Warped Knowledge

Went to Coney Island on a mission from God

2005-10-02T13:16:00.000-04:00

So. The biiiiig day was upon us – taking my son and his girlfriend to Across the Narrows at Coney Island.

I, being the uber-control freak mother that I am, had planned out the 12 hour day in exact 60 minute segments that, if the day had gone as I had scheduled, would have been perfect.

But rule 1043.5 in the book of mothering states that when you do have your day planned out in perfect 60 minute segments, whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Sadly, the world doesn’t function on mother segments.

First off, the weather was perfect. Somewhere in my life I must have pleased some Goddess of Music, because whenever I have to attend a concert, the weather is beyond beautiful. It was about 75 degrees. Can that get any better? We left the house at 10:30 and were at Keyspan Park at 11:20. Again, perfect.

At first WarpedTourDad and I were going to hang at Coney for the day at the Film Festival, but we bagged that idea. We watch soooo many movies, and it was soooo beautiful out, we decided it would be a sin to spend such a beautiful day watching movies. We dropped them off in front of Keyspan and then made a quick jog through the Battery Tunnel over to Manhattan. We thought perhaps we’d stop at the TKTS booth in Times Square and go see a show.

Now, every time we have ever gone to the TKTS booth, we’ve waited in line for perhaps a minimum of 45 minutes. Today there was no line whatsoever. Again, repeat after me – perfect.

We got two tickets to see Jewtopia (very funny), had a quick bite to eat from a street vendor, and then saw the show. Jim was text messaging me every two hours as requested just to let me know they hadn’t been kidnapped and sold into slavery, forcing me to go on a transcontinental adventure into the underground world of human trafficking to rescue them, so the day was going too fine.

After the show we took a cab over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Medicine in Ancient Egypt exhibit, which was, again that magic word – perfect. After this exhibit we stayed for a lecture on impressionism and post-impressionism.

Here’s where things started to fall apart.

The area of the museum the lecture was in had no cell phone reception. So as the lecture started, my son text messaged me, only not to get a response. He messaged me again 15 minutes later, and again no response. By the time the lecture was over he had messaged me 4 times and left 1 voicemail message. Because I’ve successfully transferred all of my neuroses into him, the fact that I wasn’t answering had him completely freaked out. As we started to make our way out of the museum cell phone reception returned, and my phone rang to have a frantic Jim on the other end wondering if perhaps I had been kidnapped and sold into slavery, forcing him and his girlfriend to go on a transcontinental adventure into the underground world of human trafficking to rescue me.

And even though no less than 5 security guards yelled at me to turn off my phone, I assured him that we were fine. Yes, it’s rude to scream at the top of your lungs I CAN’T HEAR YOU. WHAT? WHAT? ARE YOU OK? DO YOU NEED ME TO COME GET YOU? on a cell phone in the Museum of Art, but when you are starting a panic attack, politeness goes out the window.

Anatomy of a Panic Attack:

7:45 PM We took a cab back to Times Square. We were starving and really not thinking too clearly. It had been a long day and we were exhausted. The restaurants were all pretty empty as the shows were about to start. There was a sea of empty tables at the Hard Rock, so we thought maybe we’d grab a quick veggie burger there, and then be in the car on our way back to Coney by 9:00, giving us a good hour to battle traffic back to Brooklyn. I originally had wanted to be back at Coney by 8:30 so we could grab some coffee, sit on the beach and listen to The Pixies, have some romantic time alone, just us on the beach with the lights of Coney behind us, that kind of thing, but I was so hungry and tired I really just wanted to sit down. That was mistake #1.

8:05 PM. Our drinks arrive. I think the food can’t be too long behind. I am wrong.

8:30 PM. I noticed that people who had been there longer than us still hadn’t gotten their food; I was starting to get worried.

8:45 PM. Our food still hadn’t come, we had had it. We asked the waitress to just get us our two $25 veggie burgers to go.

9:05 PM. She still hadn’t come out. I was starting to flip out. The concert was scheduled to be over by 10:00. At this point listening to The Pixies was the furthest thing from my mind; I just wanted to get back to Coney Island before the concert ended so we’d be there to get them when the park emptied. I was having images in my mind of the FDR being backed up, followed by the tunnel being backed up, followed by the BQE being backed up, followed by the Belt Parkway being backed up, followed by us arriving at Coney Island at 11:30 only to find the lights off, the park emptied, and my son and his girlfriend kidnapped and sold into slavery, forcing me to… ok you know the rest. I’m seriously considering just walking out at this point. I really should have.

9:15 PM. We finally were out of The Hard Rock (the last time ever in my life will I step foot in a Hard Rock Café mind you, are you hearing this Hard Rock Café, the last time you will get $50 from us for two veggie burgers. I hope you’re happy after all the $25 veggie burgers we have ordered from you, but n’ere again. You’re dead to me, Hard Rock Café. And by the way – your veggie burgers suck. All those times when the waitress came to our table and asked, "How's everything?" and I answered, "It's perfect" -- I was faking it.)

Still exhausted, still starving, still light-headed, and here’s where we made mistake #2. We thought the parking lot was on 43rd when in fact it was on 42nd. I’m messaging my son telling him we’ll be a little late so please stay in front of the Park near the 5 million NYC street, bike and mounted police that had been pumped into Coney for this event, but he’s not answering me.

Why?

His cell phone battery ran out.

There is the brink of insanity, and then there is the abyss.

That is the point where I fell over the edge into the chasm of total overprotective mother freak out.

9:45 PM After spending 20 minutes stumbling around Times Square like a schizophrenic crack whore, and 10 minutes waiting for them to get our car, we finally were on the FDR. And I’m flipping out, WarpedTourDad is flipping out asking me to please calm down, no concert ever ends on schedule, we’ll be there by 10:15 at the latest, but no, there is no stopping me, and he’s trying to calm me down, but there’s no calming me, and in the midst of all of this, we miss the exit for the tunnel.

Mistake #3.

Now we’re on the West Side Highway heading towards the Holland Tunnel, with no place in the world to turn around. How on EARTH did we wind up on the West Side is beyond me, but panic attacks transport you through space and time so you can be heading south on the FDR only to miraculously be heading north on the West side. There’s a traffic tip for you commuters.

I’m pretty much catatonic at this point in post-panic attack mode. There is no place to turn around and head back south towards the tunnel. Opening a vein in my neck with my own nails is a viable option to me at this point. Not even The Warriors wanted to get back to Coney as badly as I did.

But, all’s well that ends well. We made it to Coney by 10:30. They only had to wait about a half hour for us. They were not kidnapped and sold into slavery, and we were in our front door by 11:30.

But the saddest thing?

The Pixies played Debaser. And I had a chance to hear Debaser, sitting on the beach, with the lights of Coney Island behind me, and I missed it.

I dunno, but there is just something so cool about the idea of your own kid going to a concert by a band that you adored the year he was born. Isn’t that neat-o?

They had a great time though, and that’s what counts. He’s wanted to see The Pixies ever since they got back together, and I was so happy I could give that to him. And is there any place in the world better than Keyspan Park to have a concert? I think not.

Y’anno, there is a lot of controversy about the revitalization of Coney Island. I have a love-hate relationship with Coney that I’ll write about in more detail someday. In a nutshell, I love Coney Island more than mere words can describe, and while every inch of me would love to see it return to the grandeur it once was, I hope with my heart that the camp and funk that it is now somehow remains.

I’m glad that this season at Coney ended with such a fantastic blast. We’ll be back there in June for the Mermaid Parade.

I'll be calmed down by then.

If your kids are going to Across The Narrows...

2005-09-22T08:27:00.000-04:00

... and you're looking for something to do during the day while they are there, here's an idea:

Coney Island Film Festival

It looks great!

Unite the United: A Concert to Raise Money for the Victims of an American Tragedy

2005-09-09T06:59:00.000-04:00

Give, but not through PayPal

2005-09-04T10:01:00.000-04:00

Even though I did sign up for the Blog for Relief Weekend, I haven't really had much to say that hasn't been said already.

One thing I did wish to report on was the terrible ordeal that Rich Kyanka has gone through after raising over $20,000 via Something Awful. In a nutshell, PayPal closed SomethingAwful's account due to 'suspicious activity' from one of his buyers.

Please.

Something Awful has been one of my favorite places online over the years. Sometimes I tend to get a bit... blue. In technical terms, I suffer from depression. For me, there is no therapy or medication that equals humor, and on days when I have that unexplicable 'the world is hopeless and so am I' feeling, nothing equals a browse through Photoshop Phriday or the GBS forums to pull me out of it.

At the time PayPal locked their account, Something Awful was raising nearly $3,500 an hour to the relief effort. In case you missed that, I'll repeat:

SomethingAwful was raising nearly $3,500 an hour to the relief fund.

They were cut off on 9/3 somewhere around 9:30 PM. You do the math.

SomethingAwful has done some amazing things through the years... raising funds to buy body armor for our troops, buying toys for sick children... it would be stupid for me to name them all. If you're a goon or a fan, you know how great that site is. And I'm not surprised that they raised so much money in such a short amount of time.

I'm disgusted by PayPal though. So by all means give, but not through PayPal.

Here's the charities list. You know what to do.

Technorati Tags: flood aid, Hurricane Katrina

You'll loot my server when you pry it out of my cold dead fingers.

2005-09-01T05:57:00.000-04:00

The Interdictor.

I'll never complain about my tech support job again.

Still trying to get caught up on two week's worth of work. I have very little time to read any blogs or work on the website right now, but when I do have some free time, that's the blog I'm reading, just for the sheer I-don't-believe-I'm-actually-reading-this factor.

Bottom line: I love my job, I love my customers, but I'd have been soooo outta there long before tech operations turned into a paramilitary exercise. Today, I'm very grateful all I have to deal with are people who can't get their VPN to work properly when inside a hotel wireless network, as opposed to being barricaded in a high-rise with ersatz tie-around-their-foreheads Rambo SysAdmins. Not like I'm judging them or anything, honestly I'm really a 'walk a mile in another man's shoes' type person... but if I had the choice between heading for high ground or having support teams reconfigured into things like this:

"Camp Crystal is locked down for the night. Team SOTI (that's the crew up here) has broken up into 3 squads. Squad 1 is on diesel detail. Squad 2 is on patrol. Squad 3 is on service and support."

it's kind of a no-brainer. I'd take the pink slip.

Wednesday WarpedBlogging VIII

2005-08-10T19:50:00.000-04:00

Awww… did you think I forgot what today was, kids?

Nope. I didn’t forget. I’ve been holding off posting this all day in the hopes that a certain someone would update their blog. Who was it that kept me from giving you your weekly Wednesday WarpedBlog fix? You’ll have to wait ‘till the end but, believe me, it’s worth it.

Cheney, a pal of Captain Dan’s, filled in for his shoes on August 4th. It was a bad bathroom day for her, it seems. Before August 4th, I had never heard of a ‘water bra’. You learn something new every day.

“What’s up with punk rock today?” Has any other genre ever evoked such debate? You wonder if somewhere on the other side of the world, people are blogging over, “Damn. Angklung has really sold out.”

AngelWings writes a truly well-thought piece on the commercialism of Warped Tour. Having the advantage of seeing Warped from an employee standpoint for few years, she brings that wisdom into her great, great post. Is going to Warped Tour about who you are, or what you do? Interesting question.

Hurricane Joey writes what I think a lot of people feel. In the beginning, Warped Tour was a way to showcase punk bands who, by the nature of the genre, aren’t (weren’t) able to come up with the funds for a national event. Now that punk is mainstream, it kind of necessarily follows that what will be considered punk is mainstream as well.

How do I feel about it all? I could write my opinion… but it’s been said before, and much better as well. I’ll let Tripp of the Unseen speak, because here’s what I believe. And written in a style I could only hope to come close to in a million years.

Now that we’ve waxed philosophic on the nature of punk, let’s get down to the day itself.

Please don’t worry about the author of LimsBlog. They were not hurt, not even by fat crowd surfers. That was just hair dye.

Teejay here has a very detailed review, while freakitiki has some tips for you.

Speaking of tips, that’s what I’ve been waiting for!

This incredibly amazing, detailed, well-written and everything else good you can possibly say about a blogger blog by Mike has broken his WarpedBlogging into three – count ‘em – three separate posts. Warped Tour: The Experience on August 8th, Warped Tour: The Review on August 9th and Warped Tour: The Tips. I’ve been hoping the third and final installment would get online soon, but as of this posting it’s still not there. Hopefully the Tips post will be up by the time you read it. Great blog!

Well, time to run. I’ve got a secret for you. I’m Warped out, really. I’m so backed up on posting reviews it isn’t even funny. God bless those on this tour who bring it to you day after day after day all summer long. Honestly, I don’t know how they do it. Especially considering they’re doing as victim to the elements, while I’m just reporting on it from the comfort of my home office. But I’m anxious to get started on the overhaul of the page and get back to my search engine optimization efforts. After all this time I am still not in the Yahoo index (not the directory, mind you, the index) which is a puzzle even greater than Google SERPS.

Hey, and one last thing -- does anyone know what happened to the Unofficial Warped Tour site? It's been down for a while. Anyone?

Apparently I have started a disturbing trend

2005-08-08T07:53:00.000-04:00

I got this from the band A Void over at MySpace:

"hey when we were on warped tour i saw a lot of moms wearing big, pink Warped Tour Mom's shirts...is that like a big cult or something?! just wondering, cause we saw them all over the country. "

Who are these women, and why are they masquarading as me?

Did you see a big pink Warped Tour Mom shirt there?

Did you buy a big pink Warped Tour Mom shirt there?

It’s actually a good idea though and I may put it on my todo list for Warped Tour 2006. When I re-do the page, I may start up a CaféPress site selling some shirts. Personally I wouldn't do pink at Warped, but if it's selling..... Hey, every little bit helps.

I really wonder where they came from. For some reason "Hot Topic" keeps popping up in my head but I'm not sure. I would think the legalities of actually selling something with the words 'Warped Tour' on them may open up a can of copyright troubles, although as long as it didn't have the actual logo on it, that may be ok. I'll ask my lawyer what he thinks.

Speaking of the page, it’s got to sit for right now. Incredibly busy day which includes taking two dead computers to the shop.

P.S. If you were at Warped Tour and happen to have a picture of one of these imposter Warped Tour Moms, could you drop me a copy at tmdwarped at yahoo dot com? I’d be interested in seeing what these shirts looked like. Thanks.

