Year End Coots Awards

 Posted by at 11:02  Blog Recaps, Coot Smirk, principles
Feb 232015
 

 

Well folks, in the grand tradition of sites everywhere I am participating in yet another year end post.  Today I have a few awards to hand out.

 

We will start right here with the coots:

Justin, that’s me, gets the Laziest Coot  with the most Crap to Do award.  I award myself this because it seems the hours that used to be productive are now stolen by a 1 year old and cleaning up the house.  I can only hope that 2012 will allow me to get more sleep and concentrate more on my business and making some dough.  Both bread and money.

Ralph will get the Most Persistent award.  It seems like he has nothing better to do most of the time so he writes.  He has kept this blog afloat this year and even went above and beyond to get a post out on Christmas.  Well done Ralph.

Bob gets an award that is similar to mine.  He gets the Too Damn Much on His Plate for His Own Good award.  This year has seen him start several sites and purchase much software that will keep him occupied for hours trying to figure it out.  And then he suckers me into his world as well….

To Hansi, he gets the Only Person Who Reads this Blog Consistently and Comments award.  If it wasn’t for  him, we would have no interaction at all.

To Steve Jobs, the About Damn Time You Gave Up award.  Now I am not against Steve Jobs, but, good grief if you know what I mean.

To JustHost.com, they get the You Lost A Customer With Your Crap Policies and Mediocre Customer Service award.  That title says it all, but the best service I have received from them over the last 2 years was when I was canceling my account there.

and in a related award, To HostGator.com.  There is a reason everyone and their dog recommends them.  They get the You Gained A Customer With Clear Policies and Customer Service That Should Be The Textbook Model for Customer Service Around The World In Every Field award.

To Google, you get the award for making us all paranoid about SEO rankings and what we are going to do to keep from getting blackballed in the rankings.  I call it the “Thanks For Making All Of Us Your Bitch” Award.

To Bing, you get the What The Hell Is Bing Anyway award.

and finally to our lawmakers in Washington, you get the I Voted For This?? award for proposing SOPA.  Look it up if you wish I don’t want to explain it more than to say it is stupidity on the hoof, at your expense.

Well that about wraps it up for this year and this edition of the Coots Awards.  We are staring firmly into the gaping maw of 2012 and I am kind of getting a “Sarlaac Pit” feeling, it is going to be a long year.

Yet, for all of that, Happy New Year from the Coots.  Now go get your Christmas Lights down and lets look forward to Martin Luther King Day.

-Justin

 

PS here are some doozy articles that we have written and you may have missed.  Enjoy.

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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Down with Google

 Posted by at 01:38  Down with, Plain 'ol Cantankerous, rants, Technology
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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Cantankeriffic Week in Review 1. 4/23/10

 Posted by at 11:58  Uncategorized
Jan 012014
 

If you are a long time reader to the Cantankerous Old Coots, you have nearly completed 1 month of irregular reading!

Congratulations, your education in being a coot is in full swing.   Here is some good and bad news.  The good news is that we are continuing to rise in popularity.  People are coming by and reading our blog.  The bad news, Ahh there is no bad news.

I did have to face some hard truths over the past week.  Namely, I need to be a whore to SEO.  In case you missed it, I AM NOW A WHORE TO SEO!  In order to comply with this, there is now a schedule for posts on Cantankerous Old Coots.

Ralph has informed me that this is a less than cantakerous path to take, but in the interest of making this blog a flagship destination for the rest of the world, I had to do it.  We will publish posts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday with a digest post reminding you of this weeks links on Saturday.  Also very SEO whorish.

There will also be an occasional extra post through the week like Ralph had in his lambasting of Earth Day.  Bravo Ralph, we were all thinking it, you just put it out there forever.

So, in case you missed this week because the rock you were under was just too big, Here is what you missed on Cantankerous Old Coots:

Monday April 19: Ralph took us down memory lane with a clip from The Graduate in his post, Equal Opportunity Cantankerosity-The Feminine Side

Wednesday April 21: Justin declared war on pests and vermin in his post, No Quarter Given for Vermin.

