I have no idea what that even means, but it sounded kind of neat.

The title, that is. You see, sometimes my first line talks about the title, so please be sure you first read the title before reading my posts.

I say that for the benefit of any new readers I’m not likely to have gotten. You regulars should know this lesson by now.

Sadly, there are no actual snippets today. Sorry. I just liked the title.

Have you ever seen a snail snicker? You just know they do. They have mouths and, if you have a mouth, you can snicker, I think. Would a snail have reason to snicker? Why not? Certainly they see other snails doing silly or stupid things, and since they do it in slow motion, the other snails likely cannot help but snicker. Right?

Maybe I should start a website: Snickr. You can post pictures of yourself snickering at other people. Or pictures of other people snickering at you. Or at other people. It’ll just be pictures of people snickering. Animals too. Maybe plants. Can a plant snicker? If they do, I’m sure someone has a photo of it happening.

Whoops. Too late. Someone already registered snickr dot com. Five years ago! They were thinking ahead. Too bad their site still appears to be under construction. Oh well, I thought it was a cool idea. Who knows what they had in mind for Snickr?

Anyway, so sleep peacefully tonight and dream of snickering snails.

You know, there is nothing like the frustration of reusing code from one site on another, because you know the code works, only to discover that it doesn’t.

Only it does, but only on the first site and not the new site, which is almost exactly the same.

This is why people buy lottery tickets. It’s not because they just want to strike it rich and not do anything anymore, but because they’re frustrated and don’t want to have to put up with it anymore.

It’s like that one project you do every year that you hope–you plan–you will never have to do again because next year either you won’t have to do it anymore or can pay someone to do it for you. Only it doesn’t end up that way and you end up doing it yourself again, year after year after year.

That’s why people buy lottery tickets.

But, I digress, as I am prone to do.

Anyway, argh!

Oh well, back to work. And, I should mention I’m writing this on Friday but it’s not posting until Saturday because I already have a post for Friday. So who knows what I’m doing now? Maybe writing Sunday’s post. Or still trying to fix my code.

Or standing in line to buy a lottery ticket.

Thought I’ve done this before, but apparently not…

Blah.

Blah blah blah.

Blah de blah blah blah.

Blah de blah, blah de blah, blah de blah blah blah.

Blah.

Blah blah blah.

Blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah.

Blah de blah.

Blah de blah, blah. Blah blah blah, blah de blah blah.

Blah.

Blah blah blah. LOL! Blah.

Blah blah de blah. Blah de blah de blah.

Blah.

Well, this is taking longer than I thought.

Getting the new site up and running, that is.

One of the big issues is accessing and converting data that is over 10 years old.

Backwards-compatibility is not very pervasive, it would seem.

I have close to 400 files that I want to use, but no easy way to update them into a more modern format, except to go through them one at a time.

And batch processing is not a possibility because the way things are, doing it manually is the only way to do it.

Unless there were a program designed to do what I’m doing which there doesn’t appear to be.

So, back to the grind…

I should have saved yesterday’s second post for today.

Because then I would have a better post for today.

Been busy with client work today, so haven’t had a chance to think of anything for here.

And, I’ve got to get back to working up a price for a client, making a change on another client’s website and do some work on my own website.

So this is pretty much all you’re getting for a post today.

Unless, of course, something comes to me while I’m typing up this post.

Nope. Nothing. Nada.

Still nothing.

All righty, then. Time to call this puppy done and hit the “Publish” button!

Earlier today, I posed the question: “What Should I Call My New Blog?”

So far, I heard from Speedy and Mike. Thanks!

Being the impatient type, I’m going to pick a name and go with it. So, I shall call my new blog: Dan’s Blog. (Sort of.)

Unless, of course, someone (or I) comes up with a better name before I finish building the thing.

I started on building it earlier today, and then I realized that I already had a system built that I could adapt for use as a blog too. So, I am going to “recycle” that code. I have been preparing the code for the new site.

The cool thing is that it will be more than a blog. What it actually will be is a blog that’s just a part of another website. So, you’ll be able to read more stuff than just what I post in the blog.

There will be some social networking features too, so you can talk with your friends and meet new friends. And spam should be kept to a minimum. It’ll be locked behind a membership site. That alone will cut down on the number of spammers. The approval system will also not be automated, which will cut down on the number of people that will set up an account and then just spam away until they get caught. This way, hopefully a lot of would-be spammers can be cut off before they can even get into the site. Third, if any spammers do get in, we can zap them. So, I am hoping to give people an experience that will largely be devoid of spam.

