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Disasters, natural or otherwise, are tragic. The loss of human life and the tragedy that ensues in the search for survivors is rarely a wonderful thing. We've seen this so many times this year from the tsunami, to Katrina, to the most recent Kashmir region earthquake. It's been a tough year and we're pretty beat up about it. Thankfully the outpouring of money and support has helped many to a great degree. And hopefully the Katrina disaster will be something people can refer to in the future when money is cut from infrastructure programs that can save lives.       But beyond all of this, I've found a deep and utterly depressing problem with disasters. It's not from the news though as you get pretty numb when you watch it and then they ultimately drop a story. For instance, everything must be all right in New Orleans since we don't see any stories about it anymore, right? Yeah, right. No, my problem lies somewhere else and the best way I can sum it up is to say, canned food.       Do you remember whenever canned food drives would come around asking for donations? Well, if you don't you should because if you ever saw the things that were donated, you'd laugh yourself silly. Here are things like "creamed crab", "carrot dip", and "white hand peas" to name a few. And beyond the absolutely bizarre products there are many that are past their expiration dates. Essentially the "warmth and giving" that people do is just an effort to dump out stuff they don't want, can't use, or will never take advantage of. The donation is the chance to get a write off on things that would otherwise be garbage. Not the best sentiment, but I suppose something is better than nothing.       The only reason this all rolls in to the forefront of my mind is because the same premise is true with music. I saw this Destiny's Child video the other day which me want to vomit. It has all the appeal of elevator music on prozak and it was something that was supposed to "help" victims of something. But, it got me thinking. Why does all the benefit music have to be slow and crappy? Neil Young did "Walkin' to New Orleans" recently and honestly, it kinda sucks. Elton John did that "Candle in the Wind" or whatever garbage for the Princess Di aftermath and really, that truly sucked. The list goes on and on. It's like all these artists have their "creamed crab" song lurking in the background that they pull out when something bad goes down so that they can actually sell it. Sell it they do, I might add. These craptastic songs makes millions which supposedly helps the vitims, but we never really know just how much they actually do since "proceeds" is a very nebulous term and I haven't sen an example of any recording artist ready to open their books for public viewing about a benefit album.       I suppose my main point in all of this is that it's bad enough to have a disaster happen. It's made worse by crappy songs being released that I feel do a great disservice to all those that listen to them, because they flat out blow. Why can't a song about tragedy rock your ass? Maybe it would have more staying power and do more good for once instead of getting the channel changed.

It appears that this 'this_is_a_test_of_404_response' bit is also due in part to something called BecomeBot 2.3 from the site www.become.com. I don't know why they're doing this, but a lot of my original queries for this weirdness did come from Google. Maybe this is some kind of partnership. Who knows? But one thing is for sure in that all the IP's from where this request is coming from lead back to Google. So maybe it's more than a partnership. Maybe this is some other business that is in the process of being "clownified" to Google's look. Once again, I've never seen anything like this in two years of log tracking, so I don't know what's going on all of the sudden.

Over the past weekend we went up to Napa and traversed the Valley in search of free booze. For those who don't know, it generally costs a lot to go there since nearly all of the wineries charge for tastings and a "taste" [grrr] is all you get these days. The worst has to be Niebaum-Coppola which is something like eight or ten dollars for a tasting now. Oh but wait, you get to keep the glass. Whoop dee doo. They should pay you for that because then they don't have to clean them.       But, if you're lucky like us, you'll find some deals here and there. We happened upon Beringer when they were having their Cellar Sale which apparently means free tastings of all that's on sale. Good deal for us, since we got to down a lot of free wine that I wouldn't have otherwise paid for as I'm not a tremendous Beringer fan, but hey, if it's free, I'll usually drink it.       Then there was a fluke. Well, actually it's always the case that tastings are free at V. Sattui but it's such an anomoly in Napa that it kinad freaks you out. But, the wine is actually good. They really don't need to provide free tastings, but it certainly doesn't hurt business as people hang around and buy large amounts of the wine. It also goes to show the absolute greed that wineries have stooped to. It's amazing that they still get it, but people keep paying and so they keep charging. I'm one of the few that refuses to pay and I even haves friends at some wineries where I can get occassional discounts, so I suppose I don't fall in to the whole wine snob thing since I find $10 to be about the most I want to spend on a bottle.       There are also more pictures in photos if you wanted to see some more of the adventure.