P.P.S. Due to my much kvetched-about car accident, I was not nor will not be at Warped Tour this year, so I hereby disavow any behavior of these Warped Tour Moms in the big pink shirts. If you saw a Warped Tour Mom in a big pink shirt, it was not me.

No rest for the wicked

2005-08-07T17:55:00.000-04:00

I went away for the weekend.

Have come home to pandemonium.

My step-son's computer needs a new power supply. The video card on my computer I share with the kids is fried. My husband's computer is just plain old dead.

I do tech support for a living.

There goes my plans for a relaxing Sunday night.

I don't even want to ask them what they were doing whilst I was gone. Somehow I think it all has something to do with my reminders to unplug the computers when an electrical storm passes through the area going unheeded.

Men. They never listen.

I'm just glad my work computer here has a BIOS password none of them know. If I came home to this one being dead too, heads would roll.

Oh well. At least I had a good visit with my mom.

Because I just don't read enough blogs

2005-08-04T12:32:00.000-04:00

If it's Thursday, it must be BlogSoldier's surf day. That's how I keep the traffic exchange sites straight. Whilst surfing I found a new one, BlogAdvance

They give 50 credits to sign up and offer .5 credits per view.

You can earn 10% of your referrals surfing credits weekly up to an equal amount of your own surfing credits. Neat idea!

Edit: a comment left let me know about another new one: VirtualLoop

Wednesday WarpedBlogging VII

2005-08-03T18:39:00.000-04:00

You know what an Earworm is, right kids? That’s when you get a song stuck in your head that just won’t go away. There is actually a scientific reason for it.

Well, I have most of the WarpedBloggers of this past week to curse, for they gave me a truly painful earworm.

Kansas.

Dust in the Wind.

I would give my left arm to have this song out of my head after wading through all the blog posts in Feedster that mentioned dust.

A few of these people mentioned dust, but they also wrote such interesting and/or amusing stories that I forgive them.

Those who went to the Warped Tour TheFlashingMango attended suffer from the same malady of those who go to Randall’s Island – namely, black boogers. You know, when you hear people talking about blowing black boogers out of their nose for 3 days after Warped Tour, you think they are joking. Until you experience it for yourself.

That Amy Dials. She’s such a dork and a renob. I don’t know what a renob is, but I know she doesn’t mind me calling her one. Speaking of name-calling, I loved the description of those waiting in line over at There Are No Rules

Captain Dan traded in his notepad for the day to apprentice as a sign person. He didn’t do such a bad job of it, but he thinks he’ll keep his day job.

And my favorite WarpedBlogger this week? It’s none other than Beth, a fellow descendant of we, the cursed distant relatives of the Tuatha de Danann* who cannot spend more than 5 minutes in the sun without turning lobster red. Poor Beth endured a bad breakfast, sunburn and heatstroke, but got her waffle cone in the end!

Speaking of favorite WarpedBloggers, my fave Trish from last week is so cool, she went to yet another Warped Tour. Check out her updates at her blog here and look for two – count ‘em – two great parent reviews on my main page from her tomorrow.

This mom over at The Puppy Pile didn’t go to Warped Tour, but she blogs about one of the drawbacks of text messaging with a child who did. Only a 13 year old would text message their mother with “Well I almost like blacked out” Poor mom. You know she almost like had a heart attack when she read that. Thankfully the rest of the day went well.

I don’t have many entries this week. Sorry kids, but it was a busy day. I’ll just leave you with this post and thought. My blog posts tend to ramble on way too long. Sometimes the shortest posts are the best. And as they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words. Proving I can count correctly, Meg sums it all up in 1,003 words for you here.

If I overlooked you this week, it was only because I was so pressed for time. Don’t be shy about contacting me if you’ve got a WarpedBlog others would enjoy. I’d love to highlight you next week’s go ‘round.

Oh! I almost forgot.

I’m going to leave you with one last thing. Because you kids did this to me, I’m going to return the favor. Here you go:

I close my eyes
Only for a moment, then the moment’s gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind
Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind.
Now, don't hang on
Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind Dust in the wind

Have fun exterminating that earworm. Mine is still running rampant through my auditory cortex.

-----------
*Tuatha de Danann - Cool and funky if not totally historically accurate name for us folks of Irish descent

I grabbed

2005-08-02T09:58:00.000-04:00

I found another social networking site a la Myspace - Grab.com. It's been around since October of 2004, but as I'm not real big on online communities I just found it now. Not surprisingly, both myspace and grab are owned by Intermix. Where myspace is the DIY engine for indie bands, grab is the same for indie game developers. Very interesting.

Grab is like a cross between MySpace and Pogo. I haven't spent much time there, but the overall memberbase seems to be of a similar age range to MySpace. It's a lot easier to navigate than MySpace, but I got irritated when trying to fill out the profile page. I just did a cut and paste of my myspace profile. I may play around with customizing it some more during my lunch breaks. The interface seems more stable, as I did not once get that "Sorry, an unexpected error has occurred" message that runs rampant through myspace.

They have an "I wanna" feature that is reminiscent of 43 things, but sadly only 7 people wanna go to Warped Tour. They also have tokens that can be traded in for prizes, and some obscure karma points system that lets members rate each other’s actions. I don't think I'll be spending enough time on the site to raise my karma any significant level, but the game aspect looks interesting.

I've started seeing Grab profiles show up when I was googling 'warped tour', so I decided it would be a good idea to get a profile up there too. If anyone has a fledgling website directed at the youth market, it may be a good idea to get a grab profile up with a few of your keywords in it. So many emails I get from parents start with, "My (son or daughter) found your website at MySpace and emailed me a link to your page."

When you run a site like mine, those are great words to see in an email!

Can we go back to that cougar part again?

2005-08-01T06:47:00.000-04:00

My husband is a lot of fun to watch TV with.

He really gets into it. After a show is over, and during it as well, he wants to talk about it. And analyze what just happened. And talk, ad nauseum, about the psychological ramifications and motivations of the characters. It drives the kids nuts. “Hello, Daaad”, my stepson will say, “Here’s a news blast for you: It’s a TV show. They are actors. This did not really just happen.” My son and stepdaughter are less subtle. They'll just scream, "Shut uuuuuppppp!!!"

We get series on DVD and watch them, because with my work schedule I’m usually busy when a show is on. He will hit the pause button a minimum of 3 times during any episode to discuss why Leo Glynn really is the best warden that prison could have, being both an African American male and a former corrections officer, or why Adrianna, for all her faults, really was a pure soul at heart and didn’t deserve that although she really should have seen it coming, or argue with me, over and over, why Carmella knew what she was getting into when she married him, or rant and rave over why Kim Bauer is the most useless character ever in a show and there is no way, no f*cking way, that air brained moron would have ever gotten a job like that even if her dad worked there and – OK, you get my point.

I think it’s cute. The kids don’t, but I do.

He never really liked Six Feet Under. One night a few years ago I was late getting back, so he decided to sit down and watch the show so he could tell me what I missed during the opening. He knows I love those death scenes in the beginning. What he didn’t know was that they were re-running the first season that night. Starting with the first episode. I came back about halfway through the show. As I walked in the door he jumped up from the couch and yelled, “The dad died!”

I cracked up. He didn’t know that was the first episode, and he thought that the dad was a major character who’s death was going to cause a major shift in the script. I was laughing so hard I was crying, really. I told that story at work and everyone died laughing.

Sometimes though he talks through the shows while they are actually airing, which does annoy me a bit. Last night even he hit the damn mute button twice to start to argue over Rico’s emotional affair and whether or not Vanessa should still carry this pain or ask who does Claire and her new Republican boyfriend remind me of and I had to hit him. I don’t like to be a violent woman, but he brings me to it sometimes.

Last night, when Nate died I thought he was going to have a stroke. I was really afraid for him. He screamed, “OH MY GOD!” so loud the windows rattled. My stepson laughed so hard at him he was crawling on the floor.

I just kind of sat there stunned. I kind of saw it coming after that whole narm thing, but was hoping that it wouldn’t.

I wished we had TiVO.

I would have liked to have seen that cougar part again.

Don't bother writing to me if you have AOL

2005-07-31T10:53:00.000-04:00

Don't send me a review. Don't send me a question. Don't send me hate mail or compliments.

Don't bother.

I won't be able to write back to you.

I hate America Online.

I hate AOL with a passion I can’t even begin to express in mere words. Everything about America Online, from its network-adaptor hijacking, to its pedophile-ridden chat rooms, to its resource-hogging interface: I hate it beyond all human endurance.

I do tech support for a living. When someone suddenly can’t access the network on their laptop, many times a view of their network adaptors will show that they’ve installed AOL on their machines over the weekend and screwed everything up. That’s one of the reasons I hate AOL.

I used to sell on eBay back when you could actually make money out of it. 9 times out of 10, any deadbeat bidders (those who win auctions and never pay up) or those who couldn’t follow simple rules (like NO CHECKS) had an @aol.com email address. There’s another reason I hate AOL.

Every time my kids upgrade their AIM, that nefarious WeatherBug and/or WildTangent and/or Viewpoint comes along, even though I’ve told them to, please, for the love of God, choose the advanced installation so they can uncheck thoese boxes. But do they listen to me? Noooo. So there’s another reason I hate AOL.

Now I have another reason to hate AOL. It comes in my email once a day:

From: MAILER-DAEMON@yahoo.com
To: tmdwarped at yahoo dot com
Subject: failure notice

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following
addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

x.x.x.x failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 554-: (HVU:B1)
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html
554 TRANSACTION FAILED

And what does 554 TRANSACTION FAILED mean, friends? Well let’s take a look:

Error 554 HVU:B1

554 HVU:B1
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html
EXPLANATION:

There is at least one URL in your email that is generating substantial complaints from AOL members.

SOLUTION:

If you own all the domains linked to in your e-mail, please contact us to discuss more effective management of your complaint levels. You can start by setting up a free complaint loop through this form. This will allow you to receive AOL member complaints against your domain.

If you do not own the domain, please have the owner of that domain contact us.

Does this mean that your hardworking and SPAM-hating webmistress has a URL in her email that is causing grief, woe and complaints among the subscribers of this atrocity that passes itself off as an ISP? No, not at all. I get this even when my signature is turned off. There’s only one URL in the emails I send to AOL members, and that’s this:

Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

I don’t put that there. It’s put in automatically by Yahoo.

I am unable to write back to anyone who has an AOL email address, simply because the AOL SPAM team has configured their software to automatically block email addresses that have the URL http://mail.yahoo.com in them. It is frustrating beyond belief. I wrote to support at Yahoo to let them know, but I highly doubt anything will be done about it.

So… if you are any of the following people, here’s what I was unable to write to you:

Nicole from NJ - Hi Nicole, and thanks so much for writing! Thanks for pointing that out to me. I didn't mean to imply that everyone in the pit is a moron, but rather, as stated, the larger any activity, the larger the number of morons. And yes, even as you wrote – you could apply this even to gardening! Those who mosh are not morons. Those who grope women and hit out at others who are not participating in HXC in the pit ARE. Anyway, thanks again for writing. I'll definitely edit my page a bit so people reading don’t think I’m calling everyone in the pit a moron. Thanks for your feedback!

Robert from GA - Robert - Great review - thanks! I've posted it and please let me know if you'd like any changes made. If you have the time, would love it if you'd do a follow-up on how your second go 'round at Warped went this year! Thanks again for taking the time to write such a great review.

Susan from NY – Hi Susan! I would really suggest you call the Tweeter Center in NJ and ask to speak with the office there. Randall’s Island would be really hard to navigate with a wheelchair. I’ve never been to Tweeter but their website does mention they have accessible seating. You can contact them at (856) 365-1300

Angela from MA – Yes, you are correct! I was in that group a long, long time ago! Thanks for the memories! Write back to me (not from an AOL address) and let me know how you put two and two together! Are you still making music?

Joe from PA – No.

To anyone who has an AOL.com email address and is thinking of writing to me – don’t bother. I won’t be able to reply. Take two minutes and set yourself up a free email account at Yahoo, where they don’t bounce back emails, or send me a message via MySpace.

Sheesh.

I’m not alone. These fine folks hate AOL as well:

Ben hates AOL because they spy on you

Viganos hates the stupid subnet policy too

And all these people at TechSupportGuy hate it too

Is there any reason at all to still have this joke as your primary means of internet access? Why do people still use this - I'm truly curious.

In any event, because it is becoming a daily occurrence, I am looking into another free web-based email so that I can write back to aol.com users. Hotmail is not an option because from surfing around, I've heard other people have the same problems with @hotmail.com addresses trying to send to aol. Anyone have any suggestions?

I'm rich! I'm rich! I'm rich!

2005-07-30T23:51:00.000-04:00

OK, not really, but give me a break. It's my first Adsense payment!

$107.52 for a year's work. Worth it? Hell, yeah! This is my $107.52 I earned all on my ownsies. Not working for anyone else, but mine, mine, all mine!

At this rate, I should catch up to Darren Rowse by the time I'm about, say, 102.

Wonder if Warped Tour will still be around then?

Love leaves on Sundays

2005-07-29T06:58:00.000-04:00

Everyone who matters leaves the Island on Sunday nights

The ferry swallows them as I stand behind and watch

I wait on the beach as the boat pulls away

And stay there until it's just a dot on the Sound

Whenever I cry, I remember this truth:

Love is very messy. Especially when it's a teenager.
In the absence of love, there's a chance to catch up on housework.

Love always comes back in a few days. And brings it's welcome mess with him.

Never mind bugging their cars....

2005-07-28T15:10:00.000-04:00

... I'd much rather put a GPS tracking device in their heads.

Seriously though, I really think this is just a waste of money. And it's insulting to kids. Not that you'd want to track them. That's not insulting. I'm only half joking about that GPS-brain-chip thing. What's insulting is to actually think this is going to work.

I got a kick out of this line:

"Using our system, parents can be immediately notified, by text message, blackberry, or email, if their teen does something they shouldn't. For instance, going to a particular house or business, leaving school during school hours, or exceeding pre-defined speed limits."

Now, for anyone who was ever 17 years old, tell me that didn't crack you up. The developers of this obviously don't realize that any kid who's parents buy this because they don't want their teen driving to a certain place is just going to park their car someplace else. Or catch a ride.

Hey, I know it's a scary world. But this whole new industry devoted to tracking our kids day and night via cell phone and cars.... it's just an industry based on fear and mistrust marketed to the upper middle class. These things don't come cheap friends. A SignalTrac Ultra is $500 for the device, and that does not include installation. Fees for different packages range from $30 to $60 per month. So if you're one of the many working slobs in this country where both parents are holding down two full time jobs and you still have no money left over after bills, you're out of luck. Guess you just have to parent the old fashioned way. Or maybe even -- horrors -- actually trust your kid.

