McCain's New Advertising Strategy

With only a few weeks left in the presidential election 2008, John McCain is falling behind in the polls, most people say it's due to his linking with unpopular President Bush, I personally think it's because he has his advertising all wrong. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you McCain's new strategy:

Democrats... Geritol... Whats the difference?

It was recently reported that during an interview, John McCain stated that he wanted to make sure the best minds were in positions in the government, and went on to say that there will definitely be Democrats in his cabinet...

The problem was actually that McCain was confused and was actually stating that he will be taking plenty of vitamins to make sure his mind is sharp and that there will be plenty of Geritol in his medicine cabinet, poor old man is losing it.

Don't worry Mr. McCain, the home they are speaking of is not actually the White House... but at least there will be plenty of people there to help you..

Free Stuff!

I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this and I'd also bet that many other people have come across the same conclusion. I was browsing around Craigslist to see what was out there, and I happened upon the Free page for Phoenix. In the last 3 days, I've come across:

• Broken Refridgerator
• Fill Dirt
• A Box of Misc Shoes
• A broken 1960's Jukebox
• Glass Top Dining Table, End Table, and Coffee Table (Without Legs)
• Child's Sandbox, complete with sand.
• A bunch of 5 gallon buckets
• More Fill Dirt
• Used moving boxes
• Sets of Lost Keys, found at the Salt River, as well as about 20+ hubcaps
• 10 Gallons of Used Motor Oil
• Old Magazines
• 2100 sq ft of sod
• Top Soil and Fill Dirt
• 2 White Toilet Seats
• 13 tons of sand

So yeah, we're a strange bunch here in Phoenix, for those of you that haven't done it, I highly suggest you take a look at what your city is giving away on craigslist. Here in Phoenix, it seems we really like our fill dirt.

And The Winner for Best Corporate Spelling?

TARGET! Check out the sweet Todddler underwear!







I couldn't help but bust out my phone and take a shot, I hope you all enjoy.

Google's Really Outdone Themselves Now.

So I've done posts about crazy Google Adsense ads before, but here's an interesting one. After reading the post about Driving in Phoenix, did someone you know suddenly get arrested and needs a bail bond?


Low Cost Bail Bonds, right here baby!

Why does Google do this to me? I mean I put adsense here for targeted ads, so I can make some change blogging, and what do they do? Accuse my readers of being criminals in need of bail bonds, what exactly are jailed inmates doing browsing the web anyway? Obviously they arent in Phoenix in one of Sheriff Joe's jails.

If You Can't Drive It, Don't Buy It!

I will never understand this logic, I go to the car dealer to buy a new car, as I'm browsing the lot, I see this bad ass 2008 pickup. I tell the salesman that he needs to get me into that car, I've got good credit, lets get me on the road with this beast asap. As soon as I leave the lot I find out the car's too much to handle, so I'm stopping late, over/under accelerating, etc.

Unfortunately, I drove it off the lot, like a moron, so it's mine. No problem you're likely thinking, it just takes some time to get used to it, I'll be okay.

I have seen countless morons on the road who cant turn, cant stop, cant accelerate correctly, it's amazing. Does no one bother to take a test drive anymore? I'll be the first to admit my Yaris handled differently when I drove off the lot when I test drove it, but that's because it had the dealer's kill-switch installed, so when I drove it home it drove a lot smoother, but the handling was about the same.

I bring this up because I noticed some idiot driving around in his brand new Chevy Avalanche, assuming you can actually call it driving, basically swerving and not handling his vehicle very well, at all.

My first assumption in a situation like that is that the driver is likely drunk, but it was a monday afternoon and there were actually 3 people in the car, male driver, female passenger, and what seemed like a baby seat in the back, so this guy was likely driving his family somewhere for dinner or similar to that. Mind you, I don't live overly close to the city, we're a few miles north on the interstate, but it's fairly busy. They had recently added an on-ramp for one of the streets and its not very smoothe because of the construction and they have 2 way traffic in an area that will one day become a 1 way. Lets see the graph, shall we? (YAY MSPAINT!)

