Never fear on the perils of using a virtual keyboard while I type up today’s blog, ladies and gentlemen.  I’m on the laptop and fighting the touchpad which moves my cursor based on where I have the ole thumbs rested.  Fortunately, I’m able to deactivate the feature and rely on a cordless mouse.

“Edisonism” is the process of just sitting around doing generally nothing while coming up with ideas for stuff to invent.  The rules around the process are not so rigid that you don’t have to be doing nothing to have the occasional epiphany every once in awhile though.

I had such a moment yesterday, and came up with a really, really, darn good idea.

The product I engineered in my skull yesterday was one that could revolutionize the world.

Well, not really.

It was still a good idea though.

The resulting product could make me a potential fortune if my two quick picks for Mega Millions don’t pay off this week.  It uses existing technology in a whole new way.  I envision Congress banning the product some 100 years in the future after relying on a bunch of junk science.  Why not?  It happened to Edison.

Alas, my bitchin’ idea will not see the light of day.

You know why don’t you?

Essentially, ladies and gentlemen, Edisonism isn’t always a good thing unless you can think of something that no one has.  I would recommend that whenever you have a flash of brilliance which produces a really good idea for the next great thing, you should probably Google it first.

Click to enlarge

Harvey MacKay said that.  I don’t know if it was those exact words, but I know I have the correct context. 

I don’t know where I ever heard or read that line for the first time, but since then I’ve been in hot pursuit of the magnum opus of my life which would make me marvel day after day about how some short sighted individual would decide to pay me for what I do.

Certainly I can look back over the years and recall times where I may have came close to nailing it.

Close.

Close only counts in horseshoes, hand-grenades, and shit fights. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to tell you about the goings on here at TharpSter.Org.  With exception of TreadMill & The Pit, and the CFO, all members of the Board of Directors reside nearly rent free in my head.  They also have clearly defined roles and responsibilities.  The maintenance crew is there too. 

The editor goes nuts when he sees little red or green squiggly lines under the text that makes its way to the screen via the typist.  The idea man keeps less than traditional hours, and wanders in and out of the office whenever he feels like it.  Even then he shows up at the most inopportune times; like during Game 4 of the World Series or Monday Night Football. 

Bastard. 

The publisher doesn’t seem to mind the psychotic hours, because when the idea man does show up he has a suitcase full of verbal gold which demands to be published to the website as quickly as possible. It’s very rare that an idea lives beyond a few hours without getting published around here.  Otherwise it gets thrown out with the leftover tuna loaf.

Did you notice anything missing from the consortium of phlegmatic malcontents who make the decisions around here?

That’s right.  It’s all me and no one else.

I don’t have anyone looking over my shoulder telling me what I can and cannot write.  I’m solely responsible for the verbal brilliance which draws you here.  If I want to sit here and weave a verbal assault on the way things are, I can.  If I want to write a series of articles about my beloved dogs, I can.  If I want to write a thousand words pondering how many calories the act of flatulence burns, I can. 

I can, and will write about anything I want to.  

Last year when I launched TharpSter.Org, I made the decision to put advertising on the site.  It was nothing major though.  I signed up with Google AdSense to put code in my site that would tailor ads and banners to various words which appeared in the content of my writing.  Any visitors to the site who clicked on those ads would generate a payday for me.  

Over the last 16 months, it’s been interesting to see some of the ads which appeared whenever I post new content.  In the page I wrote about our dog Faith, I referred to her as The TharpSter TreadMill.  Naturally, the ads which appeared were for exercise equipment.  I don’t remember which article generated it, but one showed up recently for a Sharia dating site.  The only rule I really need to watch out for was to not take steps to manipulate the ad clicks.  That means I couldn’t encourage the reader to click the ads.

One of the other rules was that I had to keep the content relatively clean, and avoid posting material of an adult nature.

No problem.  I don’t consider myself as an author in such a venue anyway.

Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago when I received the following note from Google about my AdSense account:

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as http://tharpster.org/. Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your website.