What did our parents ever do without GPS enabled cars and phones to watch over our every move? How did we ever survive into adulthood?

Warped Tour 2006 Wish List

2005-07-28T08:54:00.000-04:00

Warped Tour is nothing if not flexible. That’s one of it’s strengths, and what has made it a success year after year. It changes with the times, and the things that don’t work get dropped.

I’m hearing a similar thread running through a lot of parent emails, and by the end of the season I’ll put a ‘wish list’ for Warped Tour 2006. Here are some of the things those footing the bill for tickets are requesting:

The Reverse Daycare – it’s got to be bigger. Whomever sponsors it at each venue has to realize that this reflects on them as a business. A small, dinky, cramped and crowded Reverse Daycare shouts, “We are cheap bastards” to those cramped and crowded inside it. So c’mon PR Execs. Release the funds to double the size of the Parent’s Tents for 2006. Also, I’m hearing some parents are having a hard time finding it once there. Take a cue from the Marines or YooHoo, and have something large and eye-catching that floats above the crowd.

I’m dead serious here, and I’m also changing my parent review form. I’m going to start asking, “Who sponsored the Parent’s Tent?” So here's a chance to get free advertising from parents. Corporate Sponsors: You can afford larger tents, and you know it. Just choose the same size tent you do when you have your parties at the Hamptons. It does make a difference to those parents who are also your customers. And your stockholders. As a stockholder, I like to see the companies I invest my tens of dollars in put my money to good use. Nice sponsored events that promote branded customer loyalty are a good use. Bloated executive salaries and benefits aren’t.

In all fairness this is something that's probably already in the planning stages. The NY tent in 2004 was better than the tent in 2003, which was better than the tent in 2002. One thing that happens at Warped Tour each year is that things that work get improved upon; things that don't work get dropped. But if you're a parent who said "Yes" to Warped Tour based on the simple fact that they are the only concert of it's type thoughtful enough to offer a quiet resting place for parents, and then either can't find said resting place or can't get a seat in it, it makes you that much more likely to say "No" next year.

Backpacks – please, ok, please let them bring in backpacks. Really. Seriously. Let me tell you a little something about terrorists – if they want to hit Warped Tour, they will. Backpack or no backpack. Refusing to let 15 year old Janey from Milwaukee bring a backpack in is not going to keep our nation safe, OK? And those security guards you venues are paying slave wages to keep the backpacks out – they think that rule is bullshit too. Believe me. That ‘no backpack’ thing is coming to you from the same folks who fall for “They hate us for our freedom.” line. So wise up. They don’t hate us because we are free, and they can and do hit with or without backpacks if they want to. Post-911 security in New York had no problem letting 10K+ kids bring backpacks in, and they had enough security guards to check them. They need something to hold all stuff they get and the cell phones/ wallets/ sunscreen they need to bring in.

Now these things VF Corporation/Vans has no control over. But they could certainly urge their sponsors and venues a little. It ain’t like they don’t have the financial muscle to do so. Any more suggestions? Feel free to use the review form over at my website to let me know, and I’ll get that up somewhere around the end of September.

Oh, and serious wishes, kids, OK? Putting “WARPED TOUR BANDS SUCK” is just going to wind up in my recycle bin. It's not like this is going anywhere or means anything. I'm just curious what your wish list would be.

Wednesday WarpedBlogging VI

2005-07-27T13:43:00.000-04:00

English teachers of America – rejoice! Glory, glory hallelujah, this week’s round of literate WarpedBloggers is so whopping, so wide, so welcome, so worldly, so worthwhile, so wonderful, we have to give them the respect they deserve and make them world-known. Or at least our-little-corner-of-the-world-known. I actually had a hard time this week wading through them all. And because I recognize that this is starting to get worthless, wearisome and worn, I promise to stop using “w” words in my opening sentence from now on.

I like shadows_of_noir. Not only does this blogger think for themself, but they also explain what on earth that graphic is on the upper right hand corner of the Warped Tour website. I always wondered what that was. These tired old eyes just couldn’t make it out. Please tell me I’m not the only one who looked at this:

and thought, “huh”?

It’s interesting to see the themes running through people’s posts each week. This week’s theme is sweat, cultures and the F-word.

Between the downpour and other’s people’s sweat, Marcy had a very wet day.

Apryl endured the heat and sweat as well, along with body-modification-profiling from the border guard. However she stereotypes on her own by stating that all Americans are obsessed with cute people who speak French. Oh, OK. She’s right. J'aime les hommes beaux qui parlent français. Toutefois les hommes beaux qui parlent français ne m'aimeraient pas probablement, parce que je ne peux pas parler français sans aide de BableFish. Et je donne la permission complète à tous les bloggers de langue française au rire de façon hysterique chez cependant BableFish a déformé cette phrase. Le seul Français je peux dire couramment quand je vais à Montréal est, "excusez-moi, où sont les salles de bains?"

Also soaked with sweat were Tim and Zach who went together, and really f*cking hate it when f*cking bands use the f*cking F-word in every f*cking sentence. The last line in Zach’s third paragraph had me cracking up. Really. What the f*ck.

I don’t know where Bumblef*ck, Indiana is, but they raise some very nice people there, like the gentleman who found Caitlin’s cell phone and called her mom to return it. Sadly there was some trouble at the Taco Bell afterwards from someone obviously not raised in Bumblef*ck.

Breaking out of the themes of swearing, sweating or profiling, McDiggity dropped $40 while searching for a friend who was without cell phone for the day. I can vouch from personal experience that the worst part of trying to catch up with a lost companion at Warped Tour is the loss of money. Them darn merch booths; they’ll get you every time.

And my favoritest WarpedBlogger of the week is cool mom Trish, who is the mother of not only the happiest 10 year old last week, but the happiest 10 year old who’s also one killer artist.

As far as Warped Photobloggers, Gabe has some nice photos of the teeming mob. And not only does EvilMonkeyCult sound like the type of religion that I’d like to join, it’s member Luke has some great movies and pictures of the day as well.

Who’s blogging on the other end of the stage? The lovely and talented Eternia blogs her soul with the same honesty that makes her music so damned, well, honest.

Lots of discussion this week on differences and cultures. If I believed in astrology, I’d say there was something in the stars. I could write something meaningful and unifying on all of this, but I’m just not that deep of a person. I’ll just end where this all began, with the first WarpedBlogger, Captain Dan. I love this blog and always have a hard time trying to decide which of the week’s posts I’ll write about. This week’s was easy. This post covers neither sweat nor the ubiquitous F-word, but is behind the scenes look at the E.I.Y Culture. Very, very interesting.

That’s all for now kids. There are so many more but I’ve been pretending to work long enough, and have to get back to my real job. It was a hard choice deciding who to put in, and I had to cut a lot out of my list simply for the time factor. I could have made this post twice as long, really.

Happy Wednesday!

Only if you put me back where I belong.

2005-07-25T09:32:00.000-04:00

Found this ego-boosting goodie over at ProBlogger, one of my favorite sites.

You can abuse Google all you want too. Make them say whatever you want. This is better than that Burger King Submissive Chicken thingy.

Should I take my kid to Warped Tour?

2005-07-24T10:36:00.000-04:00

I’ve been having an email exchange for a while with another mom. She’s still not sure about taking her kids to Warped Tour. She’s very much like I was back in 2002. She keeps going back and forth.

She’s also a Libra. Now, I’m not a big believer in this whole astrology thing, but one thing about us Libras – we can’t make decisions if our lives depended on it. It’s incredible. We’ll have a million and one opinions about everything, but don’t ask us which restaurant to go to for dinner.

Obviously I’m very pro taking your kids to Warped Tour. Actually, I’m very pro taking your kids places they want to go, especially when they’re at the ages when they’re pulling away. The biggest reason is because they’ll remember it when they’re grown up.

Here’s a story I remember about being 15.

I was nuts about horses. Absolutely, positively nuts. Anything and everything about horses, I loved. And I loved horse races. Not so much the races part, but the horse part of it. I used to keep lists of the horses that were winning at the race track. I’d keep lists of which jockeys rode which horses. I’d keep lists of what the track conditions were like. Yes, I was a little obsessed, but I was also trying to teach myself how to make a database for a school project, and figured the task would be easier if I was using data I was interested in.

After a few months of doing this, I was convinced that if I went to a racetrack, I’d win money. I asked my dad to take me. He kind of laughed, said it was a waste of money, only losers gambled, etc. etc. etc. But I kept begging. So finally he gave in. Our relationship was a little strained at the time, and I think he thought if he did something I wanted to do, it would bring us closer.

When we came home with $2,517 more dollars than we went there with, it did.

I think even if my database hadn’t worked, if I had been dead wrong on each horse I bet on instead of dead right, it still would have been a good thing for the two of us.

He did something he didn’t want to do, just for me. He gave up a whole Saturday, when he didn’t have many free Saturdays, to do something just for me. Something that meant a lot to me, and something he thought he’d hate.

Our first race, he bet the smallest amount, even though I knew the horse/jockey combo was a done deal. When we won, he bet a little higher the next race. And a little higher the race after that. By the end of the day, we were betting all of our money. It was great to see him get so excited. He really got into it. He was really interested in how I was picking the horses. He was really curious about how I gathered my data. For a whole day, we had something to talk to each other about. And for months afterwards, he bragged about me to anyone and everyone, and told the story ad nauseum at family dinners.

I never forgot it.

It meant a lot.

Was it the end-all be-all change in our relationship? No. I was 15. We still had years of fights ahead of us.

But it was something I remembered. It was something I knew he did just for me.

And it’s a story that now I tell ad nauseum at family dinners. Along with the stories of taking the kids to Warped Tour.

It means a lot to them. Let them go. They’ll remember it forever. They'll remember you did it just for them.

P.S. For any kids reading this, and I know you're out there, there's a flip side of this story too. For years my dad asked me if I wanted to play golf with him. I kept saying no. In all fairness, after years of losing at Monopoly and Chess to the man, I felt I had no self-esteem left for him to destroy. But now that he's gone, I honestly regret that I didn't let him teach me. I should have played golf with him. It would have meant a lot. It would have been something I did just for him. So if your parents want to do something that means a lot to them, bite the bullet and say yes. When they're not around anymore, you'll be glad you did.

First award

2005-07-23T08:43:00.000-04:00

I got an award.

True, it's no Webby.

But it's my first. And it means a lot to me.

I don't win many things. I once won a free weekend trip for two to NY. I've gotten a few magazine subscriptions. My biggest and proudest award was about 20 years ago as an honorable mention and printing in The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest book*.

Now, the experts on the left would scoff at my award. But to me it's a big deal. I'm old enough to remember a time when awards and webrings were cool things online. I'm stubborn enough to still apply for them. And I still think they're cool.

And you know what? So does my target audience --> moms.

Moms love awards. Moms love webrings. Moms are the ones who, after working a full day and getting all the housework done, are giving up their free time playing Canasta over at Pogo to search out what this Warped Tour thing is all about. OK dads too in all fairness, but the bulk of the email I get comes from moms.

And mom's websites are chock-full of awards and webrings. Interestingly enough, let me tell you a little something about SERP and webrings.

Way back during my golden days of Google-#3, I had a link to a webring for Women of Strength and Inner Beauty. And when I had that link there, I had 24 Google-recognized inbound links. During a revamp of my index page, I accidentially deleted that ring code. I didn't even notice that I had done it. And when I fell down to Google-#9000 something, my backwards links fell down to 4. I think losing that little code is part of my drop. That WOSIB thing online is a biiiigggg deal to moms. It's back up now. I was horrified to have deleted it. That WOSIB thing online is a biiigggg deal to me too. I love WOSIB.

So, to wrap this up, because I tend to go on way too long, my award means something to me. It shouts "I'm a mom who make a website directed at other moms" and/or "I really like awards and people who give them" to my target audience. They recognize me as one of them. So thanks, Cover Zone! It really, really means a lot to me! If you love webrings as much as I do, The CoverZone runs more than a few you may want to check out.

*My contest entry: "As I look back on all the loves of my life, none was as overpowering as that of Claude, the boy in my seventh-grade English class, who's eyes were as green as the swimming pool my mother had installed the summer before she was put in a wheelchair, and was thus too preoccupied to concern herself with it's general maintenance." If you don't know what this contest is all about, you won't get it. But if you do, you'll agree that's one horrible opening line.

Friends tell friends about Tell A Friend

2005-07-21T16:39:00.000-04:00

Yikes!!

This was so scary I wanted to link to it right away. In a nutshell, JenSense has an important post about a certain 'Tell-A-Friend' javascript pushing their own adsense to webmaster's pages. If you are an Adsense publisher and you've ever had a 'tell-a-friend' applet - or ANY kind of a third party java applet on your site, you'll want to read this.

And be a friend, and tell your friends too.

Shame-based self promotion

2005-07-21T14:41:00.000-04:00

I’ve mentioned a few times before how beneficial a Myspace profile is in bringing website visitors. It begs repeating, because it truly has been a powerhouse, both in traffic and networking.

I don’t spend hours and hours at Myspace. Generally I’ll drop by once in the morning and once in the evening to check messages, bulletins and blogs. What I’ve found is in addition to the networking and traffic aspects, most of the people there are truly nice. Artists who I think would not have the time send me very thoughtful notes, with comments in them that prove they actually read my site, and not just skimmed the surface. I’ve been amazed at what’s there. True, it behooves any artist to actually connect with their fan base, but superficial phoniness is easily detected. If someone is mentioning one line I wrote way deep down in my website, you know they were actually there.

Other websites have noted the power of MySpace in website promotion as well. Bob Baker’s blog references a good tip on the spinme blog advising bands to register a URL pointing to their MySpace profile, and a comment on this post brings some important Myspace etiquette as well.

This thread over at SitePoint Forums starts a discussion on it. Again what’s important is that any type of site using MySpace for promotion needs to have content relevant to the user base there. The original poster runs a website offering notes and study guides, which would have a receptive audience at MySpace. It will be interesting to follow up on this thread to see what he reported.

An article at Transworld Business reports on two companies using MySpace to promote their ventures, and also mentions IceLounge which is appearing as the new MySpace for skaters. The CSMonitor writes about the heroes of my youth R.E.M. using MySpace to connect with fans, as well as reporting on a new site named iFanz. I tried to sign up for a free test account at iFanz, however they require a credit card in case your list grows beyond the free membership level. I just wasn’t comfortable with that.

