Have you ever heard of Twitter? If so, you’ll know what I am talking about here. If not, I’ll explain what it is to you. Basically, Twitter is a website that allows you to post very short updates on the happenings of your life. It can go something like this…”I have my hand stuck in the toilet.” You can post as many updates as you would like all day long if you want to. People who follow your Twitter feed can stay updated on how many times you get your hand stuck in the toilet during the day. It’s marvelous.

I hope I am describing the service correctly; I have never actually used it.

Just because I haven’t used Twitter, doesn’t mean I can’t complain about it. Please, let me know if the following is annoying to you too.

The other day, I was watching the news or something like it. Maybe it was one of those news shows, I’m not sure. There was a fascinating story on about how a few surgeons were operating on someone and another doctor was Twittering the goings on of the operation. I didn’t think too much of it at the moment. Then, later that day, I started thinking more about it. I asked myself, “Self, why was a doctor Twittering about an operation as it was in progress?” I began having strange thoughts and my mind started to wander. I must confess, I got annoyed for a while. I finally calmed down and tried to look at the plus side of the whole thing.

Let’s look at the “goods” of Twittering during an operation:

1. Comfort – a family can sit around a computer or a mobile phone reading “Tweets” about their loved one’s operation.
2. Informed – The world can get a first hand look at what goes on during an operation.
3. Progress – The doctors and hospital can glow in the limelight of their cutting-edge technology.
4. Contact – Everyone can be proud of themselves that we no longer need to have any amount of human contact.

Today, I watched the White House press conference for a few minutes. I got to the part where the Press Secretary said, “I find it humorous how many press releases have gone out and how much Twitter activity has gone on about…” I had to stop watching. Are you serious?

Okay, I love technology just as much as the next guy, but at what point do we implant “Borg-like” cybernetic enhancements on the sides of our heads and call it a day?

I thought it was great when email arrived on the scene. What a time saver. Then, when I could read the news online, I was thrilled. When I could finally keep up with friends and families through their blogs, I just loved it. When people started broadcasting every heartbeat that occurs inside their chest cavities, I thought the line was crossed.

I tend to think that this modern computer age is a “tool” to assist us in our “real lives.” Did you read that? A “tool” to “assist” us in our “real lives.” I might be over-quoting here, but I believe we are headed towards a place that is quite the opposite of what I just said. It’s going to be like, “Oh man, I have to go out in the sunshine today? Can’t I just twist the knob on the side of my skull and relay all my thoughts to everyone who belongs to the collective? Well, if I must go outside, I am going to need some sunglasses.”

Exercise? Family time? Conversation? Hiking? Looking someone in the eyes? I don’t think so folks…I’ll just go to YouTube and watch a video of someone else exercising, email my family about what I did today, use Skype to have a face-to-face conversation, get a treadmill and call it a hike and email someone a picture of me. I think that about covers it.

As I am finishing up this post and re-reading it, I am seeing a theme among this post and my prior one about Facebook. It appears that I get most agitated at the constant updating of our lives. With my blog, I write every so often to give you folks some information about me. I do it with thought and care. I plan it, write it and then proof read it. I don’t do it randomly and I certainly don’t do it 30 times a day.

Let’s go back to the Tweet, “I have my hand stuck in the toilet.” I think many of us might ask, “Who cares?” Seriously, “W-h-o c-a-r-e-s?”

To think, I thought I was alone. This guy sums it up nicely.

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The article talked about how people were generally dissatisfied with Windows Vista and that may have been taking its toll on computer sales. In other words, people were willing to stick it out with Windows XP and an older computer, until a new operating system is released. They said that many computer users are waiting for the release of Windows 7. This is what I found interesting…

Here is my logic: If people didn’t want Vista in the first place and were willing to keep an older operating system, how is a new operating system going to fix the problem?

As far as I know, there really isn’t all too much of a pull for a new version of Windows. I totally understand the need to come up with new and better products, but a new version of an operating system every few years isn’t really necessary. Especially when so many users out there are perfectly willing to use an older one. Why not build on that one?

Here is a disclaimer: I have absolutely no reason to believe I know what I am talking about when it comes to the inner workings of software. I am merely stating simple observations.

So here is my question: Has anyone taken an in-depth look at Windows 7? From what I can tell, it looks a lot like other versions of Windows, with things arranged differently, along with some new icons. I am sure the developers over at Microsoft would like to slap me for saying that. I wouldn’t mind someone familiar with the system to comment.

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For the most part, I am very happy with Firefox. It does everything I want it to do (load web pages), but I do have two pretty major compaints:

- Firefox crashes when I close it. I would say this happens 9 times out of 10. I did a reinstall, but that didn’t help. I have also been waiting for this problem to cure itself with each upgrade, but it never does.

- Firefox crashes when I download more than two files. I can download one, no problem. I can download two, no problem. When I try to download three, every one of my Firefox windows disappears.

I have the Firefox crash report set to “on,” but I don’t think anyone over there is reading these things. Who knows, maybe they are. There are many things I am about to read over here. Maybe they will offer some insight on what’s going on.

I may consider giving Chrome a spin, but wanted to get some opinions on it first. If you are using Google Chrome, what do you think of it? Is it worth the download? Is it stable? Do you like Chrome better than Firefox and IE?

