Friday, January 17, 2003

The Morning News becomes more intriguing by the day, and I've yet to go further than its front page. One of their writers, Dennis Mahoney, spent yesterday updating his site one hundred times, from the time he woke up until a half-hour before midnight. This marathon provided a number of genuine laugh-out-loud moments and a glimpse into the mind of a man who would dare to take on such a Herculean task.

Not only is he daring, but I must deem him a damn good guy. His forty-second post of the day mentioned a trip to the ATM. He closed it by pointing out that the phrase "ATM Machine" is redundant.

This misuse is a pet peeve of mine as well, and I dropped him a note about a related term I hate even more, the grammatical abberation "PIN Number." Despite being not quite to the halfway point of his goal and getting inundated by a constant avalanche of e-mails, he took the time to respond to my message. If that doesn't show him to be a good guy, I don't know what does.

Sleep well this weekend, Dennis. You've earned the rest.

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Jody and I had a little contest going based on my symbol for anarchy, which, as I revealed earlier this week, is Ernest Borgnine in a tutu. She wrote about this, then wondered which of us would be at the top of Google's listings for that phrase after a week or so. Well, she did the search yesterday and found that her site came in right on top of mine.

The thing is, she said she was going to search for the phrase. To me, that means you put your search term in quotes. Jody didn't. When she e-mailed me to crow about her victory yesterday, I noticed this difference in methodology and went to Google to try it my way. With the quotes, the HoC topped the Dumptruck.

Two different search strategies, two different results. We've called the contest a draw, with the "real" result unknowable. No bragging rights won or conceded this time. We'll have to wait for the next such opportunity to see which of us rules the hit roost for absurd phrases.

Posted @ 11:51 AM

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