Now… how all this will play out with with Fox’s consumption err purchase of MySpace remains to be seen in months to come. With that announcement came the inevitable fake profile of Rupert Murdoch, which is a riot.

Fake and spoof profiles are everywhere. Those are fun because their owners will leave in-character comments on your profile, and you can leave “in-character” comments on theirs in return. Some of my favorites are Agent Smith, Willie Wonka, Napoleon Dynamite, Al Swearengen from Deadwood (whom I am afraid to add as a friend for fear of his hilariously foul language), Charles Darwin and of course, George Bush.

You have to be careful with the fake profiles though – sometimes what you think is a spoof is a misguided attempt at adoration. Recently I saw a profile for an organization that was so over the top, so Conservatives for American Values-esque I thought it was a spoof profile and left my own in-character comment. Much to my dismay I realized afterwards that this person actually admired this organization so much they made a profile as a sort of shrine to it! Oooopppsss. My bad! Thankfully they were graceful enough to just delete my comment. And no, I won't link to it. They were classy enough to just quietly remove what I wrote, so I'm not having you rotten kids visit their profile and annoy them. I know you too well!

There are shares of horribly designed profiles there. Light pink text on pale orange backgrounds has been spotted on more than one occasion. God-awful animated gifs abound, as well as cursor trails, flashing and scrolling text, and every other geocities-website induced atrocities you can think of. And I’m not even going to touch on the hoards of young women there who feel the need to post rather scandalous pictures of themselves. I guess it’s to be expected, but c’mon ladies! Have you no self-esteem? Or perhaps it’s a matter of too much self esteem.

But getting back to the original gist of this post, the MySpace is for nothing if not self promotion. Blogs, groups and bulletins are full of people promoting their latest album, blog, website – you name it, people are promoting it. MySpace has become the ultimate DIY self promotion machine.

I’ve started it as well, however I just don’t feel comfortable to do it as much as some. That word “spam” always creeps up, and I’m so afraid of ever being considered a spammer. I will send out a bulletin once a month asking for link requests, and I’ll give a pitch here and there on groups for my site if I feel the thread warrants it.

I’m a rather shame-based individual though, so I can’t go too overboard with it. I’d probably wind up with three times as many visitors and inbound links if I’d step it up a bit, but I’m still afraid of that dreaded spammer-label.

So in the interim, I’ll just scout around for more fake profiles to add as friends. That’s still my favorite part of MySpace.

I don't care. I will not give up my coffee

2005-07-20T10:40:00.000-04:00

.
But something tells me if I took up acid, my house may be more organized.

Wednesday WarpedBlogging V

2005-07-20T09:07:00.000-04:00

.
It’s the third day of the week, which means it’s time for round 5 of Wednesday Warpedblogging, where we wave off the witless, the weak, the watered-down, the wearisome, the without-Thesaurus bloggers of America in search of those able to translate memories into readable text.

In the official Warped Tour blog, Captain Dan reports on the inconsistencies of logic displayed by the undead.

Is “cellar door” truly the most beautiful phrase in the English language? I’m not sure. I’ve always been more enamored of “buy one get one free”, but that’s just me. In any event, cellar door lists the best and the worst of the day, as well as a warning to those of you who punch in the pit. Don’t make her tell you twice.

Missmal’s calling it quits and has pledged this to be the last Warped Tour. Definitely our loss, ‘cause it’s a great review. Stilettos?? Please, Lord, if you exist, please let me find the blog entry of whomever the fool was wearing stilettos.

Also calling it quits is Wendy. In case you are wondering, she did not have a good day.

Brande Jackson of Lokahi Outreach endured the spiritual and olfactory assault of a slaughterhouse to add 750 more to the ONE Campaign. There are some great pictures of the booth here.

And who’s my favorite WarpedBlogger this week? Why, it’s none other than Mosie, the greatest grandmother in the world, who posted her day here and here, along with some great pictures. And might I add that this was not Mosie’s first Warped? She’s done it before. Any parent who refuses to take their kid to Warped after reading Mosie’s blog deserves to be horsewhipped.

That's all I had time to search for this week. I'm sure there were other great blogs out there, but the demands of my job took over. Unless I can get a corporate sponsor, sadly work comes first. Life is just so unfair!

Speaking of sponsors, I’ll just add this thought. Why aren’t any manufacturers of sunscreen products Warped Tour sponsors? Wouldn’t it make sense? Why not pass out free sunscreen packets and skin cancer awareness to the concertgoers?

What is the one thing people repeat over and over and over? Answer: that they got burned. It’s time for WarpedTourMom to nag at you kids, so sit down, and no one is allowed out until I am finished.

• More than a million people will be diagnosed with skin cancer this year.

• One in five Americans will develop skin cancer in the course of their lifetime.

• One person dies every hour from skin cancer, primarily melanoma.

• The incidence of melanoma is increasing rapidly in women under the age of 40 being the most common cancer in young women aged 25-29 and second only to breast cancer in women aged 30-34.

If you have fair skin, like I do, and burn easily, like I do, and have gotten sunburned, like I did, you are at a high risk of getting melanoma.

Like I did.

It’s not fun. Yeah, yeah, I know, it can’t happen to you.

I thought the same thing. And then it did.

Please wear sunscreen. Not just at Warped Tour, but every day. It’s not worth it, seriously.

1 in 5 people diagnosed with melanoma will be dead within 5 years.

At Warped Tour there are booths for AIDS prevention. There are booths about breast cancer. There are booths about smoking. For Warped Tour 2006, I’d like to see a booth about skin cancer.

Our ozone layer is too damaged to protect us. And as we lay in the sun under it, we are dieing.

Don’t smoke. Practice safe sex. Perform breast self examinations. And educate yourself about the sun.

I’m done ranting. You can go outside and play now. But put on sunscreen first.

New York Warped Tour Bands

2005-07-19T21:33:00.000-04:00

During an email exchange with a friend, I was asked who I wanted to see at Warped Tour this year. Sadly, the jury is in. My back is in no shape for me to go this year, so I won't be there. However my list still remains. Thought I'd share it with y'all. If I were well enough to go to Randall's Island next month, I would go to see, in no particular order:

Who	Why
Go Betty Go	"Worst Enemy"
The Dead 60's	"Riot Radio"
DORK	C'mon. It's DORK
Shiragirl	C'mon. It's SHIRAGIRL
Eternia	"Stereotypes". And because I love her video diary. And because she's a kind soul.
Q-Unique	"Father's Day"
Dub Trio	"Casting Out The Nines"
Jen Urban and the Box	"Needy"
Monty	"Hearts Bleeding"
Ordinary K	"Hello"
Remedy for Ruin	"Round One"
Darkbuster	"Danny Boy"
Robby Roadsteamer	"The Hand I Beat Dogs With". And just to watch my husband's face during "I'm Sorry Your Cat Has Ass Cancer"
Like Yesterday	"Courage"
The bands I wasn't able to find to add to the page	Because I feel guilty
Too many more to name	Because I'm running out of time and need to go. And also, because each and every one is so unique, I do love them all.

Yeah. What they said.

2005-07-18T07:42:00.000-04:00

This guy and this guy.

Amen.

In both lists, there's only one true answer. It's #9 in Stuntdubl's. I'm a play it safe kind of girl. Hence, the correct answer is: the blue pill.

Seriously though, it is true that the amount of confusion and contradictions you see as you browse seo and serp forums puts the there were no wmd's vs. the wmd's were moved debates to shame.

As far as how this relates to my Google woes, I think I'm just going to let it slide. I could spend hours and hours and hours reading every blog and forum out there and come out twice as confused as when I went in. I've submitted to every directory I can think of, and now my next step is to try and build links with music sites. By the time I'm done that, Warped Tour will be over for the year and I can stop obsessing over how much Google traffic I've lost, and work on fixing that horrible bands page. I'll have the luxury of a 6 month block of time before the Warped Tour 2006 traffic starts to pick up again.

I think part of my problem for the Parent's Guide is I'm in just too much of a niche. I'm in a niche of a niche. Not about Warped Tour itself. Not about parenting itself. But directed towards parents of young teens and preteens who want to go to Warped Tour. However, they are a large force, and the parents who do manage to find my site are eternally grateful (as are their kids who get a "yes" answer out of them after reading the page). So I dunno. The information in the forums and blogs are great if you are looking to make a living on the web. For those of us who have some knowledge we want to pass on to others, and think the internet is a good place to do it, it becomes a despair of choices type thing.

This isn't to say that I'm going to stop reading them. I'll read them and use the knowledge I find in them every day until my site comes up at least on the third page of google for my keywords. However I will pass on right now that the best piece of advice I received wasn't on a seo or serp blog or forum, it was actually on a music forum.

When I went down to serp position 9000-something for my keywords, I was told to just set up a myspace.com profile, link it to my website, and get bands to add me as friends. Within 2 weeks I had gone up from 9000-something to 200-something. Also oddly enough, my myspace profile was immediately assigned a PR5, if you can believe that. It's since jumped down to a PR2, however just that myspace profile got me out of the netherworld. Just wanted to pass that on. Learn from the experts, but never underestimate the power of youth-driven social networking.

Note to self: look up definitions for the following terms because I don't have a clue what they mean:

-ros links
-lsi/lsa
~~-302 hijacking~~

(a short while later)

OK I get 302 hijacking but the other two I'm blonde over. Anyone?

So very, very out of touch

2005-07-17T11:39:00.000-04:00

What's wrong with this picture?

11 things I love about Bill Frost

2005-07-16T20:28:00.000-04:00

1.) He mentioned my website in his article.
2.) He mentioned my website in his article.
3.) He mentioned my website in his article.
4.) He mentioned my website in his article.
5.) Cool last name
6.) He mentioned my website in his article.
7.) He mentioned my website in his article.
8.) Really good Warped Tour article that I'll add when I get to my other PC.
9.) Did I mention that he mentioned my website in said article?
10.) He mentioned my website in his article.
11.) He mentioned my website in his article.

What's a girl gotta do to get a Google ranking around this place?

2005-07-15T08:14:00.000-04:00

So, so discouraged.

It's been two months now since I fell from that golden #3 position.

Out of all the keyword combinations, it's the "warped tour" search string that is the most important. It's really not the most competitive of terms. "Warped Tour". Not like there are thousands of competing sites strictly devoted to it. But the results are really interesting. Here are today's top ten ranked pages for a Google search using the keywords warped tour:

1 and 2. http://www.warpedtour.com
Duh. Obviously that should be first. Interestingly enough Google only gives them a PR of 4 and they only have 30 Google-recognized backwards links. Yet there really is no other site that should have position 1.

3. http://www.warpedtour.net
Duh again. Another no-brainer. They've been at it for so long. I'm glad to see them back on page 1 again. Back in May for some reason they did a huge drop briefly. Sandbox maybe. In any event they are holding at a PR4 as well, although they've got warpedtour.com beat with 93 official backwards links. And I love them forever because they linked to me.

4. http://www.piercedpark.com/music/WARPTOUR.htm
Now this one is really interesting that it comes up in position 4. It's a really great review, don't get me wrong. Honestly it's one of the best Warped Tour reviews from a surfing standpoint. Little text, lots of pictures. Fast enough to hold a web surfer's 10 second interest before making that decision to click back or next. However, it's a review of the 2000 New Jersey event. So what makes that a position 4 rank? PR/backwards links are PR4/BWL12. Not incredible numbers. I jumped up to the main piercedpark.com site. That's PR5/BWL74 which is probably what's giving them their position, but I still find it odd that a five year old review comes in at 4.

5. http://www2.fanscape.com/warpedtour/2005/tour/
If I were Google, this would be my choice for the position 4 rank. Fanscape is the official marketing company of Warped Tour. PR4/BWL' oddly enough.. 0. That's odd, because so many webmasters are running the official Warped Tour news applet on their site. Wouldn't that make it BWL(infinity)?

6. http://www.warpedtourtickets.musictoday.com/
WarpedTour/calendar.aspx
Expletive deleted. Oh come on. Here's what's so weird. BWL lists vans.com as having a link to them, but they don't. Weird, weird, weird, weird.

7. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7415954/
mychemicalromance?pageid=rs.News&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;
amp;amp;pageregion=double1&rnd=1121427755602&has-player
=true&version=6.0.12.1069
Ok another no-brainer. It is RollingStone after all. But again this makes me very confused about the whole PR/BWL theory that everyone pounds on. This is PR0/BWL0. Again, it is RollingStone, but if the PR/BWL theory is correct this should be way down.

8. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050701/
music_nm/music_warped_dc
Now, exactly how does a news site get a PR4 when the BWL is 0? Is it because it's Yahoo? It has to be. However, this is a Reuters news feed, which means that every lazy newspaper Entertainment Editor picked this up to run, and it's duplicated on all the newspaper websites. So that blows the whole "avoid duplicate content like the plague" theory of Google positioning.

9. http://www.sideonedummy.com/ecard/warped/
Yeah, as it should be. Official soundtrack.

10. http://www.coasttocoasttickets.com/concerts/
vanswarpedtour_tickets.shtml
Expletive deleted yet again. However, as opposed to so many other ticket sites, this one actually offers content. PR5/BWL...460? What? All the BWL's are from their own site. C'mon Google.

From an SEO standpoint, none of this makes any sense, and it goes against the rules of everything I've been reading from the experts at the blogs listed in the sidebar, as well as various SEO forums. What about Vans? Wouldn't they come up on page 1? How about PETA2, Truth, Samsung, Cincular... other sponsors who have high ranking websites closely affiliated with Warped Tour. This is all just too confusing for me.

144 and 145

Sheesh.

Wednesday WarpedBlogging IV

2005-07-13T17:16:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the fourth weekly Wednesday Warpedblogging, where those who show the ability to coherently explain their Warped Experience get a little love.

Captain Dan returns with a vengeance, and in his 7/6 post explains his absence. None of my scenarios, however. It’s the webmaster’s fault! Now, who ever heard of a webmaster who doesn't work weekends and holidays? That's against the rules!

I never want to run into Tulip or Twisted while out doing errands for fear I’d show up on their blog. I’d definitely fall into some fashion don’ts post.

Jason risked a really bad cold drink headache by pounding down strawberry margaritas in the Beer Garden and Joel shows amazing time management abilities. Wow, indeed.

Ingle actually took the time to review the bands in her post… and to do a great job of it to boot, while rainydaypsycho writes an open letter to the 10K+ in attendance.

