Finally, after 7 days of waiting (I submitted my appeal to Google AdSense 7 days ago), they finally acknowledged the appeal, and sent an email saying the information I’ve submitted in the appeal is under review.

Hello,

We’re currently in the process of reviewing your account with the
additional information that you’ve provided. Please understand, however,
that there is no guarantee that your account will be reinstated into
AdSense. As a reminder, Google does reserve the right to disable an
account at any time, as stated in the AdSense Terms and Conditions
(http://www.google.com/adsense/terms ).

Thank you for your patience.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

I love how they have to note that they reserve the right to disable any account at any time to cover their asses. Even if it isn’t justified, they have the final say and I still see that 0% chance that they’ll restore my account. If they do, I have a funny feeling they’d steal the money from the account and leave me with nothing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d love it if all of a sudden the AdSense account was restored, every cent earned was rightfully returned to me, and I was allowed to continue to opperate my site without worrying what kind of ads are going to be shown to my users. It’s just ads! I should be more worried about possible layout changes, logo changes, new store items, new site features and working on new posts. Ah well, I hate waiting for things.

Tags: Google, Google AdSense

This article is copied from cnn.com and can be found here.

Authorities say they’ve arrested a man who broke into the home of two California farmworkers, stole money, rubbed one with spices and whacked the other with a sausage before fleeing.

Fresno County sheriff’s Lt. Ian Burrimond says 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez was found hiding in a field wearing only a T-shirt, boxers and socks after the Saturday morning attack.

He says deputies arrested Vasquez after finding a wallet containing his ID in the ransacked house.

The farmworkers told deputies the suspect woke them Saturday morning by rubbing spices on one of them and smacking the other with an 8-inch sausage.

Burrimond says money allegedly stolen was recovered.

A man breaks into a house and rubs spices on one man, and smacks another guy with a sausage.. Sounds like the guy likes to play with his food — especially his sausage. ‘nough said.

Tags: Funny, News

Week 2 is finished and we can safely say we’ve walked away learning a great deal about the teams, especially those in the top 10. Read more below!

USC had a bye week, and got to sit back and relax. They also got to watch an extra game that was quite revealing of the Ohio State Buckeyes, but more on that in a little bit. They’ve maintained their position at #1 this week.

Georgia looked a little better this weekend, beating a very underrated Central Michigan with a final of 56-17. Their showing has maintaining their #2 ranking, and may be getting into the groove. It couldn’t come at a better time, with an upset South Carolina fresh off their loss to Vanderbilt will be looking to make a statement next week.

Oklahoma looks downright scary, struggling early on against Cincinnati, but breaking the game wide open in the 2nd half. I must say though that the Oklahoma player who was pinning Cincy QB Grutza down and talking shit to him while he was screaming in pain with a fractured right ankle should’ve been ejected immediately from the game, and thrown out of the NCAA. I’d only expect that type of thing from a team like Miami U — not Oklahoma. Still, they’ve moved up to #3 with an overall very impressive win, 52-26.

Everyone — including me — expected a blowout in the Miami-Florida game, with the Gators winning by some outrageous score like 45-14, but that wasn’t even close to the case. The Gators struggled all game long against Miami, and managed to blow up the score late in the game. Still, let’s hope that the struggling against a young Miami team isn’t a sign of things to come later on in the season. The final was 26-3, Florida. They also moved up to the 4th position in the polls.

I spent much of the early afternoon actually worried about whether or not Ohio State would be able to pull off a win at HOME against Ohio University. Thankfully in the end, Ohio State managed to pull off the win, and in the 2nd half looked better, but the first half was absolutely horrible. Who were those players on the field? Sure as hell not THE Ohio State Buckeyes. The polls were nicer than I was. I actually think they’re more of a #7 spot team. Instead, they’ve only dropped down to 5th in the polls.

Week 2’s Game of the Week: Ohio @ Ohio State / South Carolina @ Vanderbilt / West Virginia @ East Carolina

Ohio State had a game on their hands at home with Ohio U. Anytime a team can come into The Shoe and give everything and more to the Buckeyes — especially when it is another team from the state of Ohio — you have to give the game props. A good, hard fought game including the starting QB of Ohio U getting injured and Ohio keeping it close with their backup. Great game from a football lovers point of view. Bad game from a Buckeye point of view.

