You’ll find that the makemetheking.com service is faster and more reliable than ever! Please let me know if you have any problems, and thanks to everyone for their recent support, and the donation or two. The donations actually made this switch possible, I was considering shutting down the project all together due to lack of funds.

Thanks again and enjoy!

If you’ve used and enjoyed the service, you might consider donating… it helps me keep the service up and running. Of course, no obligation necessary.

One thing’s for sure. When you’re on the Bachelor, you may not catch the man of your dreams, but chances are you’ll catch something!

I know I’m not the only one that’s thought it, but someone has to say it.

The Bachelor is a ‘dating game’ in which 1 man ‘dates’ as many 25 woman in an elimination-style reality TV show. Each woman, carefully screened to be a ‘perfect match’ for the Bachelor, competes with the other women in a combination of group and single dates in a ‘winner takes all’ battle for the man of their dreams. At the end of each season, the Bachelor asks one lady for their hand in marriage… most of the time.

The title of this post makes the claim that The Bachelor is destroying humanity, but I stand by my assertion. Let’s start with the basics.

There isn’t enough time

I’m probably going to keep coming back to this, but come on’. This man moves from one woman to another in a series of one on one dates and exploratory relationship that are laughable in terms of time. There’s a whopping 8 episodes, 3 one on one dates and countless group dates in which the Bachelor spends a max of a couple of hours with each woman.

He doesn’t actually ‘plan’ this crap

Every episode, the Bachelor talks about these elaborate and mind-blowing dates that he’s planned for the women. Helicopter rides, cliff diving, romantic private island get-aways, yachts, sunsets, you name it. And often times these women will pine for the Bachelor. “I can’t believe he planned all of this”. Or even better, “This is my idea of the perfect date! But how did Brad know?”. Seriously lady? How did he know? You don’t actually think he planned all of these dates do you? Don’t you remember, in the 5 Applications and 3 demo videos you sent in to ABC, what you filled out on the Application?

Do you really not remember applying for the Passport and requesting travel in another country? I don’t want to shock you here, but he had nothing to do with this. He didn’t pay for it, he didn’t plan it, and he wasn’t told about it until the day before you two went. He’s not bringing you the magic, the Network is.

It’s not personal

Camera’s, lights, sound, producers, electricians… immense man power required for each and every scene. And they’re there, all the time. Those nice quiet scenes in which they make intimate remarks and reveal their deepest darkest fears and secrets? Camera guy. Sound guy. Producer. Electrician far off in the back ground. There’s no actual privacy, or intimacy. And now is a good time to remind you: It’s a television show. Re-takes, cuts, do-overs, scene deletions. It all happens. Don’t think that it doesn’t.

He’s very physical with you… oh, and those 8 other women
This actually bothers me quite a bit. I love these women who say “The kiss was incredible; I think I’m falling in love”. Lady, he just made out with 4 other women this episode… and they’re your room mates! This guy can get some action from 4 different ladies in a single 36 hour period, and none of them are genuinely upset about it. It’s all part of the ‘game’. And it’s all magical. And mystical. One thing’s for sure. When you’re on the Bachelor, you may not catch the man of your dreams, but chances are you’ll catch something!

It’s not real dating

You can’t form a strong, serious (marriage worthy no less!) relationship with someone under the circumstances above when he’s having the same interactions, both physical and emotional, with that many other women.

In addition to that, the experiences that you’re having are not typical of the kind of relationship or life you would have together. While trips to tropical island paradises are wonderful, they’re not every day life. You don’t form the basis for a healthy, life-long relationship by starting with a honeymoon.

Real life does not consist of helicopter dives and cocktail parties. It’s filled with ups and downs. Jobs, bills, lack of time and conflicting schedules. A relationship built on fantasy would never, ever survive in the real world. Which brings me to my next point:

In 14 seasons and 90 episodes, no Bachelor couple has ever stayed together

The reality of the Bachelor can be found not in it’s plethora of episodes, but in the fruits of the show. In 90 episodes, no couple has ever successfully remained a couple. That means that this show has never produced a single good thing for humanity. It’s contributed to heart break, divorce, and statistics that show our nation is in a continual decline.