AmyDials spreads nasty rumors. Visit her blog and repeat everything she writes.

I don’t know what was in the light of shakarosey’s bathroom, but she’s a braver woman than I for getting so close to it. Speaking of health safety, please have all the free safe sex you want by taking all of spicyofloggins’ condoms so they can see the bands.

Sure.. you could find better photos than sloanro’s, but would you find better captions? I think not! Chris has a nice album, but the mother in me just does not approve of that driving.

That wraps it up for this week. Are there more? Of course there are, but I just don't have time to hunt them all down. If you feel you've got a warpedblog that should get a little attention, feel free to drop me a note at tmdwarped at yahoo dot com and I'd be happy to feature you next go 'round.

How to WarpedBlog: A tutorial

Just in case you’d like to be added some Wednesday, I thought I’d put a few pointers out there.

Own a blog.

Write in the blog using proper punctuation and spelling. Occasional typos are ok. Occasional punctuation errors are ok. Occasional typos combined with occasional punctuation errors are OK. Massive combinations of both are disqualifications.

Same for 133t spelling and/or sTICkY cApZZZZZZZ. Or over-useage of ZZZZZZ in place of the letter “s” for plural words.

Purchase a Warped Tour ticket from a Warped Tour approved ticket vendor.

Attend Warped Tour. It is mandatory that you visit every stage. Yes, you heard me, every stage.

Go home.

Turn on computer.

Log into blog

Write blog entry using the following template:

Today I attended Warped Tour at (insert location). Mention a few words about who you went with. Insert funny anecdote about either a) drive to Warped Tour or b) events leading up to your attending Warped Tour or c) a combination of a and b

Write a maximum of three paragraphs on the big-name bands you saw. Write a minimum of three paragraphs on the smaller bands you saw. You want to have this to look back on in years to come for your “I knew them when…” stories.

Go to the tents and the booths. Talk to people. Get their names and myspace usernames and/or websites, so when you write about them later you can link to them. Hopefully they’ll return the favor.

Write at least one paragraph on the most bizarre person you saw at Warped Tour. Alternately, write at least one paragraph on any combination of bizarre people seen at Warped Tour. Also add a few lines of how nice a certain person who you expected to be horribly stuck up was, and how horribly stuck up a certain person who you expected to be nice was.

Write about the best thing that happened to you on Warped Tour. Also write about the worst thing that happened to you on Warped Tour.

Wrap it all up by waxing philosophic on the sorry state of punk today. If you’re under the age of 25, write how much (fill in the genre) is ruining the scene. If you’re over the age of 35, write that one story about the back room at CBGB’s and pray your kids never find your blog.

Ping your blog so I’ll find you.

If you don’t see your post on a Wednesday Warpedblog, just drop me a line.

Further proof of brain damage

2005-07-10T13:57:00.000-04:00

Conversation from the rear of the car whilst driving:

Son’s girlfriend: What’s that thing over there?
Son: Splish-Splash. It sucks. We went there when I was like 10
Step-son: Yeah, it sucks
Son: I hated it there

Me: Excuse me, bu-

Step-son: How would you know? You didn’t go on any of the slides!
Son: Because dude! It sucked!

Me: Um, you two, we-

Step-son: You stood in line for like 40 minutes and then backed out.
Son: Because the slides sucked!

Me: Wait, you guys-

Step-son: And then you just wanted to sit down and wouldn’t walk anyplace.
Son: My feet hurt!

Me: SHUT UP!! NOW!!

Step-son: (silence)
Son: (silence)

Me: We never went to Splish-Splash. We tried to get in one day, and they were so crowded they were turning people away. You two are arguing over something that never happened.

Son: Whoa.

Conversation whilst flipping through radio stations in the car:

Son: There’s no good music.
(flip to rap station)
Son: You’ve got to get the CD player fixed
(flip to pop station)
Son: These stations suck
(flip to depressing classical music station)
Son: (In PBS-y type voice) You’re listening to Funeral Dirges on 101.4 with your host, Raymond
Car passengers: haha hahah haa hahaha

Several weeks later

Son to girlfriend: There’s no good music on any of these stations
(flip)
Son: My mom still has not gotten her CD player fixed
(flip)
Son: Wait, I have to find this one station. They play funeral dirges with this guy Raymond, and… wait… does he really exist or did I make that dude up?
Me: You made that dude up.
Son: Whoa

You guys make it all worthwhile

2005-07-09T20:46:00.000-04:00

I see you guys, don't think I don't.

In between laundry and dishes and making beds and feeding cats and paying bills, I sit at the computer and have a cup of coffee.

I jump over to my stats to check my referrers.

And I do read the bulletin boards where you guys are coming from. You're posting on fan boards, on skating boards, on movie boards..... you guys really spend a lot of time on message boards. But hey, that's OK.

I see your message threads. And they all go like this:

Poster 1 complains about parents not letting them go to Warped Tour
Poster 2 says, hey, send your parents this link. I did and now my parents are letting me go
Poster 3 says two hour later, thank you, my mom/dad loved that site, and now they said yes!
Poster 4 says, that's a really cool site, I'm sending this to all my friends
Sudden flurry of referrals from Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and AIM and Yahoo Messenger

I see you. Thank you. I really, really appreciate you guys. You make it all worthwhile.

Wednesday WarpedBlogging Volume III

2005-07-06T10:40:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the third Wednesday Warpedblogging, where your gracious webmistress weeds through the banal, the pointless, the child-obviously-left-behind ramblings of the masses to bring you the few literate Warped Tour bloggers.

I’ve found a few more blogs about and/or related to Warped Tour, and you’ll see them in the sidebar to the right.

As for those who actually have a life that doesn't revolve around Warped...

Jerry honestly isn’t a drunk, he just forgot that all important nose area when applying sunscreen. JessK endured the burn as well, along with elbow jabs from fangirls.

Katrina provides a list of important mosh pit do’s and don’ts, while Katie just lets her fists and feet do the talking, and joy's friend loses half a toenail but learns an important lesson about appropriate moshpit footwear.

I had to google what a bilagaana was but, white or otherwise, Carmen’s ucky bilagaana experience sounds just plain gross. Not her photoblog though, which shows the teeming mob in all it’s glory. IdleThreat has a swarm of great pictures as well.

Speaking of great pictures, I don't know which I like more... the writing or the photos in underbelly's post. This is my favorite blogpost of the lot. No wait, it's lazymatt's. Or is it nate's?

Cory's blog doesn't mention if her dream came true, but at least it sounds like she had a great day.

For those of you yet to blog your day, here's a tip: If you're going to follow the lead of these other warpedbloggers and write more than the standard one line post about how much Warped Tour rocked, why not tag your posts so it will make it easier for other bloggers to find you in the future.

Paging Captain Dan....

2005-07-05T07:35:00.000-04:00

OK, so what’s the deal with Captain Dan this year? Prior years, the Captain Dan blog was updated nanoseconds after Warped Tour ended each day.

All right, I'm exaggerating a bit. But c'mon. Dan, hon, if you’re going to have a blog, and – more importantly – have it hosted on a website that gets insane traffic levels, you gotta update it. Please. We’re begging you.

You ok Dan? If you don't update it, I start to worry. That's what moms do. We don't hear from you, all sorts of scenarios start to float through our worried little minds.....

Scenario 1: He forgot sunscreen. He's hospitalized with infected 2nd degree burns
Scenario 2: He forgot to drink enough water. Dehydrated and disoriented, he's wandering lost somewhere in Phoenix
Scenario 3: He got knocked out in the pit.
Scenario 4: He hooked up with some floozy parent in the Reverse Daycare.
Scenario 5: He got e-coli from eating undercooked hamburgers at the BBQ. Didn't you visit the Peta2 booth? Those things will kill you.
Scenario 6: He got e-coli from not using anti-bacterial lotion on his hands after using the Port-o-Potties. Didn't you read my suggestions? Those things will kill you.
Scenario 7: Hit in the head from an errant baseball at the MLB batting cages
Scenario 8: Manipulated by cute Marine recruiter into joining the few, the proud, the brave

I jumped over to Feedster to see if anyone else was as worried as I was. Maybe Captain Dan could be the next "Ian Turner is missing". But nope, other than myself, one "Captain Dan sux", and one person who did nothing other than copy his stats, the blog world is quiet on Captain Dan's disappearance since 6/29. Could this be a conspiracy? Has the blogging community, jealous over his attention, somehow conspired to kidnap Captain Dan and hold him hostage until Fall?

Scenario 9: Jealous over his attention, prominent music bloggers have somehow conspired to kidnap him, and hold him hostage until the Fall.

The pictures are great, though. Everyone posts band pictures on their blogs. From an old fogey standpoint, they all start to look the same after a while. Captain Dan posts pictures of the fans, which is really what Warped is all about.

A new update to the Warped Tour site is the Warped Compound, which as well is rather scarce on info. They did mention on 6/29 that they were having computer problems, but I’m a little puzzled by the simple “hi” post on 7/2

Well friends, off to surf the blogs! Tomorrow is warped tour wednesday so I'm trying to wade through the WARPED TOUR ROCKEDDDDDD posts to find the few that stand out.

10:20 PM - Update - Fear not, Captain Dan fans -- he's back! We can hold off running his "Have you seen me?" picture on the back of Monster Energy Drink cans for now. There are new updates for the missing days between 6/30 and 7/4. But where was he during that time? He's not telling, lending credence to my Scenario #4. I'm heading off to bed now but a brief scan showed the 7/4 entry is a loving tribute to the loving moms and dads who hang out in the Parent's Tent. Go ahead and share the love.

American Hero

2005-07-04T10:40:00.000-04:00

Thank you, Amber Dean.

Working the graveyard shift at Denny's must really suck.

But I'm glad you were there.

I cried so hard when I read this. Before my son was born, missing child stories upset me. Once I became a mom, they kept me awake at night. Seriously. I know that most child abductions are due to custody interference, but there's always that fear.

All parents have fears of their child being abducted, but at the same time live in that "It can't happen here" state of mind. It happens to other kids, in other states. Our kids are safe. We know where our kids are.

When we hear of a missing child, we start to compare our lives to the parents.

It's shameful, but true. It's a internal talisman to keep our kids safe in our own minds, because the reality that it could happen to our kids is just too horrifying. We don't tell anyone that we are comparing ourselves to those other parents, because that would be victim-blaming. That would be horrible. That would make us bad people. But quietly, internally, we do. To keep our kids safe, at least in our own minds.

"They hired a homeless handyman. I'd never do that. My child is safe."

"They were swingers. I'd never do that. My child is safe."

"They let their kid walk to the park by himself. I'd never do that. My child is safe."

These shameful horrible thoughts we keep in our heads, to save us from being that mom or dad on CNN. Crying, holding pictures of their missing child, a huge chunk of their soul cut out and missing, bleeding emotionally in front of Paula Zahn, their entire life laid out before us, the "good" parents, who compare them to ourselves, in the hope it will keep our kids safe.

They took drugs, they drank, they partied.

They breathed.

It can't happen here. It can't happen to us.

The fear doesn't stop when they are teenagers, either. Actually it gets worse then. They are on their own so much. They close out huge areas of their lives to you. You snoop, and you pry, and you question, and you hack, and you drill. But no matter how much you snoop, pry, question, hack, drill, they keep a part of themselves separate. They have friends you don't know about. You hear a name mentioned in passing.

"Who is that?"

"A friend."

"Where did you meet him?"

"Around"

And you fear. It's something you hold onto, and something that creeps in every time they go out. Everytime you see them chatting online. No matter how old they are, you worry.

And, even though you hate yourself for it, you compare, so it will never happen to you.

Until one day, God forbid it does, you pray there's an Amber Dean out there. Some bone-tired exhausted mom working the graveyard shift. Probably putting up with loads of crap from the customers. Who had to do that mom work before her shift, and probably is coming home to more mom work afterwards. But who still takes the time to look twice, to notice something's off, something just doesn't feel right. And goes that extra step.

I hope there's an Amber Dean out there for Dylan too, where ever he is. And if any of us ever need her, I hope there's a Amber Dean on our side as well.

Fuel for my addiction

2005-07-04T07:23:00.000-04:00

I read way too many blogs

I read a lot more than those listed to the right.

I have bookmarks for cat blogs, funny blogs, politicial blogs, computer blogs, virus and adware blogs, tech support blogs….

It’s become pretty bad.

Last night I found BlogExplosion. Now it’s going to get a lot worse.

I’ve never been big for those !!!!traffic explosion!!!! type sites, where you surf a few member sites to get a hit on yours. I think most people just click click click their way through to get their credits. And I tried them in the beginning, but I got tired of click, click, clicking my way through 20 other !!!explode your traffic!!! type sites only to get one 30 second hit to my site.

Oh but this is so different.

It’s for bloooooogggggggsssssssss

I surfed through a few last night and have already added three more blogs into my bookmarks.

I'll be featured on that Intervention show soon.....

(fade to black)

THE BLOG READER

(fade)

Warped Tour Mom sits in her office, surfing through her IKeepBookmarks links of blogs

Cut to sink full of dirty dishes

Cut to cats crying next to empty food bowls

Cut to overflowing laundry baskets

Husband enters office, "Babe, did you get a chance to call the insurance company today about that bill?"

Warped Tour Mom: "Yeah, hon... um.. hang on a sec.."

Cut to Warped Tour Mom posting a heated comment about the G8 summit

Son enters office, "Mom, can you drive us to Blockbuster?"

Warped Tour Mom: "Ok, um, hon, hang on ok, 10 minutes?"

Cut to Warped Tour Mom adding yet another bookmark about SEO

Cat enters office, "Prrrang? Prrrt! Meeeooowwww!!!"

Warped Tour Mom: "Get down!"

Cut to Warped Tour Mom knocking cat off desk, adding 50th comment to post about Sandy D's retirement and what that means for a women's right to choose.

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE

Cut to family sitting in living room.

Husband: It's gotten out of control!!

Son: You said you'd drive us to Blockbuster yesterday and you never did!!

Cat: Prraaaanng! Prreettmeeeeooowww!!

Warped Tour Mom: (crying, screaming) I can stop whenever I want!!

(fade to black)

A FAMILY IN CRISIS. A PLACE TO TURN.

Interventionist: No one is mad at you. You have to understand they are frustrated by your blogreading.

Warped Tour Mom: (screaming) I have to get back! Ian Turner is missing, damnit!!!

Interventionist: You need to realize your obsessive blog reading is just covering up for some emptiness inside you.

