Feb 232015
 

Foreign countries are strange

One of the big hangups about traveling, particularly traveling abroad is dealing with the strange customs of foreigners. It is as if just living somewhere foreign gives them permission to be strange. Go figure! Some of if is charming. Who doesn’t love the idea of gondolas and seranading gondoliers? And who can resist the romance when ordinary objects get translated into Italian.

English: Tripe in an Italian market. Some tast...

Image via Wikipedia

Ordinary stuff becomes magical in another language. Still there are risks. you can order something uneatable, like tripe, without knowing. Europeans seem to value tripe much higher than Americans perhaps because it sounds so sexy. It is hard to remember sometimes that the people eating that tripe aren’t Americans. And tripe remains stomach no matter what language you speak.

Ah, there is the problem. Continue reading »

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Feb 102015
 

We have been in Buenos Aires for over a week now.  That time has given us an opportunity to form some  opinions  about life down here in the Southern hemisphere.  Don’t expect a big report today.  Buenos Aires is not a relaxing place.  It takes just about all the energy this old Coot can generate to keep moving down here.  Even when you are trying to keep your cool and remain calm, just riding the SubTe (what they call their subway) or riding in a taxi engages all your reserves.  All the taxis are subcompacts and it takes me five minutes to get in and  out of one but once you are in, the ride is exhilarating. It amazes us that we haven’t seen one accident because taxi driving is a competitive sport down here.  Your taxi driver plays chicken with all  the other taxi drivers to get around a bus or into a better lane.

Down time is when you sit down for water at a sidewalk cafe, sometimes just inches from the traffic but once you order a water, you can sit forever.

That’s about it for today.  I just noticed that neither Bob nor Justin had checked in since my last post and I figured I’d better put something in. I’ll upload a couple of pictures  and add a few more observations about Buenos Aires to flesh out later.  Trial lawyers would have a field day in BA because we haven’t seen a sidewalk without serious safety issues since we got here.  Portenos (residents of BA) seem  to have an underwear fetish.  There are underwear shops in  the SubTe stations.  They do seem to celebrate Christmas with some of the same  themes we use but Santa Clause is Papa Noel.  Green wreaths, trees and lights are up  but in more restrained fashion  than back in  the  states.  More later.

BA Tour Bus

Open air Tour buses give you a quick overview of BA sights

View from our apartment

Our apartment view

BA sidewalks can be a challenge

There must not be trial lawyers in BA

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Feb 102015
 

Tuesday I read a great post by Frank Kern. He talks about doing things for yourself and being your own Guru. There should be no one you can blame for your own failures.
In society today there are far too many people who feel that they are entitled to money or things that they don’t work for. It is a load of horse crap. My generation is the beginning of that “hey look my hand is out give me something” mentality that frankly makes me sick.

Certain family members that I have are so bad that I would love to see a huge cosmic slap in the face come to them. Sure charity is a good thing but if you do nothing yourself, nothing for yourself and do not work hard for what you have you can neither appreciate it or be grateful for what you have.

Hold your hand out to me and I will probably fill it with bullshit because that is what you deserve.  Ask me for help to accomplish YOUR goals, I will bend over backwards to do so.

Read Franks post here and realize that it is all up to you so quit whining and get to work

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Feb 102015
 

Hail to the Chief.

Photo taken by me as an example of a stay at h...

Stay at home  Dad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once a year we honor the creator of Cantankerous Old Coots; the one man responsible for this exercise in extreme folly who has led the way of Cantankerousity for all of us constrained by boring convention and insipid politeness.

Continue reading »

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Dec 232014
 

I don’t know about you but I’m fed up with Search Engine Optimization, Page Rank and kowtowing to the great god Google. What do they want from me? What do they want from the world and can anything stop them?

Google says their mission is ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ Did you ever hear anything more like big brother in your life? Even Obama hasn’t suggested doing this as he eliminates the private sector economy. And these clever people at Google have figured out how to make us pay for it without thinking unlike those clumsy and ineffective taxes the government uses to get our money.

But back to the SEO. Have you read the helpful instructions you can find everywhere on the web about how to make Google happy?  Even if you read them, do you have a clue about what Google really wants? You hear all the time that if you create high quality content, the web is a piece of cake but when you begin to study SEO you learn that it is bull crap because Google can’t read and wouldn’t know good writing from from the typing of 10,000 monkeys. If you write good copy but fail to appease the god Google, nobody will ever find you, read you and appreciate your effort. Why bother?

To make Google happy, don’t waste your time refining your prose because writing is old fashioned and irrelevant. Nobody cares because thanks to Google, nobody will know that it even exists. If you want to be successful you have to pack your collection of words (why even call it writing?) with a  word or phrase that somebody might search for. Salt enough of those keywords throughout your word aggregation and Google will send you readers. No muss, no fuss and best of all, no tedious writing effort. Anything will do.

Google has spawned a whole new industry of products and services to help witless people with more money than they can spend to propagate their word aggregations around the web to provide ‘credibility’ (in the form of back links) to your aggregations. Put those mutated word aggregations in enough places and rearrange their words in enough ways and Google will reward you with a higher page rank. Just like the annoying TV ads that finally get etched into your brain and make you mindlessly grab the products when you shop, if you saturate the web with your word aggregations, you overwhelm the competition and achieve value to Google.  After all nothing else matters any more.  And all it took was a few hundred dollars and some software.

So today I say to Google, ‘Do no harm’. If Google can’t read and won’t even try to learn, then stop pretending that Google knows how to find value and content. Call a spade a spade. Google isn’t about writing or content – unless you value keywords. I can’t get too excited about them but then, I’m a Coot. They are probably all that Tweet- addled Gens X and Y can handle. Google doesn’t care a rat’s ass for writing. What Google loves is picture frames for keywords.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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