You’re worth more than this game show

What level of self-esteem must a woman have to participate in this show? I shouldn’t have to be the one to tell you this but you’re worth more than this show. You deserve a man’s full attention. You don’t need to compete for his attention and affection like some kind of wild animal. You need to take the Disney approach and be like Jasmine: You are not a prize to be won!

He’s not a real man

What kind of a real man would make out with, and lead on, 8 different women at the exact same time? 4 women? 2 women? In the real world, a man who was having an intimate relationship with more than one woman would be branded a dirt bag of the worst kind. But on ABC, he’s the man of every woman’s dreams! A real catch!

A real man has self respect, and respect for women. The Bachelor? Not so much.

It turns moms into bad moms

Okay, I guess I don’t have a right to call a woman a ‘bad mom’. That’s really not my place. A lot of people like to throw around the term ‘to each his own’, especially when it’s more convenient to avoid doing the right thing. This last season featured two single women who had small children waiting at home. That’s right, there were two women, including the show favorite (Emily) who have little kids at home wondering where mommy is.

At the end of the day, I don’t know whether these women are good mothers or not. I’m not that judge. That being said, I feel confident in saying that leaving your child for weeks at a time in pursuit of love on a tv game show is not an attribute of a good mother.

In Summary: It sets a standard that cannot be achieved

As our country falls further and further into the pits of self-gratifying entertainment, our moral fibers literally stretched to the limit, and our marriages and relationships portrayed as nothing but one night stands and ‘starter marriages’, the last thing we need is a television show like The Bachelor. The show is degrading to women, to marriage, to parenthood, and the strength and unity of a genuine family unit.

The Bachelor strives to convince us that intimate, life-long relationships can be formed in a series of 3-hour group dates, surrounded by cameras and lights. Real life just isn’t that way, and as our society pushes marriage and family further and further from it’s heart and mind, The Bachelor will continue to play it’s part in the degradation of our society.

And that just sucks.

What you should have clicked:

How to avoid shame in the future:

This particular company handed out random telephone numbers, unless you elected to pay a $10 “vanity number” fee. For this charge, the agent would attempt to assign the number of your choosing, as long as it was available. Obviously this is useful for people looking for any easy to remember number such as (xxx)-xxx-0123. Or maybe they wanted something for their pool repair business such as XXX-POOL.

The sneaky trick here was that whether at random or with the purchase of a vanity number, agents used the same screen to select a phone number. There was no additional work or cost associated with selecting a ‘vanity number’ beyond keying in the 4-7 digits the customer hoped to find.  Because of this, I often gave customers what I considered to be good numbers just out of the goodness of my heart. Things like xxx-0111, 0123, 1234, 2345 and so on.

One particular afternoon I received an activation call from a customer who was activating a cellular telephone for her local Church. The woman was very nice on the phone, and we had pleasant chit chat about the weather while I was busy entering data into the computer. When the number selection screen came up, something inside of me decided it would be funny to assign them a vanity number. Something easy to remember would be good. Something that the congregation would easily remember when looking to get a hold of their clergy.

The number I selected? (xxx)-xxx-0666

I remember little of that phone call. I don’t remember her name, or the name of her Church. I don’t remember what City or State she was from. But I do remember her voice, and the conversation that followed.

Me: Alrighty, so here’s your new number. It’s Area code ###…

Her: Uh huh…

Me:###…

her: ###… yep…

Me: 0666

Her: ..Oh…

Me: Alrighty. So it looks like you’re all taken care of… anything else I can do for you today?

Her: … No… I… well, thank you…

To my recollection, we then disconnected the call. Somewhere in the back of my memory I have a vague memory of deciding at the last moment to change the number, and her being quite happy… but I can’t be sure I haven’t just made that part up to ease my conscience.

Looking back now, I very much regret that decision. This was essentially the one and only time I’ve ever made what I consider to be an unprofessional decision. Although I don’t work in a customer-facing environment anymore, I always took customers very, very seriously and delivered the best service I could… with this one, rare lapse in judgement. In my defense, I was only 17 or 18 at the time… but I regret it nonetheless.

Nice Christian woman who was in the service of her Church a decade ago: I’m sorry I gave you an offensive phone number. It is a decade later and I remember it, and would correct it if I could.

