Things you don’t want to know

In case you didn’t notice, this is my blog and I tend to prattle on for days about things no one else cares about. That’s what makes blogging so fabulous. Don’t you think? So yeah, I’m going to do some more prattling here. You’ve been warned.

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At BlogHer a couple weeks back, Yahoo strategically placed these little beans full of utterly awesome Jellie Bellies all throughout the Internet Cafe. So, being the swag whore that I am, I picked one up. And now, I wish I’d picked up more. Because I’ve found that besides being full of delicious candy, it’s also a valuable tool in my ongoing Battle Against Evil. Where Evil = Poptart. And Poptart = our manic rat terrier puppy. Unlike her elder counterpart, Beetoe, she’s not easy to rattle. If she wants on your lap, she’ll get on your lap and no amount of threatening, tossing, growling, hissing, biting or firm “NO!”’s will stop her. Some might say it’s part of her charm. I beg to differ.

The pup is incorrigible. And a constant fly in my ointment. I don’t mind Beetoe on my lap because she’s my princess but the pup is not my princess. And one dog is enough on my lap at any given time. And since Beetoe is such a pussy, often she’ll give up her coveted spot on my lap to the pup if the pup is forceful enough about it. And until now, there hasn’t been a really good way to keep the pup off my lap.

Enter, the Bean of Doom. Last week sometime, I finally dug the Yahoo Jelly Bean out of my mountain of swag and dug in for Jellie Bellie goodness. When I was finished, the empty metal cannister was left on the table next to my chair, waiting until I found a use for it or threw it away. Being that I’m quite a fidgeter, I would play with it while watching television. And when Poptart tried to get onto my lap one evening, I snapped it at her face. And she freaking FLIPPED out. Now all I need to do is show it to her, or at the most, open it and she goes running. This empty shell of a bean strikes fear in the heart of that maniac puppy. And I love it for that. Dang, I wish I’d thought to pick up more of those. I could use one in every room of the house, I’m thinking.

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So there’s been a little discussion about the whole “nofollow”/”dofollow” thing. And, even though I’m a self-described WordPress guru, I’ve been hard pressed to actually learn about what it actually is. These posts actually educated me on that and got me thinking: what’s wrong with a little linky love between bloggers? Basically, the issue is that most blogging platforms (WordPress included) have made it so that when Google PageRank (and other ranking systems) calculate your popularity by how many links there are out there in the Internets to your blog, it won’t take into account the comments you make on other people’s blogs. This is supposedly to discourage people from leaving spam comments just to spread their beautiful little link all over the Internets. Of course, these days the spam fighters do a pretty decent job and what they don’t catch, I’m all over like white on rice. The estimated lifespan of a spam comment on this blog is averaging about 1 hour right now. Hardly long enough to count towards anyone’s PageRank, right?

I know this sounds all techie and complicated and “Gee, can we talk about the Bean of Doom some more?” but the long and short of it is: I’ve installed a plugin on this blog that makes it so your link in the comments on this blog “counts”. Not to say that I’m trying to “buy” your comments by promising you a better chance at a higher PageRank. And not to say that you care about that sort of thing anyhow (or even know what it means). But rather it’s a little “thanks” from me to you for stopping by and giving me your two cents. And while this particular plugin by default only gives you “credit” after you’ve made 10 comments, I’ve set it to give credit after 1 comment. Do be aware, that if I suspect anyone is just trying to spread their link around and using my site to further their own means, I’ll delete that comment so fast it’ll make your head spin. But then, I’d probably do that anyhow.

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Do you feel enriched now? See, you didn’t come here wanting to know these things, but now you do. Good deal, huh?

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