Ye Li, an incredibly talented co-worker of mine who is well versed in pop culture and Internet Meme-ery sent me a link the other day to the “How Many Justin Biebers Could You Take In A Fight” Quiz (It was hot in NYC that day, and apparently that caused a Justin Bieber song to revolve around Ye’s head like a pack of wild wolves revolves around hurt prey). I decided to take the quiz because, well, it was late in the day and I wanted something fun to do after a pretty stressful afternoon. The first question asks you to listen to a Bieber song on YouTube and give your impression of it, with such whimsical answers as “Is that a guy or girl singing” and “OH GOD MAKE IT STOP!”. I pressed Play on the embedded player and got the video going, and Google helpfully provided me some ads in the lower third. The first ad amused me more than the quiz though:

That’s right ladies and gentlemen – if you listen to Baby by Justin Bieber, Google thinks it’s quite possible that you need to take the Demon Test. Gotta wonder what the analytics data was that caused this association to occur!

Happy Weekend everyone – steer clear of possessed Justin Bieber fans and have a great couple of days off!

Last week, for about 3 days, my GTalk status (As well as my AIM status) read the following:

“If you’re reading this, open up a new e-mail and put my address in the To line, a noun in the body, and an adjective in the subject. I’ll write a story about them and send it back to you”. After a few days, I had two responses. Here’s the stories, in case you’re interested:

Story 1: diluvial Cinnamon

Old man Cinnamon knew it would surely be a horrible day as he gazed out across his farm. Earlier in the week his favorite cow, Bessie (a stereotypical cow in name only, as she had a graduate degree in physics, was an expert markswoman, and of course could talk), had lost the state sharpshooting contest when she was disqualified for using performance enhancing grass. Later that night, Bessie drowned in the diluvial lake after smoking way too much weed. Cinnamon was inconsolable, until he heard a shot ring out from the barn and knew that Clucky, his penultimate favorite chicken had decided to take up Bessie’s legacy.

Story 2: Battered Goldfish

Robert Goldfish knew that the evening was sure to be delightful as he entered the mortuary. Bob (as his friends and enemies knew him) was tired but looking forward to the 42 embalmings awaiting him. As he prepared his work area, he read the report on the first deceased. She’d been bludgeoned, beaten, hit, belted, bonked, slapped, swatted, wallopped, chopped, and banged on the head repeatedly in a case of domestic assault, truly a sad case. As the night went on, he grew even more excited at the prospect of finishing the dirty yet somewhat calming work he enjoyed doing only at night, when the direct sunlight would not hit him as he entered and exited the mortuary. As morning rays of light started to peek through the tepid clouds, Mr. Goldfish left the mortuary, went home, and battered up some pork chops for breakfast.

Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have always used the noun as a proper noun… Anyway, if you’re reading this and want your own story, send me an e-mail and put an adjective in the subject and a noun in the body!

A few days ago I posted that I out-sniped a sniper on eBay to win an auction. Today that auction’s contents came in the mail: 4 of the new-style AAA Safety Patrol badges. Who would want these? Well as a bit of a collector of odd pins and badges, I do!

From Collectibles

These four are interesting in that they’re a radical change from the previous AAA badges of the late 80′s and prior. Originally AAA Safety Patrol used badges that actually looked like a police badge. I’ve got a set of the ones used from the AAA logo change until around the late 90′s, including my original Safety Patrol Membership Card (I “bought” my way up to Captain rank!):

From Collectibles

From Collectibles

As I wrote in the comments on some of these, I’d feel really depressed to be a kid now who gets the Triangle badge as opposed to the Eagle style. After all, when your job is making sure first graders don’t get run over by senile old ladies in cross walks, you might as well have something respectable upon your belt. If you want to see some of the other odd things I collect, check out my Collections page for a taste. And if you happen to have an old safety patrol badge (the style with an eagle but with large AAA instead of the circular logo), I’d love to take it off your hands!

Coming soon: A badge for 1960s Television Fans…

A few weeks ago I got this piece of Comment SPAM in my e-mail:

A new comment on the post #94 "Does Spam Work?" is waiting for your approval
http://jonwestfall.com/2007/04/does-spam-work/
Author : Make Money Online with Mr. X
E-mail : russianmobvictim85943@gmail.com
Comment:
HELP! I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia and being forced to post spam comments on blogs! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. They’re coming back now. Please send help!

Needless to say I didn’t approve it… which probably means I contributed to someone’s untimely demise…

Photo: sindesign

Merry Christmas!

I’m writing this from Karey’s parent’s house in Burgettstown, and while they are wonderful people in every respect, they are not early birds – even on Christmas. So it’s 10:11 AM and the plethora of Christmas gifts are still unopened, and Karey & I are the only two awake in this house of 7. The aforementioned plethora of gifts (as shown above) will have to wait!