The note went on to advise me the ads on my site had been disabled due to unacceptable content which could very well fall under any of the following categories:

    * Lewd or provocative images

    * Crude or indecent language, including adult stories

    * Sexual tips or advice

    * Sexual fetish sites (e.g. foot fetish content)

    * Adult toys or products

    * Ads or links to external sites containing adult content

    * Adult links and/or adult keywords within the meta data in the source code of your site

Okay.

My blog is salted with plenty of colorful imagery, however I never considered any of it on the level of unacceptable in the eyes of Google.

I followed up with a note back to Google asking for specific examples of the unacceptable content, and they have yet to nut up and respond to my request.  If you take a look at the bottom right hand and top left hand corners of this page, you’ll see boxes where advertising used to appear.  

It’s not like the advertising was doing anything for the website anyway.  At last check, it’s generated a whole $4.99 in lifetime revenue for yours truly.  In today’s uncertain economic times, I could take that money and add a whole bunch more to it to go buy something nice for myself.

At the same time, the management of the theme isn’t going so well.  Its author recently upgraded it and as a result, I’m unable to generate some of the same features I could last year.  Naturally, I could do so if I wanted to cough up the dough to buy the professional version of it.  Let me assure you my Google AdSense revenue won’t cover it.

So here’s the deal.

The advertising is gone and the theme is on its way to being changed.  If there’s anything I’ve learned in this ordeal, it’s the fact that the one thing that brings readers here has nothing to do with the advertising or the theme.  

Look for some aesthetic changes in the coming months here people.  The content will remain the same.

Recently, I’ve noticed that some very creative search terms have been used in the process of landing readers here.  This was first noticed when a beloved reader whose identity I will never know landed here when they asked Google how to put a picture of Hamburger Helper on their Facebook profile picture.  In addition to the event inspiring a blog, it also added a few more readers because I mentioned it on my own Facebook status that week.  By writing that piece, I’ve begun a successful cornering of the market of Hamburger Helper searches on my favorite search engine.  On a side note, I would like to send a shout out to the good people at Hamburger Helper.  I’m still waiting to hear from you about an endorsement deal.  I could make you people proud.  Just sayin’.

The occasion of gaining readership in this manner has been quite an unexpected, yet pleasant surprise.  When I launched TharpSter.Org just a few short months ago, I had every intention of focusing the site on the political landscape of the day.  I figured I would publish my assorted opinion pieces, and show up on all of the search engines when people google things like “Obama” and “universal healthcare”.

The problem with achieving that goal is that it becomes tricky to come up with original commentary on the day’s events when a given subject matter has already been served up as the fodder of others in the blogosphere.  Sadly, the news events of this last Thursday and Friday were pure gold for a blogger in my position.  First, there was the whole deal with David Letterman discussing his personal life on his show in what by my account is act 3 in an orchestrated effort to boost his ratings.  The first two acts were his suggestion that Alex Rodriguez had committed an act of statutory rape on one of the daughters of Sarah Palin, and then his landing Barack Obama as a guest on his show.  Something tells me there will be other stunts in the near future.  The second event which could have inspired me to utter about 1000 words in your direction was the rejection upon the city of Chicago by the International Olympic Committee on Friday.  I had already dedicated web space to the event a few days before the rejection in Snap To & Pay Attention.  My only comment from the post mortem point of view which would explain the rejection is the suggestion that maybe the IOC is racist.  It only makes sense.  Anyone who criticizes the Obamas must be doing so out of racist borne machinations.  Jimmy Carter said so.

But, I digress.

As much as I would love to offer up my daily commentary to the political landscape, such as what has happened in the last few days, I feel compelled to leave such activity to those who have the time to upload their sentiments as soon as the events happened.  Otherwise I’m just jumping on the subject matter bandwagon.

So with the original goal of having my political blogs appearing in the top 10 search results on Google somewhat set aside, I began focusing on writing about anything that came to mind instead of a specific subject matter.  As a result, I’ve generated a variety of content based on whatever goofy notion ricocheted around between my ears on any given day.  Up until this last month, my readership primarily has been generated from two different sources; word of mouth and mentions of the site on various social networking sites in discussion forums.  Up to a point, I was the only person telling others about the site.  After about a month, I mentioned it to a few people at work, who then told a few other people, and so on.  It was like getting my own Amway distributorship without having to sell the soap or convince someone that it wasn’t a shifty pyramid scheme.  To those of you at work who have passed the word, you have my eternal gratitude.  Thank you very much.