(fade to black)

Cut to Warped Tour Mom entering luddite-esque rehab with no computers. Looking pale and drawn.

Warped Tour Mom: I'll do this for them, but I don't think I have a problem.

(fade to black)

INTERVENTION. ONLY ON A&E

Moving Day

2005-07-03T11:45:00.000-04:00

After much internal debate, I have decided to move the blog from MySpace over to Blogger. There are numerous reasons for this:

Inability to add a tracker to MySpace blogs so I can see where traffic is coming from.
Only MySpace members can post comments
Inability to publish a RSS feed easily
Limited customization
Inability to link to places outside MySpace
Clunky and awkward

In any event, today I'm slowly moving posts over. Excuse the updates for a day or two. Thanks.

Interview With Me

2005-07-02T13:09:00.000-04:00

Interview with me

The Warped Tour Parents Info Guide webmistress had a little too much coffee this morning, and decided to post an interview with herself.

WTPG: Good morning.
Me: Morning

WTPG: Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can get for you before we start?
Me: Could I have some more coffee?

WTPG: Don’t you think you’ve had enough?
Me: Guess you’re right. Do you mind if I smoke?

WTPG: You really shouldn’t you know. Those things will kill you. Didn’t you visit Truth’s booth last year at Warped Tour?
Me: Yes :: lighting up ::. And the year before too.

WTPG: OK, well, let’s get started. Can you give us your full name?
Me: I’m Terri, but I’d rather not give my last name. If someone wants to Google me hard enough they could probably find the last name, but it’s just Terri for now.

WTPG: That sounds pornographic.
Me: You’re pathetic.

WTPG: So, tell me about starting the Parents Guide. Why did you make that site?
Me: I covered that already here and here. It’s all been said.

WTPG: OK, so, are you going to Warped Tour this year?
Me: Probably not. If you had taken the time to read here, you’d already know the answer to that question. I’m still not sure. There are a lot of variables.

WTPG: Do you think you’ll ever attend Warped Tour again?
Me: Again, I don’t know. I can’t say no. The musical tastes of the kids change a lot. This year they really don’t like anyone there, but you can’t say how they’ll feel next year. They’re all old enough that they can go by themselves now. However, if I’m going to go to the trouble to drive them all the way to the Randall’s Island shuttle in Queens, I might as well drive them the extra 10 minutes across the bridge to Warped Tour itself and stay for the day. I don’t think I’d ever go to Warped Tour by myself, but again, you can’t say. I’ve met a ton of really nice people through MySpace and the Parents Guide, and it might be nice to see them in person.

WTPG: So, say you never attend again. Why keep the site running? Why put so much work into it?
Me: Again, I’ve already said. Once the page got up and running, it took a life of it’s own. I kind of feel I have a responsibility now to continue what I started. There is still no information out there for parents. And the kids who want to go each year seem to get younger and younger. When you’ve got a 10, 11, 12 year old asking, “Can I go to Warped Tour?” it’s a really scary thing for a parent.

Also, there’s kind of a challenge factor in it too. I’m a rather competitive person. When I saw my page show up on page 1 of Google, it was a real rush. When Google dropped me under page 13, now it’s become a test. Can I get back to page 1? Can I teach myself enough about search engine optimization to get there? It’s kind of a game. And I’m not in the Yahoo index at all… how do I get in? What do I need to do? There’s so much to learn, and what I do learn can be transferred over into other webpages.

Finally, except for the summer, it’s really not a lot of work. During the winter the page just sits dormant. Once the bands are announced then things pick up a bit. During the summer, I may do about 30 minutes a day on the page. And somedays I’m just so busy, I don’t get to touch it at all.

WTPG: You mention “other webpages”. Do you have them?
Me: Yes, I have a ghost site floating out there that I really need to work on. Once I update it a bit I’ll announce it.

WTPG: “Ghost site”, like, real ghosts?
Me: No, “ghost site”, like, a ghost ship. Abandoned.

WTPG: OK, so tell us a little more about yourself? How cool are you?
Me: I’m really not cool at all. That’s a common misconception about me. I’m a proud nerd, and always have been. But then again, I think nerds are cool, so I guess I’m pretty cool after all. I had the horn-rimmed glasses before they became a fashion statement in the 80’s, because I’m blind as a bat and needed those huge frames to hold my lenses.

I don’t really fit into any category. I’m not a soccer mom, but I’m not one of those hard-rocking cool moms either. I wear hippie clothes but I’m not a hippie mom because I smoke, but I’m not a play bridge and go to parties type mom either because those women bore me. I work a lot of hours at a pretty big corporation, but I’m not some career driven type-A mom. I’m just me.

WTPG: What other misconceptions are there about you?
Me: That I have a kid who plays Warped Tour. I get that question a lot, “What band are your kids in?” Or that I’m a MILF. I really hate that term and think it’s really derogatory to women. When people post comments like that I won’t approve them, because it’s so lame. I see a MILF-type comment and think, “Wow, a pop-culture term! Aren’t you a lemming, loser.”

WTPG: That’s pretty harsh.
Me: It’s pretty true.

WTPG: But aren't you just bitter that you're not thin? Maybe you're just angry because you have no self control.
Me: Watch it.

WTPG: Well, it's true though, isn't it? I mean, how many diets have you started and failed this year? When are you going to finally lose those "baby pounds"? Your 'baby' is 16.
Me: Either you change the topic, or this interview is over.

WTPG: So what kind of music do you like? Who is your favorite band?
Me: I can’t answer that, because I just love music. I always have. I can say I don’t like poppy teenybopper music, and I find that genre offensive. But other than that, music has saved my life, in more ways that one, and when I hear something I like, it doesn't matter what genre or band it is; I just fall into it.

WTPG: What kind of CDs do you buy though.
Me: :: looking around :: (whisper) I don’t buy CDs. My son burns them for me. Please don’t tell anyone.

WTPG: OK that’s off the record. So what kind of CDs has he burned for you – errr – ahem – have you bought?
Me: Well, Elvis Costello, a few of those. A Billy Holiday or two. A Frank Sinatra or two. A Morrissey or two or three. Lots of world music, some ambient music. And just tons and tons of CDs with bands I couldn’t possibly mention to you. My son carries about 30 lbs. of CDs with him at all times. And he always has something good.

WTPG: Do you get along with your son?
Me: I think so, I’d like to think he thinks so. Hard to say. Teenage years are so bizarre. I think he’s a good person, the type of person I’d want as my friend if I was 16. He makes me laugh, and he’s interesting to talk with. He’s a kind person. And an honest one. I don't mean honest as in, "tells the truth", because the child will lie like a rug even when caught red-handed. I mean more his expression. He has an honest expression of self and the world around him. He's authentic, down to his core.

WTPG: Do you ever fight?
Me: Occasionally, I think any relationship where you don’t have a fight or two or three is kind of unhealthy. Someone is keeping something inside. It’s hard when you’re having an argument with your precious baby, and the little toddler who once said, “You’re the best mom in the world!” now says “Sucks to be you” when you’re going at it, but that’s life. I still watch that PBS Inside the Teenage Brain thing online at least once every other month, because I think it helps me to be a better parent. It reminds me that there is so much going on in there, a lot of what they do just isn’t their fault. They are brain-damaged.

WTPG: Brain-damaged?
Me: Yes, and it helps out a lot with “Why not?” type arguments. I mean, look at this:

Teenager: Can I do (fill in the risky behavior request here)?
Parent: No.
Teenager: Why?
Parent: Because I say so.
Teenager: That’s no answer (argument continues)

Now compare it to:

Teenager: Can I do (fill in the risky behavior request here)?
Parent: No.
Teenager: Why?
Parent: Because you’re brain damaged.
Teenager: (stunned silence. Argument is over)

See? If you just remember that their frontal lobes bear no resemblance to anything else on earth during these years, it really helps a lot. So if he’s asking to do something out of the question, I won’t get into an argument over it. The answer is no. He’s brain damaged. Once his frontal lobe pares itself down a bit, he’ll realize what a bizarre request it really was.

WTPG: That’s rather invalidating, isn’t it?
Me: Honestly I think it’s less invalidating than, “Because I say so.” When I was 15, I wanted to work and live at King Richard’s Faire. I got accepted to be an apprentice there. My parents were just, “No! A 15 year old is not going to live in a campground with minimal supervision all summer!” I was so furious, but now I know they were right. I can’t begin to image the amount of trouble I would have gotten into had I done that. I was livid, because out of hundreds of applications they only accepted 5, and I was one of them, but I was just too young and brain-damaged to handle it.

WTPG: So what bizarre requests have you invalidated him with a "you're brain damaged" response?
Me: Actually not too many. But one memorable one was to skip school during finals week when he was 15, and do a 250-mile road trip with some friends who had already graduated high school to see The Pixies. Then sleep in the car and make a 250-mile road trip home. Only a brain-damaged person would actually ask their neurotic, fear-based, overly protective mother if they could to do something like that at 15. I mean, what did he think the answer was going to be? "Yes"? Brain damaged.

WTPG: So let’s get back to the Parents Guide a little more. You’ve slowed down updating it, I see.
Me: Yeah, I feel a little guilty about that, but I really have to balance my time. I update it if I’ve got some time to sit down, but if I don’t, then I just can’t. Also I’m really worried about the way the band page looks right now. It’s a mess, and there are just so many links there I’m afraid Google thinks I’m a link farm. I think that may have something to do with my Google drop.

WTPG: So what are you going to do with it?
Me: I’m still not sure. I want parents to have a way to say, “Hey, I really like reggae, or I really like power-pop, what bands are in that category?” and be able to find that quickly. I also am really big on talking about the music your kids listen to. I believe music is sacred, and if you are having a discussion on music with your kid, you enter a holy place.

WTPG: Wow, that’s kind of… weird.
Me: I’m kind of weird.

WTPG: Can you elaborate on that a bit?
Me: No.

WTPG: Why not?
Me: Because this has grown to four pages in MS Word so far and I’m getting tired of typing.

WTPG: So how can we wrap this up?
Me: Maybe say, “Well, Warped Tour Mom, thanks for your time. I have many more questions, maybe we can continue this again next month?”

WTPG: Well, Warped Tour Mom, thanks for your time. I have many more questions, maybe we can continue this again next month?
Me: Sure. My pleasure.

WTPG: You know the litterboxes need to be cleaned.
Me: Yeah, I’m getting to it.

Dear Moron who entered my contest,

2005-07-01T13:04:00.000-04:00

Dear Moron who entered my contest,

Yes, Moron, I’m speaking to you. So far there have been 36 of you, but I’ll just lump you under the same name of Moron.

The rules are pretty clear. The blub on the contest site is pretty clear too:

“Moms and Dads! Have you taken your kids to Warped Tour? Come visit the Warped Tour Parent’s Guide, and write a review about it. Any parent or guardian who submits a review will be automatically entered to win a gift certificate to Amazon.com. US/Canada only, age 21 . Minimum review 100 words.”

OK Moron, so tell me, what part of “writes a review” don’t you understand?

To Moron1 through Moron23 who just submitted a blank entry form with only your email address – you didn’t win!

To Moron24 through Moron26 who wrote variations of “What is Warped Tour?” – you didn’t win!

To Moron27 who wrote “YR PAGE SUX” – you didn’t win!

Runners up in the Failed to Read category include:

To Moron28 through Moron32 who wrote one line variations of “It was hot and crowded don’t go” – you didn’t win!

To Moron33 who wrote “Can I bring a cooler with beer? Please enterme in the contest too" – you didn’t win!

To Moron34 from INDIA who started your review with, “I took my doughter to worped touer when it came here..” – you didn’t win!

And the Grand Prize winner… it’s a tie!

Drumroll please…

Moron35: Vietnam budget travel, vietnam mini hotel, vietnam budget tour, tour ticket booking, property & car rental...

And

Moron36: free mature pics

….. you didn’t win!

Congratulations to all the Morons! You won’t need the $25.00 Amazon.com gift certificate, because you obviously can’t read.

Regards,
Warped Tour Mom

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.... and just think. I set myself up until next April to get these. :: sigh :: the things we do for traffic.

Why have you come to visit, anonymous Google employee?

2005-07-01T13:00:00.000-04:00

Why have you come to visit, anonymous Google employee?

Yes, I saw you,
gnome.corp.google.com/adsense/tools/abgreplytool/frameset.hta.
You spent a total of 23 minutes
and 18 seconds
on my Warped Tour review.
I appreciate the length of your visit,
but
you didn’t go to any other pages.
There’s so much more to see.

Why did you come?
Especially now,
on the eve
of the first month
that I will actually get
paid by AdSense.

I’ve been running ads for a year.
In June I finally broke the payment threshold.
So I’m a little paranoid.
Your visit worries me.

You see,
I haven’t had much luck with you,
anonymous Google employee.
You banished me to page 15
exactly one month
before
Warped Tour went live.

I feel so betrayed by you.
I’ve worked so hard.
I’ve done all the right things.
I haven’t done anything blackhat.
But you drop me under spam scrapper sites.
And you’ve yet to restore me
to my proper place
on page 1.

So now you’ve come to call,
gnome.corp.google.com/adsense/tools/abgreplytool/frameset.hta.
What were you looking for?

Was my page OK?
I feel it met your guidelines.
I’ve stayed away from my own ads.
I’ve never clicked on them.
I’ve made my husband promise never to click on them.
I’ve made my kids promise never to click on them.
When they said,
“Why?”
and I said,
“Because it’s against the terms of Google”
and they said,
“That’s stupid”
and I said,
“No it’s not
because people pay for those ads.”
and they said,
“But what if you want to see them?”
and I said,
“Then just manually type in the URL.”
and they said,
“That’s stupid.”
I hit them for you.

Because I love you,
anonymous Google employee,
and I never want to make you mad at me.

Even though
our relationship
is emotionally abusive.
I love you still.

Why have you come?

I know my click through rate
jumps by over 1.0 some days.
But I can’t help that

When you push those
free Warped Tour ticket ads
from Peta2.com
onto my page,
visitors click on them.

I don't ask them to.
They just want to.
Wouldn’t you?

I mean, hey,
c’mon.
Free Warped Tour tickets.

But my little page is ok.
Isn’t it?

Please don’t drop me from AdSense,
anonymous Google employee.
I’ve been a good girl.

Please send me my check
for $106.73.
I’ve worked so hard for it
this past year.

And maybe
after you send me my check
for $106.73
you could bump me up a bit
in the search results?

At least to page 3?
Please?

---------------------------------------
A Google poem, by WarpedTourMom

Wednesday WarpedBlogging!

