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If we hide, maybe the Apocalypse will go away

Will Santa’s workshop burn faster when the Mayan apocalypse happens because he’s got so much coal to deliver for Christmas?

I’m pretty sure we won’t have to worry about the answer to that question, but it’s a thought. The only reason I’m bringing up the subject is because some people talk about how if the Mayans could really predict the future, they would have predicted the arrival of “Spanish dudes with steel and influenza” (quote courtesy of one of my favorite authors, Christopher Moore). Here’s my problem: How can a race of people avoid getting annihilated?

Think about it. “A bunch of people will be sailing into the harbor next month. Their weapons are much better than ours and we’ll get very sick if they get too close. They want to kill us, ravage our lands, then hang around for a long, long time. Hmmm… okay, here’s the plan: we huddle up in a cave with some blankets, my teddy bear and a Swiss Army pocketknife… we should be fine for the next five or ten years.”

And I can hear you all screaming, “That’s ridiculous! The Spanish didn’t invade Switzerland to steal their pocketknives before going overseas to wipe out the Mayans!” I’ll grant you that, which means the Mayans wouldn’t have had any of the little gizmos and they’d have to use spears to open canned goods while hiding in their bunkers that they built to avoid getting wiped out.

Seriously, people. Even if the Mayans knew that the Spanish were coming, what could they do about it? They didn’t have bunkers, they didn’t have pocketknives and they didn’t have teddy bears. They were screwed.

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Lies, damned lies, and WordPress statistics

Two or three months ago, @dangergirl101 tweeted that the website she operates with her husband had just reached one million views. She’s an old friend, so I sent her a reply to say “Guess I lost the popularity contest we weren’t actually having… Congrats on hitting 1M!” She thanked me, said she always reads my blog, then assured me that I’d hit one million in no time.

I couldn’t help but smile when I read that. Why? Because WordPress Site Stats started monitoring views back in February, 2011 and I finally reached 15,000 views in November, 2012. At that pace, it’ll be many, many years before I can even start sniffing the nether regions of a million.

A few days ago, I decided to look for some new plugins to add to the blog. That’s how I found the “Share this” buttons that are at the bottom of each entry, so maybe I’d find something else interesting. I eventually stumbled upon NewStatPress, which keeps track of a lot more than the number of views and top posts and pages.

It shows the most recent hits, search terms, referrals, page views, etc. Basically, it gives me a lot more information. Most of it isn’t necessary. I mean, I don’t really need to know that the last referrer to the site was www.myreliabledating.com. It’s interesting and amusing, but not necessary.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because of Sunday and Monday. I’ll admit that I’ve never thought this blog was really popular. For the most part, I write it because I enjoy it. That said, I’m not the only person who reads it—my parents occasionally ask me questions—which is why I was disappointed when I looked at the WordPress Stats page and saw zero views on Sunday and two on Monday. Two visitors in two days. *sigh*

Then I clicked on the NewStatPress overview page, thinking that a referrer with a name like pervertedcookie.au.pn would lift my spirits. What I saw first was that the number of visitors on Sunday was 39 and Monday was 41. Eighty visitors instead of two. Let’s see here… 80/2 = 40 x 15,000 WordPress views = 600,000 NewStatPress views. Huh… so that’s what the nether regions of one million smells like.

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Showing respect in the wake of tragedy?

If you’re reading this on the Internet, then you’ve probably been inundated with information from all sides about the shooting in a grade school in Newtown, Connecticut yesterday. Personally, I think it was disgusting. And I’m not just talking about what happened inside the school.

Immediately afterward, news reporters and camera crews arrived on the scene to “gather information”, which entailed a lot of pictures and videos of emotionally distraught parents, teachers, children… the pain on their faces was very real. Reading that kids were being interviewed just after their friends were killed makes me sick to my stomach. Yes, you want to get “the scoop”, but from five-year-olds who were scared for their lives, hearing screams coming through the intercom and seeing that kind of slaughter? Not cool. Not cool at all.

And then other people jumped at the chance to push their own political agendas. “Gun control!” “Stop trying to take away our guns!” “Without guns, this couldn’t have happened!” Yes, it could have happened. Do we have too many guns in this country? Maybe, but taking them away isn’t going to solve the problem. If someone breaks into a school with a big knife, is that somehow better? He didn’t have a gun, so it’s okay? Most objects are potentially lethal. The problem isn’t the object—it’s the person holding it. Some reports say the killer had a history of mental illness, so maybe we should quit bitching about gun control and look at ways to help people who think they should do something like this in the first place.

