Upon looking at my search logs yesterday, I noticed a slew of results in my referer log. As in many, many more than I had the last time I looked (which, admittedly, isn't very often).

Instead of my expected Google search results (let me tell you, the most shocking one I had was "how to stretch my asshole", which led the reader to my jerk neighbor post and one unsurprisingly disappointed searcher, I'm sure), I had a slew of referrers from search.live.com.

Uh... okay....

So, I looked at them. There were thousands of these results, all of the form

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=table&form=QBHP

with the "table" part being random words that no one (did I say "no one"? I meant "NO ONE") would ever use to find my site. LIke "about." Right, when I search for "about" I expect to find my site.

Riiiiiiiight.

So, I added these lines in my .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^65\.55\.(109|110|165|232) [OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^131\.107\.0\.9[56]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} FORM=(LVSP|LIVSOP|QBHP)$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]

If the request is coming from the Microsoft servers, and it has the "form=xxxx" in the string query, it's a bogus query, so don't show ANYTHING. If they want to crawl the site, fine, have at it. But don't put in the bogus referer values and clutter up my search log files. Those are interesting!

Take these recent search queries that brought people unwittingly to my site:

People with long torsos (#3 baby!)
dog trash and dry heaves (#5!)
Russian crunches (#4 in Canadian search results! Whoo!)
sit ice bath (#1 in the UK! Gosh, I rule!)

Who knew that I could be so prolific in so many diverse topics?

I KNOW! Me either!

Now that the search.live.com clutter is gone, I can see them, too!

"Just post to an iframe," he says.

It's the "just" part that gets me.

I can't recall the last time I bought a technical book and, upon delivery, started at page one and read until the end of the book.

Well, that's not true. The last time was last week. But BEFORE that, it was, uh, never?

I tried to read Mastering Dojo, as it was available in PDF form as the book was being written and edited. I had problems with it, though. I don't know if the layout was problematic, the medium was problematic (reading a PDF for hours? Not quite able to do that yet.), or if the book itself was problematic for me and not organized in a way that worked for me. Regardless, I was unable to get through the book.

So, when Dojo: The Definitive Guide arrived on my doorstep, I opened it and started reading. That three of the first four confirmed errata for the book are mine, I think I was doing okay in getting through the book (with another number of "unconfirmed" errata). I took the book everywhere, including Andy's over the 4th of July, which I think may have annoyed him when I slipped away from the social events to go read. I finished it, and have to say, it's a good book. I finally (FINALLY) understand what the heck people are talking about in #dojo.

That's saying something.

With my new-found knowledge, I launched into one of my tasks at hand: AJAXifying the Drupal comment form so that comment form submissions aren't redirected to another page when replying to a previous comment.

I managed to adjust the form so that the comment form moves to the correct place for replying to a comment, and the submit happens correctly (with only minor Drupal Forms API manipulations, I'm pleased to say).

The next step (you know, the one before code review when my first Dojo script is ripped to shreds, and made so much better that one would wonder if it was still my code, which it wouldn't be, but that's okay because I would have learned much in the shredding, the "much" being what I want to learn, so it's all good) is to have the form submit on the same page. Partial page rendering, Kris says. PPR, which Oracle has been doing for almost a decade now.

Yeah.

So, just a form submit to an iframe.

Sleeves rolled up?

Good.

Go.

Having not gone to yesterday's velocity because of a migraine (an annoying, frustrating, painful, bothersome mirgraine), I desperately wanted to do something today. The headache was still lingering, though, so, really, not much was going to happen again today. Except that, crap, something, anything, right?

So, when Doyle sent out today's track workout, I figured it was an omen. I went.

I missed the warm up run, but managed a quick lap, and jumped in the with form running. My achilles was hurting a LOT on the warm up lap, and the form running was nearly impossible. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

The plyos were straight forward, and pretty short, with the single leg ankle raises being really the only problem I had (well, and the girlie pushups, but I'm saving myself for tomorrow).

2 sets of 15 pushups
2 sets of 15 lunges each leg
2 sets of 20 squats
2 sets of 15 tuck jumps
2 sets of 25 single leg ankle raises
2 sets ice skaters of 14 leaps, 7 each leg

Next came the real reason we were here, eh? The sprints.

Four each of five different sprint lengths, types and rest times.