2005-06-29T12:58:00.000-04:00

Wednesday means it’s time for the second weekly Wednesday Warped Tour Blogging, where I highlight the best of the Warped Bloggers. In today’s issue we run the range from censorship, relationships, dripping hair color, a near brush with brain damage, and a quick reminder about what's really important in life.

Hoffman’s Hearsay raises the interesting question of, if punk is anti-censorship, why then is a dissenting voice censored?

Avila Place shows us how to effectively use reverse psychology to get a recalictrant significant other to accompany you to Warped Tour.

Revelry shares memories of a first Warped, along with dripping temporary hair color.

Dustin tempts brain damage with 17 kicks to the back of the head, but is safe from melanoma at least because he wisely remembered to use sunblock.

Handstamp at the Houston Chronicle shows the Parents Guide some love by linking to us, so it's the least we can do to return the favor.

And last but not least, this blog came up in the search results because of the post title. And while it has nothing to do with Warped Tour, I wanted to link to it because it’s beautiful, it made me cry, and made me wish I told my dad just how much I appreciated him when he was still alive. After you read this, call your parents and tell them you love them.

Any other WarpedBlogging you know of?

Play that funky music, Game Boy

2005-06-27T21:19:00.000-04:00

No time for any updates today, other than posting another fantastic parent's review on the Illinois Warped Tour page. One thing about Illinois moms - they can really write! I give credit to the Illinois school system. Having attended no less than three different high schools in Illinois (we moved a lot), I can vouch for what was going on there back in the day. Out of all the high schools I went to (5 in total. Like I said. We moved. A lot.) the ones in Illinois were my favorites.

Very busy weekend, and I've got to get running this morning. The kids went to a free concert this weekend from the Huntington Arts Festival, and saw an absolutely amazing show put on by BubblyFish and Chiaki Watanabe. You must spare some time and check out their websites.

Only my son was excited to see this show at first. He has been playing rearranged video game music for me for some time, and is quite a fan of this genre. His girlfriend and friend were a little sketchy about the whole thing. They thought it sounded a little shady, but were willing to give it a shot. It was really wonderful to see how pumped they were when I picked them up, and how much they loved it. They all did mention that they would like to see these two in NYC sometime, to see them play in an environment other than a local free arts festival. Although from what they relayed, the senior citizens in front of them were really rocking out.

-----
Just an edit... after posting this, I noticed that MSNBC wrote a review of 8-bit music using the same title as my post. But I swear, I made it up myself!!

Who’s blogging Warped Tour?

2005-06-22T12:54:00.000-04:00

Not a whole lot of people who can write properly, that’s for sure.

Now, I’m no English major, and I will certainly post blogs with their fair share of typos when I’m in a hurry, and I am the QUEEN of run-on sentences, as evidenced by this one, but really folks.

I headed over to Technocrati this afternoon during my lunch break to try and get some Warped Tour blogs. I figured those who have been will definitely want to blog about it, and I could get some links to add to the web page. Of course there’s always Captain Dan’s blog, but I wanted to get other, less well known points of view.

Wow, what a waste of time.

99% of bloggers who are posting about Warped Tour had this to say:

OMFG WARPED TOUR ROCKED OMG IT WAS SOOOOOOOOO AWESOME ME AND (FILL IN THE FRIEND) WENT AND SAW (INSERT LIST OF BANDS) AND OMG IT WAS SO GREAT BUT I GOTTA GO NOW WARPED TOUR WAS AMAZING BYE!

However fear not, here are the few gems I was able to find. I’ll hopefully get these links added to the page this weekend, along with a few band and label friend requests I still need to process and add. Things are really busy here over the next few days, and I don’t know how much time I’ll have to update the Parents Guide.

The Skeptics who, much to my dismay, were a band I was not able to find before, posted this horror story about their night before Warped. Here’s holding out a wish for them that someday they are rich and famous, and, while spending the night in a 5-star hotel before playing their sold out stadium tour, can look at each other and say, “Hey, remember that night in the stairwell….?”

The prevailing complaint about Warped Tour this year is that there are “no good bands”. I’ve heard that statement around this house more than once from the boys, and every Warped Tour related message board is filled with posts singing the same tune. Jenn of blogto.com took the time to write out so eloquently what her opinions are on the music of Warped this year. I may not agree with her, but I really admire her taking the time to write it out so well. Wish I could write like that.

WhinyDancer has a short but entertaining blurb about working Warped, proving a blog entry doesn’t need to be long to get the point across…. something I really should keep in mind.

And last but not least, The Gas Rats write about their day with enough enthusiasm and detail that it makes you feel you were there - and regret that you weren't.

In the spirit of Friday Catblogging, I think I’ll make Wednesdays Warped Tour Blogging. Every Wednesday I’ll try to post the best Warped Tour blogs I can find. I know there’s more out there, so if you have one or know of one, feel free to drop me a line or add a comment here.

Here’s to bloggers who entertain and inform!

Google?

2005-06-21T12:50:00.000-04:00

We don't need no stinking Google!

Well, ok, yeah we do need Google, but it's good to see traffic climbing even without them.

What's even better to see is the amount of time people are staying on the page. So while traffic still isn't what is was pre-Google drop, the page loads are increasing. The average visit length to the page is an amazing 20 minutes which I find pretty impressive.

Todo list: Navigation, contest and bulletins

2005-06-20T12:48:00.000-04:00

I’m still going through submitting to directories, but this is getting so blasted boring I’m taking a quick break to think over some other ideas for the site.

One thing I’ve noticed about the site is that the navigation is a mess. While I’d like to keep the navigation to one line up top, that’s becoming harder to do as the site gets bigger. Also, I’m staring to think that having the affiliate Amazon links spread out all over the site isn’t the best idea.

So something I want to work on this week is creating a standard template for the navigation heading up top and making sure all the pages are the same. I think the template should be as follows:

Parent’s Tent News & Reviews Pictures & Video Add your Review

Bands Booths Contest Media Related Sites

I’ll create the new media page, and have all the Warped Tour CDs, books and movies on that one page.

Also I’m starting to think about creating a contest for the site. Kind of a “write a parent’s review, win a prize” type thing. I did that once before on another website and got some nice traffic from it. The ideas I need to go over are:

1) When will it start and end?

2.) What will the prize be?

3.) What will the rules be?

As far as when it starts, I’m thinking as soon as I can get the navigation under control. I’ll start to work on that this week a bit as I have some time. Now on to when it ends… Pre-Google traffic to the site slowed down to a crawl just about November… however traffic starts to pick up again once the bands are announced. Right now I’m going back and forth with November, 2005 and April, 2006 as the end dates for the contest.

For the prize, I think the easiest would be just an Amazon.com gift certificate. That way I wouldn’t have to get anyone’s mailing address; I could just buy a gift certificate for them and then send it to their email address. A few “how to run a contest” guides online suggest asking another business to sponsor a gift, but I’m not all keen on that. I think just springing for a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate is good enough. Anyway I wouldn’t really know who to approach or even how to ask for a donation. The blanket gift certificate is good because that way, the winner can choose whatever they want.

For the rules, I’m thinking not too many. US or Canada only obviously, because that’s where Warped Tour runs. It would have to be a parental review, so obviously ages 21 plus. That way I don’t need to worry about any problem gathering information from underage visitors. Also I need to think of what the length of the review should be. From memory on the last contest I ran a few years ago, I had people sending in one or two line reviews. “It was a good show” Those I just trashed.

I was looking over a few of the reviews other parents sent in to get an idea of how long it should be. If I make the length requirement too long, that could be daunting… but I don’t want one or two line reviews either. I don’t want parents to kill themselves writing reviews, but I do want reviews that will be of value to other parents. I’m thinking somewhere along the lines of a minimum of 100 words which is just a paragraph or two.

Picking the winner is easy enough. Last contest I ran, all contest entries went into one folder off my inbox and numbered sequentially. Then I just used a random number generator to pick the winner.

Finally there is so much information in the bulletins and blogs I really need to go through there to get the new stuff added. Especially the DIY Stage

So… there’s my work for this week for when I can find the time. Hopefully I’ll be able to gather some valuable reviews from this contest

A pal indeed

2005-06-18T12:46:00.000-04:00

With the launch of Google sitemaps, there are some webmasters, yours truly included, who were unsure how to create the map to submit to Google.

As with all needs, there's always someone ready, willing and able to fill that void.

This great website, http://www.sitemapspal.com/ will do all the hard work for you.

Thanks sitemapspal!

Back on target

2005-06-08T12:43:00.000-04:00

OK after a slight detour from this blog's original intention, I am back on track with my goals.

I'm not sure if I fit into the sandbox category that I originally thought. All I know is, on the same day that Google dropped me from #3 to #9874, the exact same thing happened to countless other webmasters, all of whom have more experience with SEO than I. I don't feel so alone anymore, but I'm still completely baffled by the whole experience.

In any event, my next task is to increase the number of sites that link to me. Right now I'm winding my way through directories, which has got to be the most mind-numbingly dull and boring part of owning any website. Yet, "they" say it's what I need, so I'm merrily submitting away... zzzzzzzzzzzz

Where oh where are the athletes?

2005-06-03T12:38:00.000-04:00

It is next to impossible to find which skateboarders, skaters, rock climbers, and bmx bikers will be at Warped this year.

All the press releases say the same thing:

Prominent athletes joining the tour from the action sports world will be announced soon.

That press release came out in March. "Soon" has come and gone.

One would think that with the release of Lords of Dogtown tonight (which I am going to see but secretly fear will pale in comparison to the wonder that is/was/always will be Dogtown and Z-Boys) that the athletes at Warped Tour would get front and center attention this year.

But no…. Search for them on Google and all you get is the same thing:

Prominent athletes joining the tour from the action sports world will be announced soon.

Please help. WHO WILL BE AT WARPED TOUR THIS YEAR??

Anyway, I'll be going to see Lords of Dogtown tomorrow. :: sigh :: Memories.

Catch-22

2005-06-01T12:36:00.000-04:00

Commonly Referenced Tip: To increase Google PR, get other sites with a higher PR to link to you.

Rarely Mentioned Reality: Sites with a higher PR won't link to you, because you have a lower PR.

Commonly Referenced Formula: PR(A) = (1-d) d(PR(t1)/C(t1) ... PR(tn)/C(tn))

Rarely Mentioned Reality: What the hell does that really mean?

Not Armageddon

2005-05-31T12:31:00.000-04:00

Without any fanfare or explanation, it's back.

No major updates either. I'm still PR3.

But oddly enough....

Go figure.

It’s Armageddon!!

2005-05-29T12:29:00.000-04:00

Oh the forums they are a-buzzin’

Anywhere and everywhere you turn, there is only one thing in any webmaster’s mind this Memorial Day weekend.

Google PR is down

Is it just a computer glitch? Will everything be ok on Tuesday?

Were they hacked?

Have they trashed it?

Are they repairing it?

Time will tell. The thread about it at WebMasterWorld.com is up to 18 pages and growing.

Interesting times. An entire industry has been built on Google PR, so this holiday weekend has got to be a pretty miserable one for more than a few folks.

Having just recently made the grand jump from PR0 to PR3 this doesn't effect me nearly as much as most folks out there. It should prove interesting though to see what happens on Tuesday with that all important Page Rank section of the Google toolbar

Hairy Females

2005-05-27T12:22:00.000-04:00

So far so good. I’ve gotten my META tags fixed for keywords. The keyword tags I had before were a mess. It’s hard to know what is the optimal number of characters to have in that META tag field… every site you go to says something different. All agree you shouldn’t go over 255 characters though, so that’s what I’ve kept them at.

Understanding Google is a science I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand. DigitalPoint, which offered the keyword analysis in my post a few days ago, also offers another cool tool where you can check your page’s ranking for certain keywords daily, weekly and monthly. Here’s where I stand on certain phrases over the last week:

Why, I ask myself, is a site all about the Reverse Daycare at Warped Tour in the middle of page 14 on Google? Well, typing in that phrase in Google brings the answer. From pages 7 through 14, there are a series of nonsense spam sites. Any parent searching Google using the phrase Reverse Daycare Warped Tour has to pass by such nonsense and/or offensive gems as (I kid you not, these are real site names):

Hairy Females
Taylor Little F*ck
Midnight Booty Call
Free Cock Dick
Darma and Greg
Eugene Public Library

So when the next kid asks their mom or dad, "Can I go to Warped Tour? They have a Reverse Daycare you can hang out in.", and mom or dad heads out to Google and types in Reverse Daycare Warped Tour, what do you think the chances are that they’ll find my site after spotting Hairy Females on page 7, or Free Cock Dick on page 10?

Yeah, I think the same. I shouldn't complain though. Perhaps out there is some webmaster who has spent countless hours creating an informative and well researched site on Hairy Females. And perhaps their authority site is pushed down to page 14 after a series of spam pages on the Reverse Daycare at Warped Tour.

Anyway all of the opening day bands I was able to find are added, and I’ve started to slowly wind my way through June. This should be a pretty busy weekend so I’m not setting out on my next goal of page optimization until Monday.

Have a happy and safe weekend everyone!

Warped Tour, Randall's Island, August 13, 2005

2005-05-25T12:19:00.000-04:00

One thing about teenagers… their minds change like the weather.

If I’m well enough to attend Warped Tour this August remains to be seen. I have two herniated discs in my neck and two herniated discs in my lower back from the car accident, so right now the idea of standing in line for three hours to get into Randall’s Island makes me wince.

If I am well enough, if I go at all this year is dependent on the whims of three teenagers who are undecided about this year’s lineup. August could see me crossing the Triborough in any one of the following combinations:

Scenario 1: Boys only. If it’s that combination, they don’t need me there. I’ll probably just drop them off at the shuttle in Queens, and rely on them for website updates of what happened at Warped 2005.

Scenario 2: Stepdaughter & friend. She’s still young enough that she needs someone there, so in that case, I’d attend and hang out in the Parent’s Tent. Maybe I’ll go with some surveys and hand them out there to other parents, if they’ll let me. That way I’ll have more updates for the page.

Scenario 3: Boys and stepdaughter & friend. That would mean I’d have to attend. My husband as well as we’d need two cars to haul boys plus a stepdaughter plus a friend.

Scenario 4: Boys with friends plus stepdaughter with friend. Well we definitely can’t do that limo thing again. We’ll just have to cram everyone into the Cavalier and the Accent.

Scenario 5: Nobody wants to go.

Scenario 6: Nieces and children. I have a few nieces with kids in the 12-13 year old range. If they want to go, I may tag along as company for them so I can get some parent interviews in.

