Visits to my Web site peaked in mid-April and began to fall off slightly through the end of the month.  May traffic is down about 30% from April–almost back down to January levels.  Oddly, I’m still getting many “referrals” from what appear to be poker sites.  I still haven’t determined if those are spam bots or legitimate traffic.  I’m more curious than anything else, but don’t really know how to track down the answer.

I am, however, going to do an experiment.  I’m going to submit my site to the search engines again and see if I get another huge increase in traffic like I did back in January.  If I do, I’ll be more inclined to believe that the increased traffic is from spam bots.

Firefox‘s share of hits on my site hit an all-time high this month with 21%.  Internet Explorer was still on top with almost 66%, and everybody else was under 5%.  I know that I’m just one site, but I have to think that Firefox is gaining market share all across the Web.  Perhaps not the 21% I’ve seen, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it reach 13%.  I wonder who tracks that kind of thing, and how.

Search terms have been woefully unfunny the last few months, except for one:  “masturbation caused rotator cuff injury.”  I don’t even want to know the details.

Debra came home from the video store with Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.  It wasn’t high on my list of movies to see.  A friend told me that the story was weak but worth watching just to see Jim Carrey do his thing but even with that disclaimer I was disappointed.  The story is just a thin wrapper around a bunch of disjointed scenes featuring Jim Carrey, who isn’t especially good in any of them.

I guess the movie would make more sense to me if I’d read the books or if I had kids and could relate more to the children’s characters.  I fell asleep during the film and wasn’t interested enough in what happened to go back and see what I’d missed.  For me, the funniest part of the film was the little girl, Sunny, hanging by her teeth from the kitchen table in the first few minutes.  It was all down hill from there.

I wouldn’t recommend the movie except as a cure for insomnia.

Walk on to any car dealer’s lot and engage a salesman.  Shortly after the pleasantries are done, he will ask you two questions:

1. What kind of car are you looking for?
2. What monthly payment can you afford?

Your answer to the first question tells him your dream.  Your answer to the second tells him your perception of reality.  I can almost guarantee that the finance company will approve you for a larger payment than you think you can afford.  Knowing this, the salesman will view your answer as a beginning negotiating position.  His job is to talk you into spending more money:  a higher payment amount, a longer term, or a lease.  The salesman will never mention the car’s price.  That’s irrelevant.  It’s all about the payment amount.

Home sales have gotten a lot like that over the years.  “Cheaper than rent!”  “No cost move-in!”  “Own your dream home for under $1,000 per month!”  Advertisements very often will not include the total price of the home, or will include the price and finance terms in fine print at the bottom (or in “fast talk” at the end of the radio ad).  It’s not quite as bad as with car sales, but it’s getting there.  People aren’t paying $150,000 for a house.  They’re paying $1,000 per month (PITI).  That would be okay, except for a few major problems.

• American society seems to condition us to live right at or slightly beyond our means.  Builders and mortgage companies are happy to indulge this gluttony.
• Most people have no financial buffer and will be in dire financial shape if they miss more than one paycheck.
• People seem to think that housing prices always go up.  They view their house as an investment.  The housing industry, of course, does all it can to promote this viewpoint.
• Builders and mortgage companies got pretty creative with the financing during the recent economic downturn in order to keep selling houses, making loans, and keeping their people employed.  The record low interest rates were quite helpful here.

What does it all mean?  Consider Joe Average who bought his $150,000 home for no money down on an interest-only loan at 3.5%, with a five year adjustment term at which time he starts paying the principal.  Right now his interest payment is about $440 per month.  Add taxes and insurance, and his house payment is probably about $700.  That’s way cheaper than rent.  You can get a very nice house for $150,000 if you don’t mind a 45 minute commute into the city.