1. 0 to 40m sprint, rest 30 seconds in between
2. 0 to 25m to 0, rest 45 seconds in between
3. 10m to 0m to 40m, rest 45 seconds in between
4. 0 to 25m to 0 to 25m to 0, rest 60 seconds in between
5. 0 to 10m to 0 running backwards to 40m to 0, rest 60 seconds in between

Andy, Doyle, Shirley, Jason and Warren were at the track, with Tyler showing up for the sprints, who cares about the plyos at the beginning, eh?

I was, expectedly, the slowest of our group. If I tried really hard, ran all out, I could sorta, kinda, maybe, a little bit keep up with the group, where "keep up" means "finish withing 3 meters of the person in front of me." I realized fairly quickly that neither my achilles, nor my fitness were going to let me keep up that pace, with the achilles stopping me from where the heart wanted to go.

I tried stretching between runs and between sets, but wasn't able to get my calves and achilles loose. After the first three sets, I was ready to be done. I was just done. All the doubts, all the frustrations, all the disappointment of the last few months settled into my achilles, and I wanted to just stop.

I don't know why I kept running. I did. I finished the workout an embarrassingly far distance behind everyone else, but I finished.

Those first few steps back are hard. I hate that I'm slow. I hate that I'm perpetually injured. I hate how far off I am from what i was. I hate that I'm frustrated. I think that fundamentally, I hate that I ended up in the middle. I am, of course, on the decline. I was never a star, never more than an okay player, solid in most respects, weak in others, and never a star.

Of course, everyone can't be a star. "If everyone's special, no one is," or something like that. I don't even know if I'd like the mini-stardom being a great player brings. I would have liked, however, to be good at something, and have known that I was good at it. To have that feeling of complete self-assurance, self-confidence, and a complete lack of self-doubt.

Yeah.

Well...

I finished the workout. Good for me.

I followed a random link today that took me to jointcontact, another website that uses "web 2.0" in its branding. I was a little puzzled at the image at the top of the page:

And then it dawned on me. I had seen it on one of my (now former) clients' sites:

I don't know why this should surprise me. Maybe the late (early?) hour?

Or maybe I was expecting this IntarWeb™ thing to be bigger. So big, in fact, that what's old is new again, and I don't stumble upon the same image twice.

I don't know why I thought that would be. This world just isn't that big.

I used to subscribe to the Economist.

I was inspired by conversations with Greg Wolff, and his ability to discuss global happenings and policy ramifications in ways that made me feel young, inexperienced and incompetent. I asked him for help, and he suggested reading the Economist regularly.

I followed up on his suggestion, and subscribed. For about two years, I read the Economist with near religious fervor. My knowledge grew. I was able to talk about world policies, events and economies, tragedies and triumphs as I was never expecting, couldn't predict and thrilled about. I started to understand the reasons behind policies, the fears of economic problems and excitement of developments outside of my usual areas of interest.

However (is there always a downside to every good side?), I also became aware of the world in ways I couldn't have predicted. I knew about conflicts in Darfur long before it was politically vogue to talk about them. I learned about the dangers of Myanmar and the upheaval happening in that part of the world. I worried about the economic shifts occurring globally.

And that knowledge caused a downward spiral.

I knew about the conflicts. I knew about the wars. I knew about the upheavals, the problems, the issues. I understood just how devastating the policies of the village idiot in the United States government was, and how badly the average citizen was going to fare in the upcoming years.

I read, and I understood, until the knowledge was too painful.

And I stopped.

My Economist magazines grew in an unread pile. The realization of the world's suffering and being unable to stop it, unable to change the course, impotent against the tidal wave of disaster overwhelming this world (my, my, overly dramatic today, eh?) caused a mental shutdown, and I wanted to be like the average American: obvlious to the outside world, small in the small cocoon of existance, not knowing and not caring for the outside world.

Except that knowledge once gained never really goes away. You can't pretend you don't know once that link has been made.

I'm going to subscribe to the Economist again. Maybe I'll be able to drink from the firehouse again, maybe I won't. But half knowledge is worse than no knowledge, and I want to know again. Maybe I can figure out a good balance, maybe I can't. Of course, having the magazine in portable, electronic format would be most ideal.

Does the Economist come in Kindle or Sony reader format?

Does anyone local want to share a subscription?