South Carolina was probably everyones favorite, but as I told my family, I really thought Vanderbilt was extremely underrated and had a legit chance at beating them. In the end, it was exactly that. A damn good, close game that ended all sorts of long droughts. Many props to Vandy. It is just a damn shame the fans never ran on the field. C’mon, if your team does something big like knock off a ranked opponent when they had no business doing so, you’re obligated to show them love and rush the field! I’m not even a diehard Vandy fan and I would’ve rushed the field.

Two weeks in a row East Carolina has knocked off a ranked opponent, this time their victim was a top 10 ranked team in West Virginia. I’m sitting here scratching my head at where the hell these guys came from. I’ve known of them, even have a family friend who attends the school but these guys have just come out of nowhere. Many props to them for being ranked 14th/20th (14 in the AP, 20th in the USA Today polls).

Week 2’s Loser of the Week: West Virginia

Lucky for Pat White, the Gators Tim Tebow had a lackluster performance for the 2nd weekend in a row, Chris Wells was sidelined with an injury, and USC’s Mark Sanchez had a bye week. Unlucky for him, West Virginia got picked off by East Carolina. Better luck next game.

Week 2’s Winner of the Week: Vanderbilt / East Carolina

Vanderbilt’s win against South Carolina was awesome and well deserved. I like Vandy, and always cheer for the underdog. It’s nice to see the punching bag swing back and break a guys nose once in a while.

East Carolina isn’t flying under the radar anymore. Congratulations for making a program that is a virtual unknown to something everyone is talking about.

Week 3’s Spotlight Games: Ohio State @ USC

Other games I’m really looking forward to are Georgia @ South Carolina, UCLA @ BYU, Middle Tennessee @ Kentucky, Oklahoma @ Washington, and Wisconsin @ Fresno State.

Sideline Commentary: Ohio State @ USC

I honestly don’t know what to expect from this game anymore. Ohio State had a tough time with Ohio U, and they’ve revealed several flaws which USC has an extra weekend to prepare for. I’m not 100% counting out the insanely long shot possibility that Ohio State held things back on purpose and kept things close to lure USC into a false sense of dominance and security or what, but that just isn’t Buckeye ball. You play to win every game, and if the Ohio U game is a legit showing of their true talent, then I feel damn sorry for all the seniors who came back for a championship.

The way I see it, those seniors came back and passed up millions that they’d be making right now as we speak for a final shot at a national championship. For their team, and for their friends. And to have the other players fail to support them in this quest, it’s just bullshit and sad. They have the talent, they have the depth, they have the coach, they have the schedule. They just need to win. If not for themselves, their school, their fans, their community, they should at least win for the seniors and give them something to remember for the rest of their lives.

Tags: College Football, Florida, Georgia, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Sports, Sports News, USC

The U.S. economy is constantly heading downhill and people are losing their jobs left and right. Virtually everyone in the country has been affected one way or another, and with the U.S. hurting as bad as it is, the rest of the world is suffering as well. At every level times are tough, and while some people have more money than others, you can’t deny that even the rich are feeling the cost of increased food prices, gas and so on.

My wife works for the University of Florida, which is considered a Major University. It is a state funded, public university with an undergraduate student body of roughly 34,612 (Wikipedia) and 15,081 postgraduates (Wikipedia) and has a wide range of popular college-level athletics and student programs. Due to the financial situation of the school, they are looking at doing major job cuts for the faculty later this year which puts her job in jeopardy. This is becoming a typical situation across the nation. Even big establishments and jobs once thought to be comfy and secure aren’t.

What I’ve been most confused about when it comes to this country-wide crisis for employment is if the jobs are constantly disappearing, who are the ones doing the jobs that others are getting released to free up funds for? Lemme explain..

Let’s say I am working for Business A, and I’m in a management position. It is my job to hire employees, pay employees, schedule work hours, place orders for restocking of items that we may be selling, and acquire new items. Now given the current economic situation, several employees below me have been let go, we’ll say 5 of 15. I’m down to 10. Then my number gets called, and they are out a manager and 5 other employees. That is 10 people left to do what took 16 people to do, and the 10 people remaining don’t have the experience or ability to do my job. Why cut my job? And why cut the other peoples jobs? You’re hurting yourself more, right?