So, I was perusing the logs for a new site that I just set up and I noticed this weird page view in there which was /this_is_a_test_of_404_response. At first I thought this was some joker just seeing what would happen if they tried to get a page that didn't exist on my site, so no big deal. Even still, I was intrigued, so I went in to the actual raw logs and saw that this wasn't some joker, it was Google doing this. Unless someone has forged their server/bot signature and IP address range, then it really is them. Well, that's peculiar I thought.       Even more interested, I went through the other logs for my other sites. These all have a higher volume, so things like a single page view often go unoticed by me. But, there they were on every site for the logs in the month of October. Definitely weird. Next question, why is Google doing this? Unsurprisingly, I got very few searches for this new weirdness, since it appears to be happening just within the last week. What did come up seemed to revolve around people thinking that Google was doing some kind of Adwords quality check on the sites where Adwords run. That makes sense, although they're doing this to all of my sites, even though without Adwords on them. This makes me draw the conclusion that Google is actually doing a full-scale Quality of Service check on any site that they've indexed. They want to see what will happen when pages move and also to see how well your site is built. For those people out there who build static, unscripted sites, this is going to mean trouble because unless you run your own server, it's tough to set up a default 404 page as this is done in the configuration files on the server itself. For those of us that script, it's a pretty easy 'else' clause to toss in at the end of any conditionals which we should have been doing anyways, right?       I doubt that doing a parse of the query string will find this every time as once Google sees that people are on to this they will change the 'this_is_a_test_of_404_response' to some other wording. I also don't believe that this is something they do yearly or have done in the past, as I have two year old logs that I ran a grep on and couldn't find anything like this previously. Does it spell out problems for you? I don't know. Luckily for me, some kind of error handling is built in to all my sites but one so that people see some form of the actual site and not the generic Apache 404 error. But, some were handling it better than others. I've gone through and made sure that they all handle it well now. As for that last site, it should be redesigned in the next month or so and I'll be sure to have a good page error handling routine built in to the scripts.       Gotta love Google. They cracked the whip by giving better search preference to sites with better code, so it forced us all to write better code. Now they're doing this to light a fire under server administrators. I'm sure some people will bitch about how heavy handed it is, but they're doing their part to keep the net as clean as it can by by making sure that content is always reachable.

Remember Mr. Vedder? That's right, it's all coming back to you. The grunge days, Seattle, ah yes, Pearl Jam. That group kind of went in to obscurity after album number four or whatever it was that I mistakenly bought and then returned, but in the beginning I liked them. They were a good group and of course there was screaming, shrieking Eddie. He had a lyrical style that seemed so different, so poetic for the grunge generation.       I'll let you in on a little secret... you can write just like Eddie did. Here's what ya do. Either grab a magazine article or just write down a lengthy paragraph on a piece of paper. The subject really doesn't matter. It can be rambling, drunken madness and this will still work (and actually be even better.) Okay, so once you get that all put together, here's the trick. Get two pieces of paper or two books, or something can't see through. Move each one in from the left and right sides of the page, so that they cover about an inch or text on each side. Now, copy down what's left, leaving out any partial words. Voila! You've just written lyrics like the ol' Vedmeister. Don't you feel like a rock star now? No? Oh, well, do a lot of narcotics and play a bongo drum in Golden Gate Park and you'll get where you want to be.

I've just put the finishing touches on a site for Belden Place. It was something of a labor of love and for all purposes, a fan site that I felt was needed.       I love eating there and noticed that their web presence isn't the best, so I sat down and built this up. I left menus out so that there wouldn't be any confusion and messy updates on my end, but if they want to start using it as their official site, I've already got the ability all set up to add that in.       Otherwise, I think it does a good job of pulling together all the different restaurants in to one easy to find location, as well as some of their friends (and I suppose competitors) in the area.