Bonehead and I are entering the freeway from point A with ultimate destination being point D (what you cannot see, is that point D forks, it will go straight and run along side the interstate, or become an on ramp, the B lane is designed for interstate traffic, whereas C is designed for people who want to drive alongside.) Now, as he drives around the turn to enter lane B, he gets into the lane about 3 hours too late, up until this point he was in lane C, when he notices that it's not going where he wants to go, gets into the correct lane and when reaching the turn, takes the turn so damn wide, almost ends up in the dirt somewhere below the text of this post.

I swear this guy had an Arizona lic plate, that wasn't FLT so no rental, so he should be used to this kind of insane traffic structure (see: How to Drive in Phoenix, if any confusion).

Misson Accomplished

So the other day, I posted a situation that has happened to me with most of my posts in regards to Reddit and how I seem to generate traffic, but never get any votes. I knew this would ruffle some feather, but I had no idea on how crazy it would get.

Based on strictly traffic levels, I would call that page a success, after all, everyone loves controversy. If you'll take a look on the right side of the page, as of 8/3, the page FYI: Reddit Hates Me, is now my 5th most popular page, based on traffic, and I've posted almost 50 posts in the last few months. I would like to thank reddit user AvantTarde for his scathing review, I can only assume people looked at his comment and thought, "Wow, what is so horrible on the other end of that link? I must read it" and the hits just kept coming for a good 24 hour period.

Also, I would like to thank fellow Phoenix blogger monkeychapps, In my post about how I manage to be the one blogger who never has one of those bazillion unique days from Stumbleupon, he suggested that I need to post something that is controversial, I think his exact words were hating french midgets or something of the like, but I took it to heart, and I tried to figure what I could write about and how I could link my blog into it.

This, ladies and gentlemen is why I love stumbleupon users. A page is never a bad train wreck on stumbleupon, if you vote it down, it is likely to mean something. When you're stumbling, the chance of getting complete garbage is relatively slim. Also, I'm willing to bet that most of the people who commented on the reddit page never actually viewed the page, so my traffic could have been a whole lot higher. In order for someone to say something about your page on stumbleupon, they need to be there. I don't need 500 thumbs up and 30,000 uniques to enjoy what I do.

So to you reddit users:

I'm not going to "fuck off and die", I will continue to post on this "shitty blog" whether you like it or not.

To everyone else, enjoy, be merry, and lets have some fun.

FYI: Reddit Hates Me

So I started experimenting with Reddit for my browsing and traffic generating needs. Love it for the browsing, unfortunately, the readers aren't too fond of my work.


Over 50% of the traffic to the Photo Dump page since it was posted until today has come from Reddit, yet on Reddit, the page itself had a score of 0. A freaking zero.

Don't worry Reddit, I still love you and will continue to browse you pages for all my web-browsing needs, but you bastards better vote this page up just to prove a point.

Inconsistent with Life.

Ok, so reading the above title, what do you assume?

If you google search it, it takes you to a bunch of junk about the Christian religion and how the death penalty is inconsistent with life... WTF?

The usage in this story is another of those wonderful trips the local Phoenix hospitals. (See:
Why Do All Hospitals Seem to Suck at Everything?) Now both my girl-friends parents are diabetic and they need to watch their blood sugar regularly to make sure everything is peachy. But recently her mother has been having problems with nausea, headaches, and just general nastiness. Unfortunately her primary care is out of the office so she decides to check in to the local hospital, when she gets there, she fills out a quick health questionnaire about her history and such, so one of the normal procedures for diabetics is that they will do a blood sugar test. The CNA walks in to get the test started and the machine reads 27.

"All set, thank you" says the assistant as shes walking out.

(Now for those who don't have to worry about taking these tests and subsequently don't know what the levels mean, first I envy you, second, I'll let you in on a little secret)

27 is EXTREMELY LOW, anything lower than a 50 is typically grounds to have you in a coma.

