I’ve noticed that when you search for Johnny Damon on google images, I appear on the first page. A few hits below me is the infamous fishgina. Of course, I know that that’s because they both come from the entry on the Johnny Damon cake (and I don’t know why the picture of the cake isn’t on the first page), but I’ve often wondered what other people must think of the fishgina when they search for Johnny Damon. Thanks to the power of referrer logs, now I know.

I noted in the referrer logs that the average daily number of hits for this site has nearly doubled in the past two months. I originally noticed a small increase back in October and attributed it to the fact that the Johnny Damon cake ranks fairly high in the Google Image search for “Johnny Damon.” (I also have a picture of Kirby Puckett and me that’s on the first page of images for “Kirby Puckett,” but less people are searching for Kirby these days.)
However, this most recent jump in traffic seems to come from http://www.backstreets.com/btx/viewtopic.php, which initially struck me as odd because it appears to be a message board for Bruce Springsteen fans, and I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about Bruce Springsteen, even in passing. So I poked around the site and discovered that user “Ando” was hotlinking to the thumbnail of the Damon cake as the signature to all his messages.
Now, I’d have to ask Rodin what the bandwidth limits are for chronosilence, but I doubt that he’s really endangering my ability to stay under those limits (especially since the site survived all the hits from the Time Traveler Convention). But it does annoy me that he’s linking to the picture without any reference to the site where it came from, especially since that’s a picture Laura took of a cake she made from scratch. And so I did something about it — enter the Revenge of the Fishgina, another of Laura’s photos from that same birthday party. Now every single one of this guy’s posts contains a picture of the fishgina, in its full 2272 x 1704 pixel glory.
Update: He changed his signature, which seems to have automatically updated all of his posts. That’s anti-climactic — I was sort of hoping for a reaction.

There are very few fellow MIT alums who are slower than I am at picking up on modern technologies. Scott Johnston is one of those people. Our resident loveable luddite sent me a screen shot of what he sees when he looks at my blog, stating “My web browser still rocks.” So I thought I’d give him a chance to see what he’s missing and give the rest of you a glimpse of the world from Scott’s point of view. (Of course, I’m putting the images in a table — that might be a problem for those of you using lynx.)

The Johnston View	The Rhode View

At least he’s moved up to using a browser with graphics. Welcome to the 90s, Scott! As for me, I’m still not sure about the icicles. The top banner looks really empty and unbalanced without something there, but with it I’m beginning to think it’s a little too cluttered. Anyone with a browser that can see them want to weigh in?

Mint flavored mouthwash and white cranberry-peach juice combined tastes like vomit. And I don’t mean that in the way that many people say “Ew, this disgusting thing tastes like vomit/ass/garbage.” I mean it has almost the exact same taste as what is left in my mouth after I throw up. I suspect that it has something to do with the two acids combining (or is mouthwash a base — anyone know?). Interestingly enough, I’ve not experienced the same effect with orange or apple juice.
Despite the fact that this was a great scientific discovery, I don’t think I’ll be buying the white cranberry-peach juice anymore. Vomit for breakfast is just not that appealing to me.

It’s not actually Halloween yet, but I did carve my pumpkin tonight. No really, that’s my pumpkin (though I played with the color balance and contrast a little bit). For more convincing proof that I actually did carve that, see this picture and this picture.

Tonight I put up the following away message:

We never did much talking anyway… don’t think twice, it’s all right.

There wasn’t any particular meaning in it — it’s just a song I like that mentions not talking, which seems appropriate for an “Away” message. But then someone IMed me with the following: “Ironically enough, I’m listening to Vonda Shepard right now,” which confused me a little, given that I had no idea Vonda Shepard covered that song. Ignoring the fact that she meant “coincidentally” not “ironically,” what does it say about the world when someone credits Vonda Shepard with a Bob Dylan song? (As it turns out, she had no idea that it was even a cover.) This is almost worse than those people who think that “Across the Universe” was written by Fiona Apple.
There are three B’s of classical music that every budding pianist learns about — Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms. Well, I think people ought to learn the three B’s of 20th century popular music as well — The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Beach Boys. And don’t credit their songs to sub-par cover artists — at least not around me!

… a four-leaf clover.
No, really. I found one while walking back from class today. I’d post a picture of it, but my camera’s batteries are busy recharging at the moment. The really unfortunate thing is that when I tried to sing “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover,” the only words I could remember belonged to the spoof of the song that we used to sing at camp…

I’m looking over my dead dog rover,
That I over ran with the mower!
One leg is missing, the other is gone,

The third leg is scattered, all over the lawn.
No need explaining the one remaining,
The one on the kitchen door!
I’m looking over my dead dog rover,
That I over ran (I over ran) with the mower!

It’s really an unfortunate song to have in your head.

… the cable guy say when he’s fixing your mistakenly disconnected cable and internet:

• Oh man, I drank too much last night. Do you have some aspirin or something I could have?
• Well, shit. That doesn’t make any sense.
• To his supervisor: Man, I never ground it. It’s always worked fine before.
• Man, I totally shouldn’t have drank so much last night. I feel so sick.

On the plus side, my cable and internet are back. And he left before he puked.

From an e-mail from the always amusing Adam Glassman:

For the last few days, I’ve been telling people I’m waiting for this headline:
“Rove Shamed, In Flames; Same Claims Framed in ‘Who Named Plame?’ Blame Game”