Joe is counting on his salary to increase in the next five years, so he’s not terribly worried about the higher payment he’ll have to make then.  Plus, he figures, if his salary doesn’t increase enough, he can just sell the house and reap a small profit from the increased price.  It’s a nice dream, and neither the builder nor the mortgage company is going to discourage Joe from holding those ideas.  They’re wrong ideas, but following them seems to have worked for people in the past.

So what happens in five years?  First, interest rates have climed to 7%.  Joe’s monthly house payment, including principal, interest, taxes, and insurance, goes from $700 to $1,200.  The economy is flat or maybe in a downturn so Joe can’t afford that extra $500.  He’d like to sell his house, but there’s a glut of homes on the market and the rising interest rates have depressed prices.  He finds that if he’s lucky he could get $150,000 for the house before he pays the real estate agent’s commission, but there are a dozen similar houses for sale in his neighborhood that have been on the market for over six months.  Joe’s only reasonable course of action is to just walk away.  Besides, he bought the place for no money down so he really doesn’t have much to lose.

I’m not just spinning a fantasy here.  Check out this Washington Post article.  People are buying more house than they can afford, interest rates are rising, and salaries aren’t rising as fast as people are spending their future income.  We’re in the middle of a housing bubble and I think we’re headed for a crash the likes of which we haven’t seen in a very long time.  This will be worse than the fallout from the late 1980s S&L crisis.  I think there are going to be many people walking away from homes that they can no longer afford.  A guy with cash will make lots of money picking up abandoned properties and holding them for a few years.

I’ve been known to be wrong from time to time, and I sure hope I’m wrong on this one.  But I fear that I’ve read these tea leaves correctly.  We’ll find out in the next couple of years.

My hosting ISP, Sectorlink, recently switched my Web mail from the old software to something called SmarterMail.  I’m not impressed.  In fact, I’m disappointed.  But at least the software is serviceable.  The last thing they switched us to was so horribly broken that they had to switch back after a couple of weeks.

The old Web client interface was minimal but complete.  I could check my mail, send messages, organize my mail into folders, and maintain a contact list.  It wasn’t fancy, but it worked.  The simple interface meant that it worked on every computer I used to check my mail, even older machines that were running IE 4 and Linux machines running early versions of Konqueror.  That’s all I wanted:  the ability to check my mail when I was away from home.

SmarterMail could be considered a “rich client.”  It has tree views for messages, fancy options dialogs, content filtering and spam filtering, and cool-looking gadgets.  Oddly, it doesn’t include the calendar feature that I think was in the old client.  It’s all nice and pretty, but I’m pretty sure that the demands it places on the client browser will prevent it from working on older versions.  Not having tested that, I can’t say for sure, but it certainly looks like there are some features that require later browser versions.

The new spam filtering looks kind of interesting.  Default filter settings use some heuristics to classify messages as good, “SPAM-LOW,” “SPAM-MED,” or “SPAM-HIGH.”  I can disable or change those rules to fit my needs, and I can use Thunderbird’s filtering rules to route suspected spam to my junk folder if I want.  Right now I’m looking closely at the SPAM-HIGH and will likely have it automatically deleted by the server after I satisfy myself that that there’s very little chance of false positives.

Speaking of spam, I’ve seen an increased spam count that coincides with the introduction of SmarterMail.  That makes me think that in the past Sectorlink was doing some server-side spam filtering without telling me about it.  I can’t prove that, of course, but it does make me suspicious.  I’m doubly suspicious, because Debra has noticed increased spam recently as well.  I thought I asked Sectorlink about that last year when I noticed a dramatic decrease in my spam count that I eventually wrote off to the bouncebacks that people got when my mail account disappeared for a full day.

All things considered, I’d rather have my old Web client back.  It worked on every system I tried and did everything that I wanted it to do.  The spam filtering and fancy UI that comes with SmarterMail just doesn’t seem worth having to re-learn my Web email client.