I wanted to take a moment, however, and write this post to say Merry Christmas to the many people I hang out with, work with, and talk with over the year. While I know some of the people below don’t celebrate Christmas proper (as they observe different religions), I’m hoping the message of peace and love will be received by all.

Merry Christmas to my parents, Al and Dianne, and Lily the troublemaking cat and Mr. Bird (A parakeet who, in bird years, is the most senior of us all). Thank you for simply everything – I can’t say more!

Merry Christmas to Karey’s family, Dan & Sue, Greg, Scott, and Mark. I couldn’t ask for better in-laws! Also Merry Christmas to Karey’s Aunt Maryann and Uncle Bob (And Mandy!), and my Aunt Lois and Uncle Bud for coming to my graduation!

Merry Christmas to my friends, co-workers, mentors, advisors, assistants, collaborators, followers (and followed!), and a plethora of people that come to mind as I sit here on Christmas Morning. They’re listed below, in no particular order, and of course my Christmas Greetings and wishes are extended not only to them but also their family & loved ones:

• Steve Jocke
• Tony Rylow
• Erika Rylow
• Maria Gaglio
• Marie Batteiger
• Michael Batteiger
• Jason Dunn
• JD Jasper
• Eric Johnson
• Elke Weber
• Martine Baldassi
• Bernd Figner
• Annie Ma
• Julie Zelmanova
• Ye Li
• Ariana Garrote
• Ashley Newman
• The grad students left at U of T – you guys will be done sooner than you think!
• The grad students at CU – a great group of people to work with and support!
• Holly Feiler
• Darius, Ed, Janak, & all the rest of the Thoughts Media Clan
• Linda, Dave, Jim, & Katie Spurrier
• Paul Culbertson
• Mike Fosmire
• Rebecca Rodriguez, Tara Reineck, and the rest of my former students at U of T!
• Trella Williams
• Will Loeffler
• Jim Bradford
• My MS MVP homies, as well as the tech writers I’ve worked with, joked with, and hung out with in the past year!
• My CCD RCIA group at Assumption (Christian, Nester, Ana, Vanessa, Georgina, Marcos, Daisy, and Erik)
• A slew of old High School friends (and teachers) who have followed me and kept up with my antics!
• A ton of Twitter Followers (Yes, I suppose even the Spambots, it’s not their fault they’re spammy)
• A lot of Facebook friends that I can’t begin to type all the names of. It’s following all of your adventures that makes me feel more connected to my past, present, and future goals!
• The random people who read JonWestfall.Com and the actual humans who have posted comments!
• And lastly, to anyone I’ve forgotten and even complete strangers (Yes, I’m covering my bases here!): MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Well, I hope that about wraps up this post. Now it’s off to motivate some Himmels to open presents and enjoy the day!

In the spirit of AutoCompleteMe, here are some of my own Autocomplete oddities. And here’s one of theirs that I particularly like

No… then they wouldn’t be dogs…

It causes arm growth…

And who doesn’t?

I recently came across a site that contains humorous Google search queries and the wonders of an autocomplete algorithm that is slightly twisted at times. You can read all of theirs, and for your amusement, I submit one of my own:

So got this today, and I really doubt that I’m going to approve it – despite it’s gracious tone! Holes in the wall is especially classy!

A new comment on the post #343 "Stupid People Alert: LOE: What do you mean I can get an STD from that???" is waiting for your approval
http://jonwestfall.com/2005/10/stupid-people-alert-loe-what-do-you-mean-i-can-get-an-std-from-that/
Author : STD Testing
E-mail : kiey@anylabtestnow.com
URL    : http://www.prweb.com/releases/std-testing-centers/dallas/prweb3224224.htm

Comment:
This article is good. People should be up front about thier sexuality (man or Woman). Either way both parties should use protection. Holes in the wall to have sex, to me that is just like picking a random person and having sex with them in the alley behind a store.I guess there isn’t anyone who is still in a serious realtioship anymore these days.

So since some have asked, here’s some data on my weird 200 pageviews:

The Averages

Here are my “norms”, as you can see, this is a pretty big shift!

The Content

So what were they looking at? Well, nothing in particular! Mostly old blog posts. My usual articles are toward the top, but then a bunch of really old content got scooped up as well!

The Source

Of that 81.32% direct:

So it looks like a bot to me. Why they want my inane old posts is beyond me…

The plot thickens though – I had another spike a few months ago, on September 29. On that day again it was 80.7% direct. Here’s the interesting part though – the locations of these spikes are all England. Here’s Sept 29 (first spike), the time between, and yesterday (Second spike)

September 29 Geographic Breakdown:

September 30 – Nov 11 Geographic Breakdown:

And Yesterday (Spike 2)

So it looks like I’m a hit in England, on certain days, this fall. Or maybe it’s something more sinister. Any thoughts? These are unique visitors, from the same geographic area, but not the same address!