Let me try this again, with another example. A major car company has a work plant. They build the cars. They have 10 thousand employees, and they shut down the entire plant to save money. 10 thousand people are out of a job and the company saves lots of money, right? That is 10 thousand people now unable to afford to purchase the very cars they were building in the first place, and since nobody is working on building those cars there, there are no cars to sell. That makes things worse, right? You’re taking away the ability to purchase items and taking away items to be purchased. Absolutely no flow of money either way in this situation. How is that helpful to anyone?

Gas prices are one of the main root issues in our economy right now, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t agree. The high gas prices get added on every items price tag at the end of the day, which is why a gallon of milk has been so damn expensive. It costs money to transport the heavy milk from the farms to the milk processing plants, then from the plants to the store. Even cabs have raised their rates. What used to be a $15 cab ride can now run you up to $20, or more. And don’t even get me started on how much of a difference cab drivers are showing now compared to the lower fuel prices of a couple years ago. Damn near killed a cabby for yelling at my wife over her not tipping him more than a couple bucks. It’s a tip, be thankful!

I could sit here all day and talk to you about what the problems are, list off personal stories about my own financial troubles, but none of that is any good anymore. Those with the power to do any real good refuse to listen to the real problems, and would rather talk about Iraq, Afghanistan, and things that will eventually cost our country more money. Help the homeland economy? That isn’t on the agenda. We’ll consider another tax rebate check, but that’ll do nothing more than let a bunch of poor people go out and buy some game consoles, sit at home and become distracted by a game or the TV and hopefully everyone will forget we’re in a failing economy.

How about some real fixes! Need a place to start? Why don’t you start with the broken educational system in the U.S. and give teachers incentives for being good teachers. I’m talking real, worthwhile raises and bonuses. I’m talking boosting a school districts funding. I’m talking doing something as small as boost local school funding to provide more regional coverage of local school athletics which drives up local support. I’m talking about giving students better learning material and more access to computers on a broader scale. Let’s take $5 billion extra for each state and dump it into their public school systems and watch what happens.

Short on good teachers? Loosen the educational requirements of a teacher and setup programs to identify prospective teachers on a personality level, rather than pure knowledge. A fun teacher will help you learn things better than a stuffy teacher who will stick a book in your face and walk away. Give them extra tax breaks for being teachers, give them 100% free medical care at any doctor they choose to visit, and at any hospital they want to use. Beyond the failure that is Medicaid and Medicare, and give them total freedom. With worthwhile incentives, you can lure in great teachers to help build the future leaders of the country and they could prepare those future leaders how they should be prepared, and maybe we might not end up with the batch of failures that we’re dealing with right now.

The foundation for any great country is education, and if you can’t figure out that 1+1 = 2, and if you can’t read The Cat and The Hat then how do you expect to do any sort of leading in any possible avenue in your life? You can’t. You do need a certain level of basic skills in your life to succeed and if the schools are incapable to fulfill those requirements and needs of the kids then something needs to be done.

I don’t mind sharing our past success to help the future of another country or two become brighter in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I think enough is enough and that we are at the point and have long since been at the point where we are wasting insane amounts of money of a cause that has already been accomplished. Instead, that money desperately needs to be dumped into the economy otherwise those two countries may be some of the last we’ll ever be able to help and we might be the ones in dire need of outside assistance. How would you like that?

The sad fact is that there are many problems in the countries economy, and that it will take many years to recover from them. We just need people dedicated to actually fixing the problems instead of giving the country more and slapping a tiny little band-aid on a critical wound. We just need those people to come into power and take the bull by the horns and get the jobs done. Until then — we’re screwed.

I see a dead U.S. Economic System.

Tags: Economy, Education, News, Politics, Sports, World News

I’ve replaced the inside post ads for older posts and switched them to the AdBrite ads instead so they’re actually worth something. So far I’m actually surprised and pleased with how simple AdBrite is, and how they’re doing things. Yay for a decent ad company!

Tags: AdBrite, Advertisement, Site News, Website News

Showing once again why the game of College Football is such a wonderful thing and that there is no such thing as an automatic win, Vanderbilt — the SEC’s resident punching bag — beat a Top 25 ranked South Carolina tonight with a final of 24-17 at home.