But you know what else happened yesterday? A lot of kids got some extra hugs from their parents. There’s no way we should dismiss the tragedy that happened and the pain that community is feeling right now, but give your kids some extra hugs. Remember the importance of life, of love, of family. Flags flying at half mast seems like a hollow gesture to me, so if you really want to show some respect for the people of Newtown, let your kids know how much they mean to you and give them some extra hugs.
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Good God. I’m not adding this to apologize for saying that the problem springs from something beyond gun control, but when someone suggests that people with autism lack empathy and that’s why it happened… there are not enough teeth in that man’s head to knock out. His opinion is biased, it’s offensive, and it’s wrong. Autism doesn’t push people over the edge into crazy. Show some respect for auties and Aspies, too, would you?

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It’s… it’s not loading! We’re all gonna die!

My sleeping patterns have been sporadic as of late—it’s probably a carry-over from studying for my Econ final at random hours of the day and night over the course of three or four days—which would explain why I’ve been awake since 5:30 this morning instead of sleeping past noon. Because of that fact, I’ve learned a very horrifying truth:

FACEBOOK IS DOWN!!! FACEBOOK IS DOWN!!!

I need to look at my friends’ recent status updates and pictures of cute kitties! If Facebook can go offline, it’s just a matter of time! It’s all over, man! We’re all gonna die!

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Wow, look at all those 12’s.

I’m sure you’ve heard it a bajillion times today. This is our last sextuple on the calendar for another century. 12:12:12 on 12/12/12. Yowza! (As you can probably tell, this event is making me very excited.)

I honestly don’t think it’s that big a deal. We’re in the year 2012 AD (Anno Domini) according to the Gregorian calendar. But what if we’re using the wrong calendar? What if the dates are wrong? Maybe someone messed up and this year is actually 2011, in which case we’ll have another sextuple coming up next December. According to the Hebrew calendar, it’s Year 5774, in which case we only have to wait a few decades before hitting another series of nifty dates that people make a big hubbub about.

And what about quintuples? Don’t people care about those anymore? We can use military time and people can get excited about 13:13:13 on 1/3/13! And then again in 2014! All the way to 2023! Yowza!

(On a side note, I’m glad the Internet hasn’t been blasted by people who live right next to the borders of time zones. “Hey, it’s 12:12:12 on 12/12/12! Now I’m gonna cross the street and wait for 59 minutes so I can celebrate the same thing all over again!”)

In case you’re wondering, I’m not bitter because I wasn’t looking at the clock when it scrolled past 12:12 this afternoon. It just seems really arbitrary to me. I suppose that could change over time. Hey, everyone who thinks I should be more excited today! How about you go away and stop bothering me, then find me again 100 years from now and see how I feel about the final sextuple? I bet if you hold a horn up to my mouth and I have the lung capacity to blow into it and make any noise… Yowza!

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Free at last, free at last! Thank Augsburg College, I’m free at last!

Tonight was my final class in Augsburg’s MBA program. It’s all over. I’m done. Now I’ll have a degree coming in the mail sometime soon that I can add to the collection that’s already resting against my bedroom wall.

Well, technically, I’m not entirely done: I have to write a couple two-page papers for Applied Managerial Economics that need to be done by tomorrow, so once the clock chimes 6:00PM, it’s officially all over. No more teachers, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks. Yes, I wrote teacher twice—it seems appropriate under the circumstances. (I don’t recall whether I’ve written about my Econ professor in here, but I’ll just leave it as “I don’t like his attitude and don’t think he was a good teacher.”)

Class started with an hour-long final exam, after which, hey, there was nothing else really keeping us there. One or two people left, but there was a final group presentation that some classmates needed to make and most people were polite enough to stay. Finally, the professor taught us the short, short version of macroeconomics. It took about twenty minutes. And that was it. (That was probably for the best, given that I’d had minimal amounts of sleep last night and was already doing the tired head bob.)

It all feels really anticlimactic at the moment, which I guess is understandable. I only had night classes once a week and didn’t do my homework on a constant basis. I was doing it, but usually at the last minute. Maybe it’ll sink in on Sunday when I can watch football all day and not have to worry about any schoolwork, showering and shaving and driving into the city for class on Monday… maybe.

In the meantime, I know I need to work on those papers, but I also know I need sleep. Badly. I’ve got a bunch of empty cans of Mountain Dew next to my desk that I’d drink while studying and studying had a tendency to last until the wee hours of the morning (see: entry about the online textbook site under maintenance), so… yeah. No caffeine currently in my system and my brain is starting to check out. Sleep is good. So are formal-looking sheets of paper with my name on them. Good night.