Obviously, this gal didn't quite know what she was looking at and nonchalantly walked back to the office to record her results as our patient is sitting in the room inquiring why her sugar is so low, possibly it's a mistake, you should definitely redo the test. All this falls of deaf ears, the assistant advised that the machine is correct and the doctor will see her soon. Eventually the doctor makes his way back into the room to re-test her and then her sugars came back much higher, around the 100 range, much more likely for a diabetic.

She explains her ordeal to the doc, who then replies with;

"That's why I needed to come back in and re-do the test, it must have been a mistake because those numbers are inconsistent with life"

Basically meaning that if that were true, she would be dead right then.

Oh lord I love hospitals.

If I Designed My Car...

The first thing I think of when I get in my car after it's been sitting in the afternoon Phoenix sun is this statement:

"The Designers sure aren't from around these parts now are they?"

I made a fairly cheap photoshop version of what my car should look like:


Photo credit originally goes to MSN Auto's, but it's the same make and model of my current car, so without further adieu, let the show begin.

1. The first and most obvious is the oven mitt placed snugly on the steering wheel. This will make summer driving in Phoenix a whole lot safer since people will be able to use their entire hand, instead of just their palms while driving.

2. Of course the air vents are going to be well placed in the car for optimum cooling, but also, it will have an auto setting that will make it so when the car is turned on it doesn't go straight to full blast(because this is what you had it set for when you were last in the car) and blow hot, scalding air right into your face and extremities.

3. Oh dear lord the chairs, this one is a gimme, any idiot who purchases a car with leather seats in Phoenix deserves anything the elements can throw at them, want your cajones stuck to a chair? you got it! through your pants? oh you've got that one as well my friend.

4. Now the fun part of Arizona summers is that around June 15th, we enter what we call Monsoon Season, which basically means that storms will gather and dump some rain on us every once in awhile. So unfortunately leaving a window cracked while at work is out because you don't know what day you will get the downpour since every day starts out clear and sunny. So what I suggest is a vent on the sides of every door that vent air in and out of the car, but have some sort of lip to keep it from getting rained in.

5. Everyone in Phoenix knows the value of a good window shade, but if you have a small car like a Yaris, good luck setting this thing up without causing yourself to need to run inside the building because you've now caused yourself to be late. What I say is that cars should come with an auto shade feature that you simply pull up from the base and then clip on your rear view mirrors, voila!

Not Shown: Find some way to make it so things you keep in your car storage areas don't become 17 million degrees, I cant even try to put on my sunglasses for at least 5 minutes, and good luck son if you're trying to pay with cash and your digging for coins in your drink holder. Say hello to second degree burns.

Navy Blue is the New Black!

No, I'm not here to educate you on the new fashion trends and how you need to wear your hair in August, I want to point out a sad little trend in state politics.

I'm sure everyone can gather by my post topics, I happen to live in Arizona. Which also happens to be the home of Senator John McCain, Republican Presidential Nominee, if you lived under a rock for the last few months. That little bit of knowledge aside, I have come to a conclusion:

The Republican Party only hires 1 good graphic designer, everyone else just copies their idea.

Case in point:

Sam Crump, incumbent nominee for the Arizona state legislature, his campaign sign looks very familiar...


Where do I know that logo... Where do I know that logo from? Oh that's right...

It's a play on the Navy and Star logo that McCain is using, hooray for word association, I must now vote for Sam Crump because he reminds me of John McCain. My money's on the fact this isn't as prevalent in other areas of the country, but most likely because McCain will win Arizona pretty heavily, since hes been the state senator for a bazillion years.

Given it's not an exact match but since most state legislature campaign signs are going to be right on the side of the road, and the only exposure you will have to it will be a quick drive-by, I'd say this is a pretty good campaign strategy for Mr. Crump, unfortunately his slogan is a little bit of an oxymoron.

Be Careful What You Wish For..

So anyone who saw yesterday's post, you know it was about how to be ignored by Digg, which was a play off the post on Cracked.com about rising to the top of Digg. I figured this page was diggworthy and wanted to see if I could beat my personal record of 40 diggs for 1 page.

