From today's inbox:
Hi Michael,
I will send you $25 in exchange for placing a text ad for a telecom company on this page: [link]
Please let me know if you are interested.
Thanks,
[signed]
I don't know how long the run was to be, so I can't tell if this is a good offer, but in any case, I'm resolutely non-commercial for insurance reasons. So, dear reader, not to worry.
That post, incidentally, is still true, but I can't help but wonder what search led him there.
Someone got to this blog by searching for “is it illegal to own a monkey in miami”. In fact, that phrase has been searched for several times in the last few days…
Weird.
(For a colorful list of what people have been searching for that leads them here, have a look at the discourse.net zeitgeist.)
The blog is acting up in various ways. It's slow, and the some of the stuff in the columns isn't working. I'm going to put off trying to debug it in light of this announcement from No Uptime Hosting Dreamhost:
We are currently experiencing some networking difficulties which is causing parts of our network to be inaccessible. This is affecting everyone in a random manner. We are working hard to fix the problem right now and will have an update for you soon.
Please bear with me until this goes away.
Dreamhost is unveiling a new service with an unusual pricing model. DreamHost Private Servers will provide CPU and RAM a la carte. $1.00/month for each 10 MB RAM and 10 MhZ CPU, protected, on a shared server (there's also a burst mode, but it's not guaranteed). Unfortunately, you buy them together (I need CPU more than RAM).
So, how much is enough to run a blog?
I may have mentioned this before, but I continue to be amazed and bemused by the emergence of one comment thread on this blog, Type 1 Diabetes Cure?, as a sort of clearinghouse for diabetes patients to exchange their stories and seek advice.
I assume this has happened because Google has put that page high on the results list for 'Type1 Diabetes Cure'. I usually close comments threads after a few weeks in order to keep down the robotic advertising attacks, but I intend to keep this one open as long as it has an audience.
Tomorrow, my family and I will be leaving for a week in Istanbul, which is a place I've always wanted to visit. Admittedly, this may not be the very best time in history to be visiting Turkey, given both the domestic tensions between secularists and Islamicists and the Turkish army's provocative shelling across the Northern Iraqi border. We made the arrangements about a week before the current round of unrest began and have been watching developments, especially the bombings, with some concern. So far, however, there do not seem to have been attacks in Istanbul itself, and we haven't called off the trip.
Our hotel in Istanbul promises wireless internet, but I've learned to be wary of such promises, and anyway, this is a holiday. So I'm turning the blog over to a guest until I get back on the 22nd (or more if he wants): my good friend and colleague Patrick Gudridge.
Patrick's willingness to guest blog is a very good thing for readers. Patrick either embodies or exemplifies most of the best things about the University of Miami School of Law. He is intellectually omnivorous, deeply thoughtful, and irrationally charitable and optimistic — all the things that make him a superlative commentator and conversationalist. He's also very nice. Best known, perhaps, for his recent Harvard Law Review article “Remember Endo?,” Patrick's interests range far and wide, but often return to issues of federal and state constitutional law. On the faculty, in addition to his intellectual reputation, Patrick enjoys a special status as a sort of utility player, someone ready, willing, and able to teach almost any course in the curriculum. Patrick is also fond of dogs, having raised, among others, champion bull mastiffs.
Here's the official bio:
Patrick O. Gudridge, Professor of Law, received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1972 and a J.D. in 1976 from Harvard Law School. Professor Gudridge served as a law clerk to Justice Mathew O. Tobriner of the California Supreme Court. He joined the faculty in 1977, and served as Associate Dean at the Law School from 1990 to 1994. He has published articles on the structure of legal interpretation and analysis. His teaching interests are eclectic, and have included courses in federal jurisdiction, U.S. and Florida constitutional law, jurisprudence, business associations, torts, and agency.
I have no idea what he's going to say (I rarely do), but I'm sure it will be interesting (it always is).
Jotwell Blenderlaw