Last month about a week before the big bicycle trip, I finally went out and bought a new replacement for the Creative PC-CAM that I broke.  I was unable to find a new PC-CAM and after much shopping I settled on the Nikon Coolpix 4600.  The camera itself is only about $200, but with a 256 MB memory card, heavy duty neck strap, carry case, and what all, the final bill was right at $300.  It’s quite a bit more than I wanted to spend, but it’s a much better camera than the PC-CAM.  It’s also a nicer camera than the Canon that I paid nearly $600 four years ago.  Almost all of the pictures I’ve posted on this site since mid April were taken with the new Nikon.

The camera has dozens of different modes in addition to the standard “snapshot” mode, including settings for night landscape, portraits, “action,” bright sunlight, museums, close ups, and others.  The camera will auto focus, and in some cases even center the picture automatically.  I like the flexibility but it’s difficult to know which mode to use in a particular situation, and the small screen and paucity of buttons make navigating the user interface a bit cumbersome.  Still, I can take much better shots than with either of the other two cameras.

The Coca Cola can pictured here is something that I hadn’t seen before going to Japan.  It’s a 500 ml aluminum can, shaped like a 16 oz glass bottle.  The programmers and artists who saw me taking the picture were a bit amused that I thought it photo-worthy.  Odd looks never stopped me from experimenting with my camera, though.  This is a very good example of the camera’s closeup mode.

A friend of mine once told me that he sometimes has difficulty resisting the temptation to stray from his wife.  He’s a nice looking guy, friendly, attentive, reasonably successful:  all in all probably what many women would consider “a good catch.”  He’s certainly never lacked for female attention in the years that I’ve known him.  After a few years of marriage he confided in me that he sometimes finds himself in situations that are, to be delicate, uncomfortable.

Now I don’t claim to be a marriage counselor, or any other kind of counselor for that matter, but resisting temptation (of many kinds) is something that I’ve fought with and given considerable thought to.  I’ve even adopted a quote from Oscar Wilde:  “I can resist anything but temptation.”  Taken at face value that statement is ridiculous, but I use it as a kind of mnemonic device.

Resisting temptation is hard.  Faced with immediate gratification of an urge, it’s very difficult not to succumb.  This is true regardless of the temptation:  marital infidelity, eating that extra slice of chocolate cheesecake, jumping into an argument or online flame war, partying instead of studying, or any of many others that we’re faced with each day.  In almost every case you have to make a conscious decision to resist, and remain vigilant lest you allow yourself to waver.  I’ve never found an easy way to resist temptation.

I have found, though, that avoiding temptation is relatively easy.  If I don’t put myself in the position to be tempted, then I don’t have to worry about resisting.  As a side benefit, I’ve found that the more I avoid temptation, the easier it is to resist when I’m faced with that situation.  For example, rather than trying to resist the friendly advances of an attractive young woman (not that I’m in any particular danger there, but it serves as an illustration), I don’t put myself into positions where such advances would be forthcoming.  That means I don’t accept invitations to “have a drink” after work unless it’s with a large group.  When I realized years ago that I had a drinking problem (more of a stopping problem), I stopped bringing beer into the house.  I make it a point to avoid situations where I’ll be tempted, freeing myself from the need to resist.

Consider two recovering alcoholics who are invited to attend a party where drinks will be free and plentiful.  One agrees to go and spends the entire night fighting with his urge to indulge his craving.  “Just one drink won’t hurt.”  “I can stop any time, I just know it.”  “Let’s see if I can control myself.”  He’s constantly turning down drink offers and having to tell people, “I don’t drink anymore.”  Even if he doesn’t succumb to temptation he’s going to be miserable all night.

The other alcoholic politely declines the invitation, knowing that it’s much easier to maintain his sobriety by avoiding the situations altogether.  He understands the concept of risk management.  The alcoholic who attends and spends the night resisting takes unnecessary risks by knowingly placing himself in a difficult position.

Why resist temptation when you can avoid it altogether?  Resistance might not be futile, but it’s damned difficult.  Avoidance, on the other hand, is easy and much more effective.