It would seem that now, TharpSter.Org has taken on the ability to appear on a search result for more unique terms which I never planned or expected.  In addition to the Hamburger Helper search landing this site in the top 10, a few more are starting to appear.

The term “Kinky Math” lands me at number 4 on Google.  I’m not quite sure why people keep searching that combination of words, but it has shown up as a mainstay in my blog stats since I published Kinky Math on September 1, 2009.

Someone recently searched “Bud Stoop Singer” and found me at number 20 on Google.  As a result, they read Real Men of Genius.

Just the other day “The Fleshy Void” revealed me at number 17 on Google, and led a reader to The TharpSter TreadMill.

Now if those search terms weren’t creative enough, today’s result was truly inspirational when a surfer with a lot of patience and veracity typed “dinka lactate” into Google.  Ideally, if you’re searching out something like this you’re most likely going to find what you’re looking for in the first 20 results.  My first search of the same term found Cultural Diversity linked at number 92.  Just to summarize, someone not only searched for that phrase on Google today, but they also cycled through about 10 pages of results and chose to read what I had to say about the subject.  I find that to be pretty cool.

Overall, I don’t know if these are honest searches or something else.  For all I know, some of my readers are picking some of my more colorful word choices out of the gene pool derived from my soliloquies and searching them out to see what comes up.  Whether it’s on purpose or not, I say keep it up.  I want to see how creative these search results will get.

The software I use to produce and publish the eventual evidence which will ultimately be used in my as of yet unscheduled competency hearing provides all types of statistical data on this site’s readership.  I can tell if the site was accessed directly, or through a link.  I can see what articles are being read and how many times they’ve been read.  Information like this is useful to me, because it tells me what type of material I need to produce in order to create a base of minions who hang on my every word.

Among the features for the site statistics is a section which tells me what search terms are being used which ultimately lead readers to this site.  For those of you who don’t directly type www.tharpster.org in your address bar, I tend to see a wide variety of search terms that get you here.  The terms usually involve subjects from politics to Lotus Notes Sametime, and everywhere in between.  The search term statistics from yesterday yielded the following as the top searches:

Let me repeat this one more time.  The internet is a wonderful thing.  If you participate in a social networking site such as Facebook (the TharpSter fan page can be found here), and you want to express your love and appreciation for a delicious, time saving, cost efficient, ground beef preparatory meal by displaying the product as your profile picture, the internet gives you the option to do so.  If you don’t know how do it, there are plenty of search engines out there which will help you express your love.  Stuff like that makes the internet cool, because if you had wandered into a library as recently as 15 years ago and asked the kindly octogenarian at the information desk the same question, she would have mercilessly rapped you about the knuckles with a ruler.  Nowadays you can find anything out here on the net, regardless of how unique the information needs to be.

The mere fact that someone used that term/phrase and found something isn’t the end all be all about the wonders of the internet though.  It’s the fact that Google comes back with over 45,000 results in .11 seconds.  More importantly (in my mind), was that the word “TharpSter” was not in the search phrase and one of my blogs about Facebook Status Updates made it into the top 10 search results:

For the record, that particular blog has absolutely no instructional value in adding Hamburger Helper to a profile picture on Facebook.  If you’re not quite sure how to update the photo, it’s not too hard.  Just upload a photo and follow the link to set it as a profile picture.  You can also check any of the other 45,299 search results on Google to see if directions are available.

I believe it only to be fair that I should throw props to the good people at Hamburger Helper.  When I made reference to your product in that blog earlier this month, I had no intention of hijacking any potential web traffic from you.  I’ve enjoyed your product for many years now, and I can assure you that there have been many a time when I did in fact “need a helping hand”.  If you should ever want to enter into a relationship with this website which would involve the advertisement of your product, the Board of Directors here at TharpSter.Org would be more than happy to discuss such a potentially lucrative venture with you.  The endorsement agreement I have with Rubber Band BoB’s Rubber Band Balls is not exclusive.  I’m starting to rethink that agreement, as their checks keep bouncing.