John’s Ramblings

Image Copyright 2010 Jacey Cooper

This puppy belongs to one of our Ram-ily friends.  Great shot!  I’m not a Corona man myself, but I get this same look on my face after a few…

Among the things we are divesting ourselves of (like kerosene heaters, scroll saws, and clothes that no longer fit because we’ve lost a gajillion pounds), is what formerly was our 55 gallon fishtank.

The tank WAS a gorgeous centerpiece to our living room.  It was a saltwater setup, with uber filtration, protein skimming, compact florescent lit goodness with a ton of live rock, etc.  I didn’t love having to top off the water every couple of days, but it was pretty cool and when we got the environment dialed-in just right (after a year to two), it was pretty much on autopilot, maintenance-wise.

Unfortunately, the entire environment got wiped out a few years back when we had that big windstorm and resulting 6 day power outage.  Tropical salt water environments don’t survive at 42 degrees, unfortunately.  It was sad, and once we came to the realization that we’d be starting over from scratch, we put the tank and equipment into the furnace room for future consideration.  Now that we’re contemplating a long-distance move, setting it back up makes even less sense than before.  Thus, we decided to sell the whole setup on Craigslist, and a bargain price of $150 (likely what we paid for the dang light).

I got a few “nibbles” on the ad last week, but everyone wanted to bargain with me. One fellow wanted me to trade the aquarium for a paintball gun.  Not being motivated to become a paint-baller, nor to acquire more crap that I am not going to use, I refused.  The ad expired on Friday, so I re-posted it yesterday.

Today, instead of the usual email inquiries or even phone calls, I received a text message about the tank.  Conversation went JUST like this:

Craigslist Messaging Guy (CMG): Do you still have your fish tank for sale?

Me (Me): Yes

CMG: How low are you willing to go if I pick it up today?

Me: It’s still $150.

CMG: Would you take $100 if I pick it up right now?

Me: No, I’m in no hurry to sell.

CMG: Would you be interested in selling  jst (sic) the filter or the lights?

Me: Sure, how about $150, and I’ll throw in the tank and stand for free?

CMG: lol. I would, but I only have $100, so thats my offer.

Me: Give me a call if you find $50 in the couch, and I’ll contact you if the price drops.

When you’ve got one of these website/blog things, you can see what postings/pages are getting viewed, and in some cases how the viewer made it to your page (such as a Google search phrase).  By far my most popular post has been “Bicycle Porn“, which was purposely mistitled in order to gain hits.  That posting was actually a call for folks to get out and vote in the last national election.  A day does not go by, however, that some kinkster doesn’t enter “bicycle porn” into their search engine, and end up on my blog.

I saw a strange referring link this morning in my stats, and when I clicked it, I got this result:

It’s an auto-tranlsated rendering of my Bicycle Porn posting.  It’s springtime, after all, and I’m sure that as the weather warms in Russia, the boys there turn their thoughts to sex and bicycles just as much as their American counterparts.

A friend turned me on to despair.com the other day, where they have lots of those parodies of motivational posters.  They have a do-it-yourself section now, where you can upload a photo, add title and text, and save it to your local computer or even have them print it as a poster (for a fee).  I whipped one up to remind me about how I got overweight in the first place, and why dieting often fails me:

When you do this blogging thing, you have access to statistics about blog activity.  Not who’s reading it, but what they are reading and what search terms they used to find you.  I find the search phrases amusing, like today’s offering:

The next-to-last entry caught my fancy today.

I hope it doesn’t rain tonight.