Update:
I would like to point out that this is the same job and time in my life in which this happened.

Enter www.reasonstohate.com. A horrific domain name, purchased for a different purpose many moons ago but never put into production. I’ve recently converted it to a hotspot for Facebook public data. I apologize for the poor domain name. I don’t like it. I don’t think it represents me well.. but it’s available and dangit, I don’t want to register yet another domain.

It’s amazing what people will put in a Status Update. People are funny, sad, depressing, open and in many cases, just plain weird. Using Reasons To hate.com is an amazing view into the mind of the average, public Facebook user, the kind of language they use, and the kinds of things they say. Quite honestly it’s been a really eye opening experience into the minds of the average Joe that exists outside of my own little circle.

Reasons To Hate.com uses the Facebook Public API (graph.facebook.com) and jQuery to search public Facebook Status updates and display them for you. Facebook updates are displayed live, in real-time! I’ve picked out some of my favorite gems (that lead to the most interesting comments) as well as left you a search box, so you can search for a phrase yourself.

Profile names and pictures will click through to real Facebook photos.

What’s the goal?

1. Raise awareness regarding the dangers of Facebook, and public online identities

2. Entertain myself and others

How does it work?

Facebook makes public information available via it’s API. I use jQuery and JSONP to make AJAX requests on your behalf to get the latest data on whatever search term you’re looking for. There is no back-end code. Your query doesn’t go through me, and I don’t give you any data.. it’s all done through Facebook through the miracle of Javascript. When a custom search (using the search box) is submitted, I log the query in a flat file (and only the query. No time stamps, no IPs) so I can look for ‘popular’ searches later on.

What about Privacy?

I’m not exposing anything that isn’t already public, searchable, and index elsewhere… I just put a different User interface on it and made it a little more search-friendly for the previously stated purposes.

And while many (most?) people know about basic Google operators like + and -, there’s a whole list of operators to refine your Google searches.

These are what I believe to be the most useful and relevant Google operators. While not all-inclusive, there’s virtually nothing in the Google machine that isn’t within your immediate reach with these operators.

Sure, many of these attributes are available under Googles “Advanced search” menu item… but who uses that thing? Keep in mind that many, if not most of these Google operators work in other Google searches, such as Google Image search. Also remember that most of these operators can be combined with each-other for some serious precision.

What’s your favorite Google trick?

Definitely Differant.

I saw this gem on my way home from Costco. I did a u-turn through 3 lanes of traffic just to get a picture of it. Well worth the time.

I wanted to start sending e-mail using a Godaddy SMTP account, via Gmail to get rid of that annoying “On behalf of” tag line that was giving away my super-secret gmail account name (or something like that).

I went into GoDaddy and created a brand new SMTP mail account, then went to Gmail and tried to add it as a valid SMTP account to send from. I kept getting messages like:

Your other email provider is responding too slowly. Please try again later, or contact the administrator of your other domain for further information

I was using smtpout.secureserver.net like GoDaddy told me to, but it turns out, it was a GoDaddy configuration issue. To resolve this, log into GoDaddy’s creepy web interface then:

• Click on the Settings tab
  • Click on Display Settings menu item
• Click on the Other tab
• Check the Use Full-Time SSL Mode checkbox
• Click the OK button

When configuring the account in Gmail, make sure to check “Always use a secure connection (SSL) when sending mail” and use Port 465.

I actually found most of this information by putting together a bunch of forum posts, but it was misplaced enough I thought consolidating it into one “typical GoDaddy…” post would be appropriate.

I put together a simple ASP form that can be installed on any IIS installation that is running indexing service, in order to test querying the catalog. It doesn’t have all the features of the previous “Query the Catalog” page, but it should be sufficient to know whether indexing service is returning results at all.

Simply toss the file into an IIS directory and hit it with your browser.

Download: Indexing-Service-test-page.zip

This software is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Congressman Alan Grayson:

Grayson’s Republican opponent, Daniel Webster:

I don’t endorse either candidate. Why would I? They’re not in my State and I’m not expertly familiar with either of their campaigns… but I’m pretty sure if I lived in his State, Congressman Alan Grayson would not be getting my vote.