Diary of a Network Geek

I don’t care what anyone says; you just can’t have enough data.

With storage being so relatively cheap, I don’t really get rid of any old data any more. It’s true. I have so much cheap storage around my house that I have literally hundreds upon hundreds of digital books, documents, photos and other files. I used to have a huge library in my house. Literally thousands of books. Books in virtually every room. The problem was, a lot of the books were horribly out of date. Or, I’d gotten them with the intention of reading them, but I was never honestly going to get around to reading many of them. Instead, they just took up space. So much space, in fact, that when my wife was getting ready to move in, I think she despaired of having room to fit! She really helped me realize that I didn’t need to keep all those physical books around. Though, I’m not sure she truly understands my personal obsession with data, or the brobdingnagian archive I have quietly lurking upstairs by the wifi router. I assure you, it’s epic. And, now I know that I’m not the only one, thanks to an article on Gizmodo this week.

My problem, though, is that I often remember some obscure bit of information that I read once on a website. Sometimes, I remember the site, but the page is missing. Or, the site is gone. Or, even worse, the site is still there, but it’s been taken over by domain squatters who are squeezing the Google pagerank to shill some internet snake oil of some kind. Then, I’m stuck trying to find that bit of data, that one reference that will take me to the promised land of information, often to no avail. Well, this week, while no doubt doing something totally unrelated, I stumbled across a Chrome plugin for the Wayback Machine. If you’re not familiar, the Wayback Machine is the search engine on The Internet Archive. And, it’s fantastic for guys like me, trying to dig up obscure and forgotten information. The plugin, according to its page, “[d]etects dead pages, 404s, DNS failures & a range of other web breakdowns, offering to show archived versions via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. In addition you can archive web pages, and see their most recent & first archives.” And, I assure you, it’s glorious. It’s also free, so well worth installing. And, if you, like me, use Firefox as much as Google Chrome, there’s a Firefox version as well!

So, go ahead, fellow data hounds, install those plugins and relive the days of data past!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

Dearest Search Engine Optimization Experts:

Please stop e-mailing me unsolicited requests to “help” me with my search engine placement.  You found me via a search engine, because I’m damn good at SEO, so I don’t really need your help.  Nor do I want your “help” cluttering up my blog with scripted, canned, generic posts written, no doubt, by starving college students and/or starving IT workers displaced by the economy.  Nothing against them, or your services, I’m sure both are brilliant, but this is kind of what I do.  Also?  It’s kind of how you found me in the first place.  So, you know, logic dictates that if you could find me to fill my inbox with unsolicited advertising, then people who actually matter to me can find me, too.

I understand that I’m not really your regular market, so maybe you were trying something new with me.  Well, please, stop.  It’s not working.  I don’t want to hear from you or know about you or have to delete your pitch for whatever internet snake oil you’re selling today.  Really.  I don’t need it and I’m not buying.

So, really, thanks for thinking of me, but, please, go away.
I don’t need advice about adding keywords to my titles or headers or what metatags I should include in my code.  I don’t really need someone to write articles designed to pump up my Google juice.  I can do that myself.  All of that.  (Also?  Metatags haven’t mattered for years now.  Honest.)
Anyway, your offer was very nice, and what little bit I read seemed well written enough, but, honestly, no thanks.  I’ll just stick to what works, what helped you and your snake-oil-selling brethren to find me in the first place: I’ll just write relevant articles and continue to produce the personalized content that only I can produce.

Thanks!

(P.S.  Also?  No, I don’t want to make extra money writing for you and your internet snake oil business!  Now, stop sending me the damn email!)