Now that was a storm!

August 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

For those of you not in the Phoenix area, last we got hit with a storm harder than Ike whooped Tina. Man!!!!!!

But at Snickermons Ranch, we escaped unscathed. There was extreme damage throughout the valley though:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/08/29/20080829storms0829-ON.html

I have never witnessed such an amazing lightning storm — it was like a strobe light — and the thunder was constant too, for about 2 hours. Insane!

All told, Scottsdale reported more than an inch of rain, but I’m guessing we received close to two inches.
(photo by Erica Gailey, published in AZCentral.com)
More incredible storm photos

Posted by seth | Filed Under Blog

Olympics Trivia #4

August 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport! The thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat! The human drama of athletic competition!

Oh, how I miss Jim McKay.

He for sure would know the answer to this Olympic trivia question:

What do the five rings on the Olympic flag stand for?

I can’t provide the answers here, if you think about it, you might be able to figure it out.

Click thru for the answer

Posted by seth | Filed Under olympics, Blog

Olympics Trivia #3

August 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Did you know that women competed in the second Olympic Games of the modern era?

And while Charlotte Cooper won the tennis singles event in at the Paris Games in 1900, she was not awarded the gold medal until 1904.

What nation did Charlotte Cooper represent?

A) United States

B) Great Britain

C) Australia

D) Canada

Click thru for the answer

Posted by seth | Filed Under olympics, Blog

Olympics Trivia #2

August 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment

In 1960, marathoner Abebe Bikila became the first man ever to win the event barefoot. Not only was the first person to ever win the event this way, he was the first ever African to win an Olympic gold medal.

What country is Bikila from?

A) Kenya

B) Ethiopia

C) Zimbabwe

D) Sudan

Click thru for the answer

Posted by seth | Filed Under olympics, Blog

Olympic Trivia #1

August 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Since it’s time for the 2008 (man I’m getting old) Summer Games, I thought it would be good to ask a few Olympics related questions over the next few days to test your knowledge of Olympic legends, lore, and politically tinged factoids.

OK, now that the eye-rolling has stopped, it’s time for the first question:

The United States is the nation with the most Summer Olympic gold medals of all time. Who is second for most golds?

More questions will follow in the coming days. I DO NOT plan on posting any spoiler stories about the results from Beijing, so rest easy comrades!

Click thru for the answer

Posted by seth | Filed Under olympics, Blog

Trouble with URLs in Google Sitemap

August 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment

My favorite client is having trouble with a few URLs in their XML sitemap. The sitemap has been submitted to Google, and Google gobbled it up and deemed it palatable enough via Webmaster Tools.

But there is something really weird going on with a handful of URLs that end in index.html.

Here is an example:
This URL is in the sitemap:
http://www.xxxxx.com/campaigns/usa/unifiedcommunications/index.html

Here is a snapshot of the error Google returned for the above URL:

This site uses both .htm and .html as file extensions and there are index.htm and index.html pages listed in the sitemap. Is this discrepancy encouraging Google to access the pages at the root level of the directory. All of the URLs in the sitemap include the full path, so Google shouldn’t be forced to do any guesswork.

Any ideas what is going on here?

Posted by seth | Filed Under Work