Topix Blog

January 20, 2004

Random thoughts while sitting in the dark

by at 9:36 PM

1. the power is off in my building, it's a beautiful night, the entire city is fully lit except for the one block that I live on... how can that be??

2. is looking at web traffic stats as hypnotic to everyone as it is to me? for some reason I can sit and pour over them for longer than I would care to admit . I love seeing what pages are popular, what is being searched, etc. just a reminder folks, the power is out in my building - not a lot of entertainment options here. maybe that's why its so fascinating...

3. what would I be doing right now if my laptop didn't have a battery? no tv, no lights to read by, not tired enough to fall asleep, girlfriend is out with friends, friends and family all tired of yapping on the phone with me....I literally would be bored stiff. thank god my laptop has a fully charged battery.

4. should I offer a free ad to anyone who can correctly guess the winner and the total combined score of the super bowl? sure, why not? one 125x120 ad on the page of the winner's choice for one month goes to whoever can guess the game and score right.

   A couple of catches - ad has to conform with our standard ad guidelines. only available on a page where we show ads (ex. we dont have ads on the home page) and where ad space is available. only 3 winners possible - so if 5 people guess it right, the three that make it to my email first get the ad. if no one guess it right, the closest three win (again, entries I receive first win in case of ties). send the picks to scores@topix.net. only one pick guess per person. I'll email the winners and point folks to the pages with the ads on this blog.

5. why did it take PG&E an hour to get to my place? they're outside my window now, so hopes are high that I will soon return to the 21st century.

6. has anyone gone to our sports pages recently? they really look a lot better since we cleaned up some of the AI. stories are good and very accurate. <s>

7. I've really been surprised by the positive reaction we've received from others in the online news community. everyone wants to make sure we are crawling them... I guess in retrospect this shouldn't be surprising since they want traffic, I guess I just didn't think we would have so many requests.

8. is it plainly obvious that this is my first ever blog post? Other than my posts on the political boards of course, announcing our 2004 presidential election page. <s>

   - mike