hall in West Virginia it drew my attention away from writing. It was then that I noticed the head SWAT guy is played by singer and HBO actor, Chris Isaak. This movie came out before his breakout single “Wicked Game.”

And, of course, the killer, Buffalo Bill, is played by “Monk’s” Capt. Stottlemeyer, Ted Levine.

It’s always interesting to see where celebrities got their starts, their early appearances.

What a wicked game you played to make me feel this way
what a wicked thing to do to let me dream of you
what a wicked thing to say you never felt this way
what a wicked thing to do to make me dream of you

I’m in Texas for a couple of weeks—this past week and next. I got here last Sunday, and have spent time working with some wonderful people in Dallas and Fort Worth.

On this trip, my job sites are not Top Secret or even high-security. Not that I mind those locations, mind you; I feel honored to spend time at those types of locations, and look forward to more visits. Still, it is a nice change of pace to be able to walk in or out of buildings at will, without inconveniencing someone who must act as escort just so I might get a cup of coffee or have a smoke.

I sincerely love my jobs.

Being a professional trainer in Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Quark, Acrobat, Creative Suite, and other applications feeds my burning passion for teaching, for talking to other creative pros, and for the tools that I can only describe as the coolest in the world. Every time I walk into a new client’s training room I feel a thrill; every single class is different, every student a new creative peer whose skills I have the joy and honor of helping to hone. When I return to a previously serviced client I get an even bigger rush; I know the people, I know their work. Each time I go back, the training is more effective because the new students benefit from how focussed I am on their specific workflow needs as a result of my previous experiences with them.

Abrupt as this is, I must end the post. I’m wiped out. I give everything I’ve got teaching a class, and it exhausts me physically and mentally. [Shrug] I have an old-fashioned work ethic of give it your all. At the end of the day, I have given it my all, leaving me ready for bed after my 7 hour day. And, with as much joy as teaching gives me, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I just stumbled across this while updating the Memes List. I though it was a great idea. You should go check it out!
Snarkland

For anybody not knowing what I’m talking about, it’s a CD that you put together, with 100 mp3s on it; all music that you feel has either been influential in your personal growth, or lyrics that mean something to you, or in a pinch, your favorite songs (because even those must mean something to you, right?). You let me know when you’re done, and I tell you how many copies to make. Everyone sends me their copies, and then I send them off to the people who are doing this. For example, I think at last count there were seven people interested. If you’re one of the seven, you mail me 6 copies of your CD (you’ve made a 7th copy for yourself), and in a couple weeks you get 6 CDs back, full of music important to other people who come here a lot.

Back in blog
I hate to say it
It’s been too long I’m high on the hog
Yes I’m let loose
From Interland’s noose
That’s kept me hangin’ on hold
I’ve keep lookin’ at the stats
‘Cause they’re gettin’ way high
Forget InterNIC ’cause it’ll never die
I’ve got six sites
blog sites
Usin’ every one of them and writin’ wild

Technical Difficulties. Please stand by.

The problems with the previous host of iamPariah.com just won’t end!

On Monday, 3 January 2005, the DNS name server change, the move from the old host to the new one, became effective. Thereafter, it should have just been a matter of waiting a day or so for all the servers around the world to be informed of, and to accept, the change in the location of iamPariah.com.

I am uploading and converting the old blog at this very moment (9:30pm PT 4 January 2005). Please return in a couple of hours to see the new and improved iamPariah.com with all the old content (and more!) that you’ve come to love.