My neighbor lightly knocked on my door the other night. He's an Academy or Art student and a nice guy who, due to my recent status as an IT guy, will often come to me for answers to problems. This particular evening he was having trouble with some video files he had captured on his digital still camera (a Canon model.)       Why digital cameras capture video and why video cameras capture stills is beyond me because most of them seem to do a pretty poor job of doing the other's job. But, manufacturers keep trying and the results have gotten a tad better for both camps, yet they're still pretty sucky systems and things you'd only want to use in a pinch. While I can generally use my Sony DSC-W5 without any problems, his Canon had left him high and dry. He could watch the video files, but couldn't bring them in to Premiere Pro, After Effects, or even Final Cut Pro.       It was one of the weirder things I've ever seen. I couldn't believe that Canon had done whatever they did to make the files so worthless. But, I presevered and was ultimately victorious as I discovered you could open them in Windows Movie Maker (a built-in application of Windows XP) and then export them out of there as Windows Media Files. It was a sloppy, annoying extra step to do, but it did end up working. Why this was the only program that could open these files, we'll never know and maybe Canon should think a bit about what codec they're using for their next still camera release, or just hand out copies of Cleaner which I just noticed has gotten bought out by Autodesk. When the hell did that happen?

It always starts out with good intentions. Everyone in my building, fresh to the excitement of moving in, will bound up the stairs in the belief that they're getting a good dose of exercise. Up and down they go. Six flights of stairs? Who cares? They don't want to take the elevator because that is just so lazy and they need to get some activity.       But then it happens. Maybe it's just the influence that I have. Maybe it's just the fact that after a long day of work, running up all those stairs gets old. Whatever the case, one by one, they start to drop like flies. First they just take the elevator down. Then they take the elevator up when they're carrying something. Then if it's just a quick ride to check the mail and back, they'll take the elevator. It doesn't matter though because soon everyone takes the elevator all the time.       And they should, since they thing is getting pretty long in the tooth (about 80 years old or so) and it's probably going to be out of service for a good long time and everyone will get all the stairs that they need. I for one never had any issue with taking the lift. I love it. It reminds me of the kind of thing you see if old European buildings and for some odd reason, I always wanted to live in a building with an elevator like that.

What is this new crap that Phair has out these days? It's like some kind of over-produced Kelly Clarkson garbage. Don't get me wrong, Liz looks great and still, but this song (that I can't even remember the name of, it's so bad) is closer to being country than anything else.       While The Cardigans were never hardedged, despite their Sabbath covers, their change to a more country-like sound is all right by me. It's not my favorite album of theirs, but it playable and is fine. But with Liz, she used to be a rocker. She was that tough, blonde chick with lyrics like "You fuck like a volcano" which had to be bleeped out on the MTV. This whiny, wimpy stuff isn't just annoying, bland music, it's just bad songwriting. It's insanely weak and I'm amazed that it's still in rotation.       I really hate to say it, but I might have to go so far as accusing Liz of selling out. I say that hesitantly because if the album doesn't sell well, then you can't really accuse someone of that now, can you? It's not like Carlos Santana who truly did blow it all to do his last album, although that is by far and away a much better album than Liz's brand new drink coaster. I know we all have to make sacrifices to make a living, but there's that step you take, which is simply one too many and think she's made it.

In general, I think that bumper stickers are pretty lame. Some may say that one feels proud and strong enough in their beliefs to wear them on the back of their car. I say that you are really quite shaky in what you believe in so you have to broadcast it to everyone just so that they know how you feel. I guess the one bright side is that I've rarely seen an old Volvo that needs paint...       But even though I have a strong distate of bumper stickers from growing up in a redneck town that sported such gems as, "Impeach Clinton" and "Due to a shortage of paper products, wipe your ass on the spotted owl", there are a couple that I've enjoyed. Probably the best is one you really don't see much, "Play an accordian, go to jail, that's the law." That's just brilliant. Of course, I like one that you see on the back of just about every Subaru wagon in Berkeley which is, "Dog is my co-pilot." Maybe it's because I find the "God is my co-pilot" sticker so annoying (especially since the people with that sticker drive live crap) or maybe it's because I'm a dog person, but I just don't get bored of that one.       So now, I have a new one that I saw the other day. In the vein of a t-shirt that says, "What would Ashton do?" this is, "Who would Jesus bomb?" I love it. Anyone who would get pissed at it isn't a true Christian because naturally, Jesus would bomb no one and yet, it delivers a not so subtle anti-war message. The people who come up with these just have a time and a place where everything comes together and they're able to pull four words in to something meaningful.