Unfortunately, I got exactly what I asked for, to be ignored by the Digg community. Oh well, I kind of expected that, so I'm going to take this post in another direction.

I am looking for some advertising to place on the top of my page, I used to use Commission Junction, but that's no longer working for me. Any feedback would be great, currently the advertising seems overly small.

Please email me at 02sense@live.com if you would be interested in purchasing some advertising, I'm looking to go weekly right now, and it will be going for rock bottom prices so I can get my feet wet. Also the ads will need to be 728x60 in order to fill up the top line.

How to be Ignored by Digg

So recently the guys over at Cracked.com did a post about How to get your site to the front page of Digg. Well obviously I'm the last guy who wants to give you advise on how to do that, as I have never been lucky enough to pull that feat off, although I did manage to get 40 diggs on my post titled Music Meet Ransom Notes. Lets see if we can break that record, shall we?

1. Have No Friends - This one's obvious, good friends are what get the ball rolling, sure, there are a few people who browse the very recently posted to see if they can find a diamond in the rough, but typically it will be your friends who get you the boost into the limelight. If you don't have friends, thats a good way to tread water.

2. Post Short Articles - I am the master at this, I build my blog to allow my visitors to stop in, read a page, get a quick chuckle, and move on. Unfortunately most of the top articles on Digg are very thought out, long pages that typically have more than 1 page to them. Again, strike 2 of 02sense, as this is just a list of 5.

3. Write Crap - If you work 40 hrs a week, spend time outside and then come in to blog for 20 minutes and through your page together, it's not likely to hit the main page. This is based solely on the fact that your "digg" is your seal of approval, if you digg it, it's showing your fellow browser that this is good shit, and everyone needs to read it. WARNING: This is not the same as man-law, in man-law it is mandatory that you expose your friends to as much horrible crap as possible, because it is funny. NOT THE SAME!!

4. Repeat the same tired old joke - It's only so many times that you can see the same de-motavational poster, or the same lolcat before you stop enjoying it. Now be careful, this is not the same on StumbleUpon, on SU your thumbs up isn't as binding, so you can see the same thing a few times, which is partially true because they get submitted at the same time and one gains popularity first and the other one is a straggler, but both are still funny. You just won't see them both on the front page of Digg at the same time.

5. Be Part of This Blog - Ok, so the guys at Cracked did it, so you had to expect me to do something similar, given this is a copycat version of their post. But honestly, this blog will likely never reach the top of Digg, although it may generate some good traffic and people will find it funny, it's not the consistent humor that you find on xkcd or Cracked.

Even after #5, lets see if we can get this puppy to the front, digg em if you got em boys. My Digg ID is Toggan, be sure to send me a message if you have something to say, or send me an email at 02sense@live.com.

New Hobbies in the Digital Age

So as time change, we're forced to change our hobbies as well, stamp collecting is out, browsing the web is in. Here are 5 ideas for hobbies I've recently picked up that I'm sure everyone will enjoy

1. Wikipedia Grammar Nazi - Now, this is not your typical grammar nazi who will correct everything they see and scream obscenities at the author and demand it be changed. What I like to do is simply browse Wikipedia for articles I care about or want to learn more about, and notice how many times the person incorrectly uses a comma or misspells a word, bonus points if it's a word that would not be picked up in spell check.

2. Google Street View Parking Cop - Seriously, what's better of making fun of stupid people? I recently started this one when I was checking out the street view for the part of San Diego I was going to and noticed some dude who could arguably been the worst parallel parker, EVER.

3. Digg Stalking - Ok, so this one isn't as much as a hobby as it's just fun. Create an account on digg for the sole purpose of digging everything someone else does. Bonus points if you have no idea who they are, extra points if they send you a message because they noticed something.

4. Positive Forum Trolling - Everyone is used to the forum troll, some idiot who gets sick joy out of being a pain in the ass. This works the other way, show up on a random forum and pick the first screen name you say and write a post about how great of a person they are. FYI: Make sure said person is not a troll first, then the point is lost.