The game was filled with injuries on both sides, but in the end it was Vandy who won by stepping up after a horrendous first half showing. The game was filled with excitement with a blocked field goal attempt and a botched punt return recovered by Vanderbilt that quickly resulted in points. Let’s just hope that this is a sign of things to come this college football weekend.

We’ll be in for a treat.

Tags: College, College Football, South Carolina, Sports, Sports News, Vanderbilt

What is the big deal with political figures being parents? The republican VP candidate, Sarah Palin, is a mother. Big shocker, right? Yeah. Wow. Amazing. What does it matter? Who cares how many kids she has? Who cares what her kids do? Who cares about her childrens personal lives? What business is it of ours to know?

I’m tired of seeing all the reports about her kids. I’m tired of seeing private information about her family all over the place. The fact she is a mother is a plus to me, but I don’t want to hear every little private detail about her kids! Respect her families privacy. How’d you like it if you had kids, and private information about them got posted up all over the world? That’d piss you right the hell off, wouldn’t it? I know I’d be pissed, and have gotten pissed for less when it comes to my children.

I’m to the point where I doubt I’m voting for anyone. I’m growing more and more concerned with Obama, and I’m against McCain entirely. There are no candidates that represent me and my views enough to earn my vote. I really wish we could choose our president, instead of some tightwads picking whoever they want to put out in front of us and let us get the pick of the litter. This time we’ve got the runts of the parties. Nobody wants to cleanup Bush’s mess, so we’re stuck with these scapegoats. Anywho, that is for another post.

Oh noez, the VP candidate is a parent!!1! End of the worlds I seyz!

Tags: Opinions, Politics

While it may not be THAT bad, it is essentially how things are in the world of professional sports this day and age. That, I think is what this season in the NFL is representing, and is showing to every young kid out there. You think you’re good? You think you’re great? You want to play for us? Come on and join us, but as soon as you get hurt, you can get the hell out.

Careers in professional sports are growing shorter than ever, with those “Franchise QB’s” becoming more and more of a distant memory, teams ask — no — DEMAND 110% of you at all times, even if you’re hurt to the point it could end your playing career. What does it matter to them? They’ll find someone else, and you’re just another number on a jersey.

Players are being sold on the “take one for the team” notion, yet the very teams preaching such lies of loyalty they’re making plans in the front offices on who they could possibly acquire for your inevitable injury. The teams will use and abuse players. So what if they’re making millions a year? That is nice, but what happens when you get an injury and you’re barely able to walk for the rest of your life? What if you can’t walk at all? What if you risk severe brain damage? It’s the risks everyone accepts when they walk out on that field, yes. But what makes it right when teams will easily replace you with someone else and move on while continuing to preach the team mantra bullshit?

This year, everyone saw the great Brett Favre fumble. The Packers moved on, and abandoned the last true Franchise QB outside of Tom Brady and the Manning brothers. He gave every meaningful year of his professional career to Green Bay, and they dropped him. Who cares if he comes back from “retirement” and has a change of heart? He gave you everything he had and more for years, and the least a team could do is return the favor, welcome him back and give him a warm reception. Big marketing opportunity fumbled by the Packers there.

Now I’m not going to praise Daunte Culpepper as some amazing player. But that was bullshit. The dude got hurt, and everyone in the league is bailing on him, and refusing to give him a legit shot to show he has what it takes to still compete. While he could’ve and should’ve accepted his backup offers from the Steelers or Packers, he should’ve at least had more offers than that. What about Atlanta? At the very least he could help out Matt Ryan, or maybe the Ravens and help out Troy Smith, Boller, and Flacco. A full squad, yes, but a squad that could use at least a little experience to help them out. The man is 31, and is retiring because he feels he can’t find work. Can he still play? Yes. Is he allowed to play? No. That is a failure on the NFL’s end as a whole.

Truth be told, I’m not much of an NFL guy. I don’t like watching sports where the players make millions for doing something I’d love to do just for shits and giggles. At the college level, players play for recognition by the NFL and other leagues, as well as play for a college education. In some cases, not even that as the school hits their scholarship limit. Then they’re playing for the love of the game and a true love of the team. In baseball, I’m a Marlins fan. They are damn poor, but each year prove that the low salary is meaningless and give teams in the NL East hell all season long.