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Well, as luck would have it, I received a phone call last night from my friend telling me that his website was bombing again. I Googled his favorite keywords and they seemed to rank fine over at my end, but he explained that he traffic stats from Google was flat. They nosedived a day or two ago. I chalked up the results I was getting to Google adjusting the results.

This new twist got me thinking. What in the world could be making this website’s ranking bounce around like this? Looking back, the proxy website may not have been 100% at fault. There has to be something else.

I began doing a little research and learned about few things about duplicate content. The reason I looked at that particular area is because there is absolutely nothing else I can find wrong with this website. Duplicate content seems to be a rather popular culprit.

I came across a pretty well laid out website called “Google Rankings Diagnostics” that describes a whole heck of a lot of issues you might be having with your website. This website validated what I pretty much already knew…that if you have multiple URLs (on a domain) with the same exact content, Google has trouble figuring out which page is the original and may throw all of them out.

I took a very close look at my friend’s website. Again, I took a unique line of text from his homepage and searched for it in Google (inside quotes). A funny thing happened. I saw the homepage result, but there were a few extra results as well, all on his domain. There were about 5 extra pages in total.

Now, some of these extra results have been there for years, so I don’t attribute the issue to those pages being duplicate content. What struck me was one of the extra pages.

A few months ago, my friend moved one of his pages. He put a 301 redirect in his .htaccess file, which was the correct thing to do. So now, the old directory where the page was held forwarded to a new page. It looked something like this:

Redirect 301 /olddirectory/ http://www.hiswebsite.com/newpage.php

The redirect worked fine, but here is what that extra page in the search results looked like:

http://www.hiswebsite.com/newpage.phpoldpage.php

Guess what page was showing at that URL…yup, the homepage. The dynamic nature of his website sends unknown page results like this to the homepage. This was a fluke. My friend forgot that there were pages inside the old directory he redirected to the new page. Every old page in that old directory was tacked on to the new page, like you see above. To make matters worse, there were a bunch of links from other websites pointing to the old pages in the old directory.

I am not sure if this would cause the ranking drops that he is experiencing, but the timing certainly lines up with when the issue began. It is also certainly considered duplicate content.

So, here is what I did to deal with the issue this time. I deleted the redirects in the .htaccess file and blocked the URLs of all those extra results in the robots.txt file. Hopefully, this will tell Google to not spider or index those pages and it will also tell Google that those links into the site are dead.

Now, we have to wait. I am not going to submit another reinclusion request to Google because I want to see if the ranking returns naturally. If it does, this was the problem for sure.

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I believe I made this change on Friday. Everything went fine on Friday and all Saturday. I thought the problem had been solved. Sunday morning, I woke up and here is what happened:

- Woke computer up
- Typed password
- The computer hung for a few minutes on the welcome screen
- The blue screen appeared
- After about 30 seconds, the computer automatically went to the black Windows Recovery screen
- The computer started normally

I did manage to write down a few things. At the top of the blue screen, I saw the “kernel_data_inpage_error” message. Then, below, I saw the following code – 0×0000007a. I also saw 9ca4d081, 9ca2e000, 0xc04e5268. I am not sure if those last ones mean anything.

On Sunday evening, something different happened:

- Woke computer
- Types password
- The computer hung for a few minutes
- I was presented with a black screen that didn’t go away
- I had to click the button on the front of the computer to restart it
- The computer started normally

It seems that the longer I let the computer sleep, the more this happens. If I wake it up after a short time, everything is fine.

I called Dell Support again and talked with a different tech. I emailed him the Windows minidump file and he analyzed it. I am not sure it showed him anything new. Then, we ran the Windows diagnostic. Everything was fine there…no hardware issues.

We decided to raise the page file to a minimum of 4602 and a maximum of 6144. I am going to run this for a few days and report back to Dell with what I find.

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Ok, since I have been using this new computer, I have had a little issue. When the computer would go into sleep mode, things would be normal. When I would shake the mouse to wake the computer up, sometimes it would hang. After a while, I would get the blue screen that gave me an error. It was “kernel_data_inpage_error.” After the blue screen, the computer would automatically (after a dew seconds) go to the welcome screen and then start as normal. When it started, I would get the normal error box that pops up in Windows that told me the computer didn’t shut down properly and asks if I would like to report this to Microsoft.

Last night, I decided to call Dell support. I spoke with a guy who used a program to take over my computer so he could check some stuff out. He said that it was most likely a driver that was causing the issue. He then checked the paging file size. Reminder…I am running Windows Vista Ultimate. He said, “Hmmm, this is probably causing the problem.” I didn’t get a good look at it, but I believe the paging file size was too small. He increased it to 1000-6000 and things seem to be running smoothly.

After a few minutes, I realized that this computer is now much, much faster. I am assuming this has something to do with the paging file size. Now, it feels like I am working on the computer I bought.

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I unpacked the box and took the computer out. It was pretty heavy. I brought it upstairs and made room for it on my desk. I set everything up and turned the sucker on. I must say, it is pretty much like my other computer, except 10x more expensive.

I do notice some speed increases with certain things, but I am not really doing anything that requires all this processor yet. Regarding moving around all those files, I would say this new system has helped out greatly.

Here are some photos…

My desk with both computers on it.

Front view of the Dell Precision T7400 workstation.

Side view of the Dell Precision T7400 workstation.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, it’s pretty large too. My other computer is tiny compared to it.

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