Of course, that means you’ll need to remember another username and password, but it’ll be worth it!

Also, grab your calendars and pencil in this Saturday night, from 8:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. EST. If I get everything in place this week, we’ll have something cool and neat on Saturday night.

So, start “begging” for your “backstage passes” because if I think you’re a spammer, you’re not getting in.

Remember a couple days ago when I said I might start a new blog?

Well, what should I call it?

Should I stick with DCR? Or should I call it Dan’s Blog?

DCR’s Blog?

As you may recall, many moons ago, this blog was called Dan Blogs. Less than two weeks into blogging here, and I changed it to dcrBlogs.com.

Anyway, so what should the new one be? I’m kind of leaning toward Dan’s Blog. I’ve noticed that only a few people call me “Dan” and most refer to me as “dcr”. I don’t really care too much, as it differentiates me from other Dans. But, you know, when I’m the only Dan around, it’s superfluous. Or something. I just wanted to write “superfluous.”

So, thoughts?

“Free form” is a bit of an oxymoron, isn’t it?

If it’s totally free, it can’t be said to follow a particular form, no?

And, if it is following a form, can it really be said to be free?

Thus, do we delude ourselves when we say something is “free form”?

Interesting point to ponder, eh?

Well, I thought it was.

Regardless, I bet this post will get no search engine love.

Oh well, I’m used to that on here at this point.

Doesn’t matter anyway. The search engines aren’t the only ways to find things online these days.

Some people use a more free form search. LOL.

Dear Blog Comment Spammer,

You are an idiot.

Now, I know that you may not even be real. You’re probably just some script or bot that goes around posting your stupid comments in order to get backlinks to your sucky website.

So, you that fired up that script or that sent out that bot are an idiot.

First of all, I’m not stupid. My blog is a blog, not a forum. So, when you or your stupid little script buddy posts a message offering to discuss the issue further in PM, I can’t help but think what a moron you must be to send out a bot like that. Seriously. There is no private messaging system here. This is a blog. Like most blogs, you leave comments. You don’t discuss things in PM because there are no PMs here.

Most blogs are like that. The blogs that aren’t are forums. This is not a forum. Your stupid little bot should be able to figure it out. It’s not that hard.

And, another thing. Maybe if you built a website that wasn’t a total piece of worthless garbage, people might actually want to link to your site. You know? That’s what bloggers like to do. We see something interesting and we tell our readers, hey, go check this out. It’s cool!

The reason you’re probably using bots to post stupid comments is to get backlinks to your crummy site because, otherwise, no one would ever link to the piece of garbage you call a website. So, you hope to sneak in some links on some blogs in order to do it.

How about this? Why don’t you set up your own crummy blogs? Then you can spam yourself to your heart’s content. Think of all the backlinks you can build every day when you’re not running into blogs that use Akismet, moderation and/or CAPTCHA to block your stupid spam comments? You can leave your blogs fully open and spam the heck out of them!

You can carve out your own little virtual Internet with your worthless sites and your crummy blogs all linking to one another. You could generate tons of fresh stupid content daily! Google loves fresh links. So, why don’t you leave the rest of us alone and just start your own private little spam network?

Or, maybe, just maybe, you could make a quality website and post quality comments on blogs–comments that wouldn’t get blocked or deleted. And people would link to you voluntarily too because you had cool or useful stuff.

Of course, you’ll never do that. That would involve work and you’re lazy. So, I guess you’ll just go back to building useless websites and spamming blogs with stupid comments.

And I’ll just continue to block you and delete them.

And since Akismet blocks 99% of your stupid blog comments, you’re just wasting your time anyway.

You know what I thought would be cool? It’s been almost 3 years since I did the “Drunken Virals” post.

So, what if I updated it but removed the lines containing blogs that were no longer around?

Let’s see what we get…

What shall we do with a drunken viral?
What shall we do with the drunken viral?
What shall we do with this drunken viral, earlye in the morning?

What shall we do with a drunken viral?
What shall we do with the drunken viral?
What shall we do with this drunken viral, earlye in the morning?

Not a whole lot of deletions, considering it’s been almost three years. Of course, I only removed the ones that are gone gone and not the ones that haven’t been updated in months or years.