5. Time Traveling - Create a series of websites in tinyurl.com that go back to the same time in archive.org. After this, create a list and pretend your browsing the web back in 1998. Or use it to confuse your friends into thinking that they fell into some time warp... assuming they are gullible to think http://tinyurl.com/36hj8 is actually the url for google now.

An Exercise in Futility

So... That nice Honda Civic Hybrid I wrote about in a previous post, it comes with this handy dandy navigation system, built in XM Radio, and a ton of other cool features. The problem is that the driver is a moron some times, and some times, Lola, as she has been named can be a moron as well.

I give you a hypothetical question: What is the point of having GPS enabled, when you don't listen to it?

A little take on PEBKAC, this time, Problem Exists Between Steering Wheel and Chair, or PEBSWAC.

Driving from our rental in Mission Beach and Seaworld, my father decided that he should use the GPS in the car to help us get there, instead of following the 8 million roadsigns that say Seaworld, next right. As we're driving along we get the "Turn Right in a quarter mile" it even gives us the name on the screen. But what do we do? continue to drive and say, "Oh, a quarter mile, we still have a ways to go." AND MISS THE TURN!

Now, the system can't always be right, I mean it is just a computer....

The system responds to voice commands as long as you hit the button on the steering wheel. Now I can understand if I lived in NY or London, and I have a think accent, but I don't, I live in Phoenix freaking Arizona. If I said "Find nearest Bank" it should find the nearest bank, amirite? Iamwrong!

"Air Conditioning Off"

WHAT THE HELL?!

"Find Nearest ATM" maybe?

"FM Channel 93.7"

Finally we just input it manually by pressing the items we are looking for on the screen, but unfortunately, sometimes the GPS is only as smart as the person using it.

Prior to going to see a Padre's game at Petco Park, we set the directions to the ballpark and had it minimize freeways, that way we can see more of the town. No problem, we get there perfectly in time and everything is good. Now later that night, we wanted to find us a Pizza joint. "Easy" we think, in a tourist town like Mission Beach, we got this. So we all pile into the car and ask "Find Restaurant, Pizza" Nothing. Find Restaurant by Name, Pizza. We get options! We find one that sounds good, and we have it map the directions, unfortunately the pizza place that was selected was in Iowa, so we had to wait for it to calculate a drive from San Diego, CA to Iowa. Minimizing freeways nonetheless, if my memory serves me, it wanted us to drive a couple thousand miles and take about a week to do it. No thanks, not for pizza.

The Feeling of Failure

Before I started blogging, I did a lot of reading, on blogging. So it comes to no surprise to me that sometimes, posts fall flat on their face and I'm left groaning about what went wrong. This has happened to me more than one occasion, and I'd like to share with you the fun times I've had writing this blog.

First of all, criticism doesn't bother me, not everyone thinks the same way I do, that's a fact. I actually enjoy getting a comment on my post where the person just rips me to shreds, it tends to start a conversation, which drives more traffic.

Second, a friend of mine said he wanted to create a blog, but was afraid that he would be posting all this stuff for the world to see. What would happen if people don't like it? I told him it will happen and to just move on, he still hasn't created anything.

So this brings me to my purpose this article, everyone wants to create the greatest blog post that will grace the front page of Digg, Reddit, and have StumbleUpon send them thousands of visitors, but honestly, that doesn't really happen. I think it's more fun to create something and then watch it sit there, and sit there, with little to no views. Why? Because it helps me figure out what my audience is looking for.

Try it, I'm sure many of my viewers are bloggers themselves, so try varying your posts, see what happens, if you usually post about making money online, try doing a post on blogging, SEO, or something a little away from the norm, you will see ones that do really well(watch out, you dont want to get an influx of traffic to a money making blog because you did a post on fluffy bunnies), and you will also have some go flat.

What prompted this lovely little post on failure? My last post on gas prices: You Could, but You Shouldn't

Go Ahead, be jealous:

Sure you COULD, but you SHOULDN'T

People make stupid mistakes, it's part of our nature. Also part of our nature is to insist that we are right, no matter who tells us otherwise. I just recently got back from a vacation in San Diego with family and friends(sorry for the lack of posting) and boy do I know a few morons.