As living with teenagers has proven time and time again, which scenario I fall into probably won’t be decided until August 1^st.

Opening day (almost) finished

2005-05-24T12:17:00.000-04:00

All the opening day bands that were easy to find have been added, and I finally finished adding the genres to the bands I already had. There were a few I couldn't find, both bands and genres, so I need to do a little more digging to get them all in. I'm always afraid that some band member (or even worse - some band member's mother) will think that they've been excluded from the page.

I really hate the way the band page looks right now, but as I decided before I'm not going to work on any design overhaul until Warped Tour is over for this year.

Keywords

2005-05-23T12:09:00.000-04:00

All of the reports at SEOmoz finished running, so this week I’ll be tackling keywords.

SEOmoz suggested running the free keyword tool at DigitalPoint. Using the number one search term “Warped Tour”, DigitalPoint suggested the following keywords

So it’s pretty obvious the keywords I need to tweak the page for. DigitalPoint also offers an analysis of how your page ranks using certain keywords and phrases. While I wasn’t as bad as I originally thought, for the top term of “warped tour”, I was position 141 on Google today. Not as bad..... but still pretty abysmal. A searcher needs to wade all the way down to page 10 to find me, and most Google searchers give up after page three.

So… my goals for week ending May 28^th are to finish getting all the bands for opening day up on the page, and to tweak the front page text a bit so that the phrase “warped tour” appears more. It's a pretty cool little tool, if you'd like to try it for your site

Why a Warped Tour Site? Part Two

2005-05-21T12:07:00.000-04:00

Continuing on with yesterday’s post, I’ll add the other answer to “Why a Warped Tour site?” This one is much more personal and selfish than yesterday’s post.

During a workshop at Omega several years ago, we were walked through a guided meditation. One of the exercises afterwards was to make a list of things we wanted to be when we were children. We were told to think carefully, and then write down the top thing we wanted to be as a child, and the top thing we wanted to be as a teenager.

My items were:
1.) Child - Archeologist
2.) Teenager – Journalist for Rolling Stone magazine

We were told that in some practical way, we should try to incorporate those two things into our lives as a hobby. That even though our careers and lives bore no resemblance to our hopes and dreams when we were young, there was still a part of us that was that child, that was that teenager, and that still had those dreams.

All of us had grand career dreams when we were young. And all of us had our grand career dreams laughed at by those around us. By finding expression for those dreams, not only would we honor that authentic self within us, we heal the wounds of having our dreams invalidated.

We were told to write down the disparaging remarks that were made about our goals:

“You better marry a millionaire if you want to be an archeologist. There’s no money in that.”
“Rolling Stone Magazine! How many thousands of resumes do you think they get in a day?”

And those comments were neither said in a cruel tone, nor meant to be cruel. They are honestly true. There really is no money in archeology. You do have to be born wealthy to have that as a career. And I’m sure the number of resumes that Rolling Stone Magazine gets totters on the tens of thousands.

Unrealistic career goals to be sure, but they were part of my authentic self’s dreams.

Incorporating archeology into my life was easy enough. It was something I already had done. Watching mostly PBS, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel, I was a walking encyclopedia on the ancient history of the Celtic Islands.

But a music journalist…? How could that ever be incorporated into a hobby? I can’t name one single band I hear on the radio. Most of my CDs are New Age/Ambient/World Music CDs. And I’m really not that good of a writer. So I shelved that idea. Yeah, it sounds good at an overpriced new-agey Omega workshop, but it just don’t fly in the real world, friends.

It was funny how the Parent’s Guide got rolling long before I ever made the connection between that workshop and what I was doing. Unconsciously, I had incorporated that 25-year-old dream into a hobby.

Even if my conscious, practical, rational self saw no way that a busy adult woman who knew nothing about music AND with a full time job could find some type of music writing hobby, that part of my soul took over and found a way for it.

So that’s the other reason, I tell those who look at me slightly askew. It’s my hobby. And I’d recommend it to anyone.

Make a list of the top thing you wanted to be when you were a child, and the top thing you wanted to be when you were a teenager. And find a way, anyway, to just do it. Those around you will think you’ve gone insane. But let them. It’s good to have people worried about you. Keeps them on their toes. Let them think you’re a nut. The fact that you’re not, the fact that you’re the farthest thing from a nut, will be your own private joke. I won’t tell them if you won’t.

Go nuts.

Why a Warped Tour site?

2005-05-20T12:02:00.000-04:00

That’s usually the question posed to me by well meaning but rather concerned family members who think I’m experiencing some sort of a psychotic break.

There are two precise reasons actually, but mid-life psychosis has nothing to do with it.

First and foremost, I still remember the first time my son asked to go to Warped Tour. He was only 11, and even though I didn’t have a clue what kind of concert Warped Tour was, I just knew he couldn't go:

Him: Can I go to Warp Tour this year?
Me: No
Him: Do you even know what Warp Tour is?
Me: No. Take the trash out.

He asked again at age 12 – pleaded actually, because some band he adored would be there. This time the conversation was a little longer:

Him: Can I go pleeeeaaassseeee to Warp Tour this year? BandNameIForget will be there.
Me: What is Warp Tour?
Him: An all ages punk rock festival
Me: No.
Him: Why not?
Me. You’re too young for a concert.
Him: It’s all ages. What part of all ages don’t you understand? Little kids go there.
Me: Take the trash out.

OK not much longer, but at least this year I knew what it was.

In the spring of the next year he asked again. Warped Tour would be in Randall’s Island on the auspicious occasion of his 13^th birthday. I have rather anthropological beliefs about that most horrible and painful of ages. The coming of age year of our distant ancestors. But to be brought up in a society so far removed from the culture, tradition and rituals of our tribal past, 13 many times goes neglected. Unless you’re brought up Jewish, there is little ritual for a 13-year-old. What rituals can non-Jewish families do to acknowledge and honor a year that, quite frankly, sucks. 13 has got to be the most emotionally painful year of anyone’s life. And such a milestone. Standing on the brink between childhood and teenage years. And it goes by without any fanfare for so many of us.

Warped Tour was something I knew he felt strongly about. I know that in our modern, divorced from ritual society, the first concert you go to definitely has it’s own ritualistic elements. The preparation and excitement leading up to it. Determining what to wear. The factor of the unknown. The first time you are exposed to live music, it’s a mind-altering experience. And somewhat religious as well, in it’s own warped way. What else can cause that great, soul-swelling heart-chakra love experience, than seeing a band you adore perform live for the very first time?

I wanted him to have that, in my own urban ritual way of honoring and acknowledging 13. So I said yes. And then practically vomited with fear at the idea of saying ‘yes’ to something I knew nothing about. I went out online trying to find Warped Tour information. I posted on every Internet bulletin board, discussion group, and news group I could find. I felt a little better after having talked to other parents, but I was still very frightened. My first concert was The Rolling Stones at age 15. 13 still seemed like such a vulnerable age.

I was a nervous wreck, from the moment I said ‘yes’ to the first time standing in that line to get in. I really didn’t know what to expect, and the crowd seemed overwhelming. My fear started to lift though, when I saw how nice the people in line were. Some band came up passing out flyers, pleading with everyone to go to their stage, and promising to play REO Speedwagon for me if I would see them play. Even though I hated REO Speedwagon when I was young, that had to be the funniest thing I had ever heard.

It was a real affirming and educational experience for my husband as well. He and I were miles apart in high school. I was in the nerdy-artsy-theater-crowd and he was brought up evangelical Christian attending Youth for Christ rallies. His only exposure to punk was seeing Sid & Nancy on IFC - not really the most accurate of descriptions. He was really ignorant to anything and everything about it. Shortly after getting in line, he was won over by the friendliness of everyone there. There's something so wonderful about seeing the blinders lifted from the eyes of someone you love, and seeing them come to their own conclusions naturally. Ask him now what punk is, and he couldn't describe a single band or genre, but he will tell you what came to him on his own. He'll simply say, "It's about community."

I decided at that moment I would write a review on Epinions of this, and it took off from there. I know out there somewhere, some mom or dad has been asked that same question, "Can I go to Warped Tour?" Knowing nothing about what Warped Tour is, they set out on the Internet to find out. And I hope my site can fill that void that was there back in 2002 – providing parents of adolescents some information that will make their kids very, very happy, and give them a good blast of reminiscence as well.

That is the biggest and most important reason of "Why a Warped Tour site?" The other one I’ll describe in more detail tomorrow. This is enough for today.

I get knocked down, but I get up again, no you’re never gonna keep me down

2005-05-19T11:59:00.000-04:00

I love one hit wonders.

Continuing on with the theme of my first blog post, I’ve decided that any substantial Google traffic for this year’s Warped Tour is a bust, so I’m setting my sites on Warped 2006. The site needs to be completely done over from the ground floor up if I want to appear in at least the third page of Google results, let alone the first.

I’m not going to work on any major design revamp right now, as I still need to service the visitors who are coming for parental information on this year’s Warped. Trying to get all of the smaller bands in before the opening day is a daunting enough challenge, one that I don’t think I’ll make in time. But hey, I’m trying.

Because I tend to think better when I’m writing goals down, I’m trying to organize and categorize my priorities and wishes for the site. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Understand and implement better keyword phrases
Understand and implement page optimization
Begin a link building campaign
Understand and implement search engine optimization
Re-design site
Get substantial traffic
Earn AdSense income
Get a domain name

That’s the order. So, before I begin, where to start?

There are zillions of webmaster resources on line, and each one will tell you something different. I’ve decided to start with SEOmoz as I find the site to be accessible to people like me – people who know that they need something, just not exactly what is it. Pretty much I’ll spend the next week or so going over that site from top to bottom.

To understand what to fix, I felt I needed a snapshot of where I stand now. SEOmoz has tons of extremely valuable tools that are free if you don’t mind the wait. Honestly, for the value these tools provide, I’d wait all day.

I’m running the reports there, and at several other sites they suggested, and will save the results so I have something to look back on as I tweak the site a bit.

Wow, I'm honored and humbled

2005-05-18T11:55:00.000-04:00

Checking the referrer logs, I noticed my first bloglink. I'm really amazed someone would bring up my site in a discussion. It was from a discussion on the more things change, the more they stay the same kind of things. If there is any way that punk today is the same as it was back in the oldentimes, it's the male domination of the music industry.

My page came up as a reference to another hot topic, girls and crowdsurfing, which I still get endless barely-intelligible emails stating something along the lines of YO U SHULDN'T TALK ABEOUT WUT U DONT NO ABOUT BITCH CROWDSURFING RULZZZZZZZ, which in English I believe translates to "Excuse me madam, but I enjoy crowdsurfing very much, thank you."

I wasn't in any of the pits at Warped 2004 obviously, so I can't relay first hand knowledge. I can only go by what was told to me by my son. When a feminist woman and an enlightened male have a child, and raise him in a community of other feminist women and enlightened males, they tend to raise someone with a healthy respect of women. And he was really disturbed by what he saw in more than a few pits.

At first it was, "OK that was gross"... then in the second pit it was, "What the hell?"... after about 5 pits of witnessing the same old groping behavior he was pretty disgusted.

I don't know. My stepdaughter went into the pit at Warped 2003, but she kept her feet on the ground. That's still my stand on the whole issue.

Should they be able to crowdsurf without being groped? Yes. Is it their fault that they got groped for crowdsurfing in the first place? No. We just still live in an imperfect world, even if we are at the perfect concert. There's no easy answer.

Sandboxed by Google

2005-05-18T11:48:00.000-04:00

You learn something new everyday.Knowing less about search engine dynamics than I do about modern punk rock, it seems a foolish enterprise for a 41 year old nerd to be the webmistress of a Google-dependent site dedicated to Warped Tour, but I've never been much one for common sense.

The site has gone through several incarnations. At first, it was a one page review of Warped Tour on Epinions.com. That was seen by an editor at a local community newsletter who contacted me, had me spiff it up a bit, and ran it here on a Long Island newsletter. Because it got a fair share of attention, I thought maybe it might be nice to get it up and online so other parents searching the web would have some information to turn to when asked, "Can I go to Warp Tour?"

It's first incarnation was on (get ready to laugh) Geocities. Although I'm pretty literate as to the damage that can be caused by ActiveX imbedded within HTML, when it comes to actually putting up a web page, I'm clueless. I used some goddess-awful Geocities template and had a one page site there. That lasted a little bit, until I realized that the url http://geocities.com/myrealfirstandlastname/warptour.html was a rather stupid thing. (Not the sharpest tool in the shed)

The site then wandered over to Tripod, until I got fed up with the barrage of popups there. Finally I settled on http://warpedtour.atspace.com/, which has proven to be a pretty stable free host with no banners or ads, and they allow you to host your own affiliate links. Affiliate links are a must, as we are just dead broke.

So far this year I've enjoyed a steady upwards climbing stream of traffic, with daily unique IP's increasing each day. About 80 percent of my traffic came from Google, with the remaining bits evenly spread out between MSN, Ask, and the blessed and beloved folks at http://www.warpedtour.net

So imagine if you will my dismay to log into Statcounter today, only to find 12 total hits during the hours of midnight to 5AM.12

From 12 unique IPs per half hour down to 12 in a 5 hour stretch. That's a sad sight to see while you're waiting for the coffee to finish brewing.

I checked the site to make sure it was still up, and there it was in all it's garish yellow glory. Odd...I checked the referrers, and that's when a sinking feeling hit me. Nothing from Google at all.

Before today, my keyword analysis was pretty steady:

google: warped tour

google: warp tour

google: warped tour parents info

google: let me go to warped tour

google: warp tour bands

You get the idea. I used to come up in position 3 on Google's first page results, even though my Google PR (which I still don't fully understand) is 0. But still, number 1 was the official Warped Tour site itself, 2 was the unofficial Warped Tour site, and there was yours truly right at spot 3.Too good to last.

Now I'm at about spot 500 in any Google search for "warped tour". Hundreds upon hundreds of sites that have less than nothing to do with the festival come up before me. After spending a frantic day searching around at various webmaster forums and sites, I think I've stumbled upon the answer.

I've been sandboxed.

It's a horrible place to be. The calming author of this article claims not to panic, because the sandbox effect usually lifts after about 3-4 months.

Just when Warped Tour ends.

Is there anyone who has worse luck than I? Oh well. I guess I'll spend this year's Warped Tour season trying to understand that whole Google PR thing, and trying to build links with other sites. That way maybe for Warped 2006 I'll be back on Google's front page again.

I hope.