Jacob’s Blog

Last month I announced that August 2006 was the biggest month ever for this website. August’s reign didn’t even last a month as September, with 4 days left in the month, just passed up August. Well over 1000 users came in so far this month through Google alone, which is a 30% increase over all of last month. The photos category was the most popular, while posts about search engines and Halloween dances were the most popular posts.

Thank you all very much for reading. I appreciate every visitor, including the rude ones, but not really the ones that spam.

I’ve started some efforts to focus my blog content on a more specific audience base. The first step in doing this has been to create a new blog for posts of a technical nature. This blog has a simple name, Jacob’s Technical Blog and the URL is similar to this one: http://jacob.peargrove.com/tech . I thought that I might be confusing some of my readers here whenever I posted things nerdy or technical, so I’ll be putting those posts on my new technical blog.

Now that those are gone, hopefully the content I post here will be slightly more consistent at being interesting to you. You may want to consider subscribing to the feed for this site. If you are using Firefox, you can subscribe by clicking the orange RSS icon that is usually in the location bar of your browser.

Short reponce: find look for love.

When we put ourselves into a position to be loved, we put ourselves in a position to be heartbroken. Because when we allow ourselves to be loved, we allow ourselves to be hurt by those who love us.

This is true even outside of romantic relationships. It is true in family relationships as well as friendships. It can happen in any relationship where we open up to the love and affection of others.

The exception is our Heavenly Father, who loves us unconditionally. He will never betray us, or stop loving us.

A couple of months ago, I hiked Kings Mountain in Oregon. Here are a couple photos I took of the view from the top of the mountain.

A little more than a month ago, I went out to the middle of nowhere to look at the stars. I took a couple of really good friends with me, so even though it was cold, it was also really fun and enjoyable. We arrived in the dark, so we had no idea where we were, but I looked it up on Google Earth to get kind of an idea where we were. Here is the view from Google Earth. We were in the very middle of the picture below.
Google Earth is part of Google Pack, a free collection of essential software. You can download Google Pack by clicking here.

On this blog, an anonymous reader accessing the Internet through BYU left a comment on a post about Wyview saying only, “Get a life.”

I don’t delete comments unless they are off-topic or spam. Occasionally I sensor comments to make them less obscene. I thought that a comment saying, “get a life” was off-topic and added nothing to the topic, so I deleted it.

The thing is, this isn’t the first time I’ve been told to get a life. I take all such comments about what I should or shouldn’t get getting very seriously. Usually, I find that persons making such comments don’t really spend any time to read over any more than a single post on my blog before making a comment. I do not think they really know me and my situation enough to qualify them to make the suggestion to me about getting a life.

What I think happens, is that someone comes to my blog, and reads a post where I might be critiquing something, or standing up for something I believe in, as I sometimes do. I think sometimes the reader disagrees with what I have written, and takes my stance as a personal attack on them, their affiliations, or their beliefs. They then jump to the conclusion that I have nothing better to do than to attack them, and tell me that I should get a life, which in reality translates to the childing cry of, “stop picking on me.”

I can only assume that if someone complains about a particular post, it means it was particularly effective at not being boring, and that it was written well enough that it stirred up some emotion in someone out there. I can only hope more people tell me to get a life.

I recently read this in the latest Police Beat:

Sept. 15: A student driving a BYU box truck on the south side of the Eyring Science Center attempted to drive between two building and ran the truck into the awning connecting the buildings. When the student hit the awning he was thrown into the steering wheel of the truck and reported chest pain. The student was checked by BYU EMT’s and released. The damage is estimated at $10,000 to the awning and $6,000 to the truck. It was the student’s first day driving the truck.

The thing is, this isn’t the first time the awning has been damage by a trunk trying to drive under it. It was damaged about a year ago, and finally fixed up about last April. I haven’t seen the new damage–it seems quite a bit more extensive–but I think it is at least a little funny that this isn’t the first time it has happened.

The frequent readers of this site know that I like to look through the search engine statistics for the site and comment on things I think people are looking for. Tonight’s question comes from a Verizon DSL user in California who went to Google to ask: Are otter pops safe?

Otter pops are not made out of spinach, so they are at least a little safer than packaged produce at the moment. The otter pops I buy at Costco come in a box which says, “Pasteurized for purity and wholesomeness.” I assume that means that at least the juice is safe. However, sometimes the plastic rappers break open, which might not be the safest thing for your fine upholstery. Additionally, otter pops do contain sugar, which could make them unsafe to those with sugar sensitivities. Finally, as with all things, eating too many otter pops in too short of time might not be the safest thing.

I went to a dance last night, and although I might have uttered these words before, it might have been the worst dance that I’ve ever been to. It was so bad, that staying at home and Googling the word boring would have been a more enjoyable experience. There were too few many individuals who could not understand that dancing actually involves foot work, and even fewer individuals who actually decided that a dance was worth their presence. Furthermore, it would be great if the people operating the musical devices (normally I would use the term DJ if their creative talents justified such usage) knew a more diverse portfolio of musical pieces, or at least what the true interpretation of the letters R and B should be.

Maybe I just come from a land where dancing to the band is somewhat more grand. I mean, when scenes from reality musicals break out everyday on the streets, it is difficult to view a dance without tunes as extraordinary, although I do promise that I at least tried to keep an open view.

I got an unexpected text message on my phone today from a friend. It made me feel, well, liked. Thanks. Update,17 Sept: Oh, and phone calls are pretty fabtabulous too.

Toilet Controls
Originally uploaded by kingbyu.

My dad is currently in Japan on business, and he sent pack this photo of the controls that go with the toilet. I kind of thought it was funny so I thought that I would share.

This post really isn’t that important, so feel free not to read it. That is because I just got done reading a lot of emails that aren’t that important, so if I can save you a bit of time from having to read this post, I will.

All it takes is a couple of email lists to go a couple days and the unread emails stack up like nothing else. Particularly, the BYU webmasters list and the Nutch users list kept me quite busy.

In other news, I think the spellcheck feature of the Google Toobar is pretty cool.

Perhaps this is just a shameless plug, but I recently set up Wordpress to be used for my mom’s business website. She really likes it, especially how she can edit and post content herself instead of having to go through a webmaster. I really hacked the template to get it to look like a regular website instead of a blog, like Wordpress sites normally do. The url is: http://www.vanillahousedesigns.com . Maybe one of these days I’ll tell her that she actually has a blog.

of course i shouldn’t be surprised that things are not quite like provo, but this is hardly bigger than high school ball. tonight is portland state vs north colorado-and the 1st 2 noCol possessions ended in intercepted passes. more info after the game. Update:Portland State won, something like 45 to 3. I was mostly disappointed in the lack of energy from the student sections (only two sections). The game really wasn’t that interesting, but it was almost amusing during the first quarter or two how many Northern Colorado turnovers there were.

I was looking over BYU Newsnet campus headlines today when I saw this one. The headline was: Opening Socials Welcome Students Back to Campus while the tag line was: To begin the year with a grand entrance, the four on-campus housing areas are holding their opening socials for residents.

The words that seemed a little odd to me are welcome back, and on-campus housing. This just seems a little odd to me because typically a large majority of those who live in on-campus housing are freshman, which means we wouldn’t be welcoming them back. Now granted, there are some students who are returning to campus who live in on-campus housing (many of whom live in Wyview which I argue isn’t really on-campus), but I’m just saying that the headline of the article could have been written to better fit the demographics.

I got a package of baja california starbursts, and the blue ones definately aren’t my favorites.