Driving from Phoenix to San Diego is a very simple drive, I10 to I8, voila. In this drive you will pass the cities of Gila Bend, Yuma, and El Centro, in that order.

Driving out, we're taking a Honda Civic Hybrid, which during this drive will get near 50 MPG due to sustained speed and all that fun stuff. Which means, we'll be able to do the 350 mile drive on one tank of gas no problem. The other car in our caravan is driving a Ford F150, gets about 400 miles on a tank of gas, so it could make the drive no problem.

Here's where the fun begins, we hit Yuma(which is right on the border of Arizona/California) and we stop at the last gas station before heading out of town to top off and make a call to the other car to do the same, the conversation goes something like this:

"Hey guys, we just hit Yuma, how far are you guys back?"

"About 20 miles, we should be there soon"

"Ok, we're about to head out, make sure to fill up before finishing the drive"

"Don't Worry about it, we've still got more than half a tank left"

"No Really, you should fill up"

"Nah, we know what we're doing, we'll meet you there"

Now don't worry ladies and gents, they made it to the hotel no problem, but if you haven't figured out their moron decision yet, here you go.

To fill up an F150, you will need around 30 gallons of fuel, to fill up a Honda Civic Hybrid you will need around 11 gallons. Lets do the math, shall we.

If the f150 stopped for gas in Arizona, the price of gas would have been $4.09, which would have cost them $122.70(ish), and that's if they completely emptied their tank, which I might add, is what they did driving all the way into San Diego. The price of gas in San Diego is around $4.46, so their gas tab ended up at 133.80 vs the Civic fueling up for $45 in Yuma, and not needing to fill up until they hit Yuma going the other way.

Sure, you may be sitting there thinking, "Oh wow, $10, the world is going to end." all sarcastic like, but think about that, it's only 1 tank of gas, it could be higher if they keep doing it. Also, think of all the other morons who are likely to make the same mistake.

I Love Spellcheque

So everyone knows that a computer(at least for the next decade) is not smarter than the human using it. The greatest part of this fact is the wonderful world of spell checking, because the computer can really only check your spelling, not the context of the sentence and which spelling is correct, if you look at the title of this post, according to any spell checking program,that is spelled correctly because cheque is a correct word.

So I decided to do some searching to see what Word and Firefox will try and correct, various words to that would make no sense in writing, but according to those programs, are correct.

The first one I noticed was in my "My Co-Workers are Idiots" post, when I used the phrase USofA, the spellchecker decided that my spacing was incorrect, and instead of telling me to use "US of A" it decide to have me spell "U Sofa." I don't know WTF a U Sofa would be, but it definitely sounds comfortable.

Also, according to Firefox's spellchecker, people should not be playing World of Warcraft, instead, it's best they play World of Watercraft, as that is spelled correctly.

Currently in my wallet, I carry an "Amex", to a human, that makes sense, unfortunately to the computer it thinks I misspelled Amen, which is understandable, but my question is, how bad you have to fail at typing to accidentally hit the x key instead of the n key? It's on the complete opposite side of the f-ing keyboard.

Toggan is the username I use for both Digg and Stumbleupon, and whenever I type it, my screen tells me I'm and idiot and I don't know who I am, I am obviously trying to type Toboggan, and I just managed to miss both the b and the o. Seems logical.

On the topic of usernames, even username is incorrect, sure, you may be thinking that it will want to add a space and make it "user name" but no, it decided that you actually want to type tournament. I'll attach a picture just to prove it, this one is way out in left field.



Anyone else seen any crazy spell check options? Put em in comments so we can all see them.

Photo Dump

So, I missed posting yesterday, as I'm still trying to fight off a lovely head cold, so here are some 16 of my favorite pictures that I've saved over my browsing time.

2 Girls 1 Cup Meets Warped Tour 2008

I couldn't help but snap this shot while I was waiting in line to get into Warped Tour here in Phoenix, someone took the liberty in explaining that girls do in fact poop.