Back to the topic… I just think it’s bullshit that it is so acceptable to throw someone under the bus because they got injured doing their job and because they might not be as good as they once were after the injury, or because someone is a human being who gets a little older each year, the teams in a team sport kick them to the curb and move on. It’s a shame so many are giving up their careers and the ability to be comfortable in life after they’re done playing the game under a false impression that the team is about loyalty when it is a one-way street.

Couldn’t accept it.

Tags: Football, NFL, Opinions

Call it a nasty habit of mine to install a program and forget that I installed it. I forget to uninstall it when its usefulness has ended, and trust me — it’s bit me in the ass a bunch of times. Like today for example!

I’ve had trouble all day and night Wednesday being unable to load websites with speed, even having load times for my own bloody site take over 5 minutes! Anything wrong with this picture? My website viewing issues started after I installed Google’s Chrome. And do you know what? You guessed it! It ended when I uninstalled that garbage browser!

I was tinkering with Google’s Chrome browser, and let me remind you that I’m running a Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz processor. While watching a sprite flash animation on Newgrounds.com, I actually hit 31% CPU usage. Now let me break this down for you, for those of you who don’t understand what kind of processor I’m using really means.

A Core 2 Quad, or Quadcore processor has 4 cores. Dur, I know. But the typical, standard and basic PC’s, especially those that run Windows XP pre-Media Center likely are running a single core processor. To have 31% CPU usage means that the total CPU usage would go well beyond 100% CPU usage in a single core processor computer, and would give you all sorts of fits.

So, I’ve uninstalled Google’s Chrome browser/failure, and I’ve suddenly and happily regained my website loading speed in my other browsers — including Internet Explorer. Amazing? Yes. If Google is so desperate to have people just settle for using their browser over the others to the point they’ll allow their browser to screw with the other installed browsers on your computer, then damn.

Google is absolutely pathetic.

I thought the evil empire that is Microsoft was bad, but wow. Even Microsoft permits compatibility for Firefox within the Windows OS and while Windows users have Internet Explorer in use. Ah well, there is no way in hell the Chrome browser will stand against Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Tags: Google, Google Chrome, Science & Technology, Tech, Technology

Seeing that the beta was released of Google Chrome and just staring at pictures of the layout of the browser, I didn’t think very highly of the browser to begin with. Still, I like testing new programs and this time is no different.

The overall usage of the browser is simple and quick to understand like a browser should. I’ve seen several reviews of it talking about its speed and how it is able to load sites quickly. Not quite. It took Firefox 3 less than a second to load SHiNTER.NET compared to Google’s Chrome which took over 2 seconds to load.

I went and paid a visit to a site I like to frequent — Newgrounds.com — and I almost thought the site wasn’t going to load at first in Chrome, because for over a second I had a blank black page. Then the content started appearing, and it eventually loaded taking over 4 seconds to load. Firefox 3 is able to load Newgrounds.com from top to bottom in under 2 seconds despite it being graphics and content heavy.

I do like the transparency support for Vista Aero for Chrome, and makes it nice and sleek. That is also one of the few redeeming qualities I get from using Internet Explorer. In the end, after tinkering around with Chrome, I was left more annoyed than anything and it didn’t take long to close out and switch back to Firefox 3.

The Good

The transparency to match Vista Aero.
The button style to open new tabs.
Extra website viewing space.

The Bad

Slower loading time compared to Firefox 3.
You have to download a downloader + installer, instead of only an installer.
Doesn’t support wheel mouse usage for auto-scroll.
20%+ CPU usage on a Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz processor when playing YouTube videos.

The Rating

For a browser that openly admits it is built around the better parts of all the popular browsers, it sure doesn’t give off that feel. I doubt I’ll be using it again and will continue to use Firefox 3 until a browser proves to me that it is functional enough to meet my usage standards. I’d give an overall rating of 6/10 for Chrome. Even the Firefox 3 “Beta” had more useful features than this.

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Tags: Chrome, Google, Google Chorome, Ranking, Review, Technology, Websites