Thursday April 22: A special edition of the coots, Ralph slaps the Earth around with, Down With Earth Day.

And finally, Friday April 23: Justin had a flash of Cantankerosity at an ad in a magazine that spawned, Down With Dumb Car Technology

If you are reading this post, you don’t need a link to it.

We are looking forward to much more Cantankerous content in the weeks to come.  Ralph has a doozy planned for Monday.

Remember Guest Cantankerousness is always welcome!  E-mail us your submission!

Thanks for reading.

Justin

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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Are they ready to rumble? I am.

 Posted by at 12:08  rants
Sep 082011
 

The three of us resident coots…Justin, Ralph, and me…were talking the other day about ways to improve Cantankerous Old Coots.  We kicked around a few ideas, some of which you’ll see us roll out over the next month or two, and some of which (thank God) will never see the light of day.

After about an hour of discussion (and not a few snarky comments from Ralph) Justin and Ralph suggested…rather pointedly I thought…that no matter what else we did, if we didn’t keep the writing quality to a high standard, COC would founder.

By virtue of my paranoia acute observational skills, even over the Skype connection I could tell they were talking about the dumb redneck boiled peanut salesman from Georgia, namely me.

Being the reserved, quiet, non-confrontational sort I quietly informed them both that I could outwrite both of them with half a keyboard tied behind my back, even before having my first cup pot of coffee in the morning, and if anyone needed to pick up their writing skills it was them.  I know I did it quietly because the feedback in my headset was tolerable.

Painful…but tolerable.

I mean…com’on…how much kettlebell crap and retirement sackcloth and ashes do you folks want to listen to, huh?  Wouldn’t you much prefer my astute observations on Washington idiocy, TSA sexual assaults at airports, and the sad state of public education…and the pithy way I present that information?

In their defense, Justin and Ralph DO have some limiting factors in their pitiable attempts to match my writing skills.

Besides writing, both here at Cantankerous old Coots AND at JustinsBrainPan (what the hell kinda blog name IS that, anyway?) AND being a stay-at-home dad…and playing those silly kettlebells, Justin doesn’t have a lot of time and energy to put into quality writing, so his dragging COC down is understandable, if unfortunate.

As for poor, poor Ralph…well, we all use a certain amount of brain power on each blog we write, and we all only have so much brain power to start with, and Ralph does have to keep try to keep quality work on his blog RalphCarlsonBlog, and…well…there just isn’t much left over.  I wouldn’t want to say he doesn’t have much to work with, but he did choose to live in Californeeee, after all.  Not just that, but he chose to be right next door to UCBerkley, for God’s sake!  His limitations are obvious.

As for ME…well, I’ve known for years I am the Smartest Man in the World, and frankly I’ve never been short on the willingness to share that fact…with family, neighbors, friends, and now y’all…so it’s obvious to me that MY writing certainly is up to snuff, both here and over at MY blog, JuicyMaters.com, but…

Justin and Ralph don’t agree.  Actually, they disagree quite vemnt…vehamtl…veamentall…oh crap…strongly, so we are leaving it up to you, my our readers, to decide who is best.  This week’s post comments will be counted, and the post with the most comments wins the Golden Coot Award for best, most cantankerous coot on this blog.

If I win it will prove to Justin and Ralph who is REALLY the best writer here at COC.

You ask, “IF you lose?”  Well, I don’t think that’s possible, but if it happens it proves you, the readers, have a mental acuity on the level of Justin and Ralph, and I truly feel sorry for y’all.

Bob@HayleStorm Interactive

Bob comes to us with a skeptical attitude and a full cup of Cantankerousness. He also writes about homesteading and yurts over at JuicyMaters.com and rants about politics at Common-Sense-Conversation.com Most of the time, though, you'll find him at HayleStorm.net, cranking out great websites for clients OR writing tutorials teaching them to build their own sites.

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