Just a few things that’ve made me laugh recently.

• Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes.  Don’t be sipping tea unless you want it sprayed out on the monitor.  You’ve been warned.
• I honestly thought that the Masturbate-A-Thon was a joke.  Okay, I still have a tough time believing that it’s real.
• Jeff Duntemann shows us an example of how not to use your spell checker. (See the May 21 entry, or click here for the archived version after August 1.)  I wonder if that editor still has a job.
• Sith Apprentice.  Donald Trump meets Star Wars, with bits from Highlander and The Princess Bride thrown in.  Definitely laugh worthy.
• A friend sent me this quote, attributed to Dave Barry:  “A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world totally devoid of reason.  Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.”  Hey, it works for me.

A very unfortunate consequence of our “improved security” in response to the 9/11 attacks is that you can no longer store your bags in airport lockers.  I wanted to attend the graduation ceremony this morning at 11:00, but had to return my rental car before 12:30 to avoid paying an extra day’s rental.  I dropped the car off about 10:30 and went hunting for a locker.  No dice.  I ended up checking in for my flight and checking one bag.  The laptop I carried with me back to the school.

Is there really that much danger of somebody storing a bomb in a locker at the airport?  It’s not like there aren’t plenty of other places to hide something.  Couldn’t we post guards at the locker area entrance and have them screen any bags that will be stored in the lockers?

When I got home this evening and opened the bag I’d checked, I found a note from the TSA saying that they had opened it and searched the contents.  I find that incredibly funny, as the only thing even remotely suspicious in there was my electric razor.  I’m glad I didn’t have anything really dangerous in there.  Like a fingernail clipper.

It’s been almost four years now.  Security keeps getting more ridiculous and yet I don’t see any real improvements in the procedures.  There still seems to be plenty of holes that a diligent and imaginative enemy could exploit.  I remain of the opinion that all of this “increased security” is just busy work to make the unthinking majority of the traveling public think that “something is being done.”  I certainly haven’t seen any data to make me change that opinion.

The Round Rock Leader today reprinted Doug Bandow‘s editorial Paying taxes for months on end, in which the author explains Tax Freedom Day and describes how much of our working lives we spend on taxes.  The average is about three and a half months, and varies from about three months to a little over four months depending on what state you live in.  I heartily agree that government costs too much, but I disagree strongly with some of Bandow’s points and the formula that the Tax Foundation uses to calculate Tax Freedom Day.

Early in the article, Bandow states:

The Bush tax cuts pushed back Tax Freedom Day from May 3 in 2000 – a record, exceeding the tax burden even during World War II.

That statement felt wrong to me.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to base the calculation on the total cost of government rather than on the amount of taxes collected?  Apparently not.  The Tax Freedom Day Web site has the following to say about how Tax Freedom Day is calculated:

Tax Freedom Day answers the basic question, “What price is the nation paying for government?” We divide the most authoritative figure for tax collections by the most authoritative figure for income

Now I’m no economist, but it seems to me that the real price we’re paying for government should include some provision for paying off the accumulated national debt of almost 8 trillion dollars (National DebtClock).  At minimum, it should include the current year’s budget deficit of over 500 billion dollars.  Not including the amount we’ve borrowed is irresponsible at best, and could be viewed as dishonest.  If you include the 20% current year budget deficit, Tax Freedom Day moves to about April 25 this year.

The Tax Foundation’s About Us page says, in part:

As a nonpartisan educational organization, the Tax Foundation has earned a reputation for independence and credibility. However, it is not devoid of perspective.

I don’t know enough about the organization’s history to say whether it deserves the nonpartisan description, and I’m happy to see that they don’t claim to be totally objective.  However, I don’t see how they can claim credibility when they make the fundamental error of assuming that the price we’re paying for government is limited to the amount of taxes collected rather than the amount spent.