Adsense update
After a promising start, the recent introduction of Adsense on this blog is seriously floundering. I am bitterly disappointed with the financial returns in June and my wife is seriously doubting the wisdom of my decision to resign from a highly paid job in IT consultancy in favour of professional blogging on the kitchen table.
Consequently, after an extraordinary board meeting, I have decided that desperate measures are necessary. I have cashed in my £12.50 Adwords vouchers bundled with my Bluehost account and launched a brilliant, inspired, marketing campaign aimed at driving traffic to this site, increasing e-commerce sales and boosting the click through rate.
So, if you see the following Google advertisement on your travels through the InterWeb, please be sure to let me know.
The world's worst blog
Ramblings from a certified madman
The wit and wisdom of Mr Brightside
www.nbrightside.com
fun with the Siebel data model
The Siebel 7.8 data model supports different industry applications (finance and banking, pharmaceutical, sales, telecommunications, energy, media, motor, public sector, retail) and contains 3,920 tables and even more indexes. The results are just in from a Friday afternoon poll to find the most popular Siebel table:- S_ACCELERATOR - invaluable in performance tuning. 'Oh well - there's nothing for it. Now we are simply going to have to load S_ACCELERATOR'.
- S_CLUSTER_TNT - images of cluster bombs and high explosives but supposedly related to 'Hospitality'.
- S_AUDIT_ITEM - typically will contain 155 million records of historic audit data dating back to 2003. No-one knows why this data is being collected let alone using it.
- S_DOCK_INITM_43 - Crazy name, crazy table. Docking table for Remote.
- S_CL_PTCL_LSXM - A real tongue twister related to clinical protocols.
- S_DISEASE - the clear winner.
a polite notice
Two weeks ago, I was working in the beautiful city of Oslo. After a couple of hours, the client finally couldn't take any more of my tedious hand-waving and badly drawn architecture diagrams so he suggested we had a five minute coffee break. In the immaculate pine kitchen, my eyes were drawn to a notice in Norwegian affixed to the kitchen cupboard. One of my hosts smiled and said 'I bet you don't know what that says'. Quick as a flash, I replied 'Oh I bet you a pint of expensive beer that I do.''Please, please wash up your plates and mugs. Your mother doesn't work here''God that is absolutely amazing. Why didn't you say you spoke Norwegian ?' In a similar vein, Andrew Sherman brings my attention to a marvellous blog devoted to passive-aggressive notices posted in office kitchens, officious post-its stuck on fridge doors and not-so-polite notices hanging on toilet walls from all around the world. If only I'd known, I would have taken a photo of this British entry.
sit back and watch the money roll in
I have had an innate fascination with Google Adsense and the correct spelling of monetization for a while.
Countless times, I was poised to hit the 'Unsubscribe' button while hovering over John Chow's blog. But every single time, I stopped myself. Is this guy for real ? Is he really making thousands of dollars every months from blogging ? Does he really eat in those posh restaurants ?
This decision to place banner ads and a sponsored search box on this site was not taken lightly and sincere apologies to all my principled, minimalist, long-standing, traditionalist readers.
Rest assured, the banner ads will only remain in place until I have raised the sum of £70 to pay for a replacement bathroom door in my Prague hotel room
After a mere 10 minutes, my newly created Adsense account was unbelievably showing an incredible return of $0.34. If this income stream is sustained, I calculate I will have generated $14,000 (£7,300) within one month and £87,000 in my first year !
However, on reflection, I assume this surge in activity was caused by my lengthy trials and tribulations with the WordPress plugin and getting the confounded advertisements to display properly on the footer.
These experiments (767 clicks all by me) probably constituted a breach of the Adsense Terms and Conditions so now I have the mighty Google suing me as well as Amazon. Sigh.
Anyway, back to the original reason for the need to raise some capital quickly. This evening, when I returned to room 516, I was informed by reception that there is a small dent in the bathroom door. I thanked them for letting me know, said it was no problem and they could fix it tomorrow morning.
Unfortunately, events then took a bizarre and sinister twist when the head of housekeeping maintained I must have been responsible as the hole wasn't there prior to me checking in.
However, I am not so sure. Honestly, I can not recall kicking the door in a fit of pique, my feet don't hurt and my toes are not bruised. Still, the evidence is stacked against me.
Unless I can stage a CrimeWatch style reconstruction, tomorrow morning, to prove that a maid's trolley laden with shampoo, lemon scented body wash and fresh flannels was forcefully rammed into the door by a disaffected and underpaid employee, I am in a very weak position.
Worse, I am told that I will have to foot the bill for a replacement door which costs £70.
Now I have occasionally expensed room service, wireless internet, movies, laundry and sundries but submitting an expense report including 'Broken Bathroom Door' might be pushing it.
Still, with my Adsense revenues, I won't be shelling out for a cheap pastel blue door made from MDF, I'll be buying the hotel.
Darwin Awards nominee
Amusing story in Friday's Torygraph about how a Sat Nav system left a poor, helpless 20- year old female student marooned on a level crossing in the face of a high speed train. Thankfully, this woman escaped with her life and will probably sue TomTom, her boyfriend and Carlos Tevez. However, Paula Ceely is so unbelievably stupid, hopefully she will manage to secure an early nomination for the Darwin Awards imminently. The online version of this story omits a crucial section - the picture of the warning sign that was clearly displayed on the level crossing that was included in the newspaper edition.- Check that the green light shows
- Open both gates
- Check that the green light still shows
- Cross quickly
- Close both gates