Google tells me that 47 minutes ago, it indexed this humble site 21-30 out of 146,000 when searched for City of Wenatchee, no quotes. Ethereal!
P.S. It turns out the real Wenatchee web address is wenatcheewa.gov, not wenatchee.wa.gov as mentioned elsewhere.
The Wenatchee World (local newspaper for the greater Wenatchee, Washington area) had an article in the Wednesday, January 30, 2008 edition. Missed it last night, didn’t catch it until this morning, when I glanced at the third-tier bottom-right heading. “City’s new Web site gets lost in online ether.” Whoa. The “online ether” sounded like a good place to avoid. As one who does a little web design, I decided to read further. Always looking for web-design-disaster-avoidance tips.
Turns out the city’s new URL (website address) wasn’t getting properly indexed in Google. A search for “Wenatchee” and “City of Wenatchee” came up zip. The old URL also got short shrift. Not a happy thing for a website that was one year and $100,000 in the making.
Now, search engines can be notoriously fickle when it comes to site ranking. A broken link may have been the culprit. The Wenatchee site will get there soon, certainly as content’s added and (as the article points out) other sites establish relevant backlinks.
Suffice to say, getting a new website hightly-ranked right out of the gate is a very gratifying, almost ethereal experience.
I attribute the above quote to Derek Jay Bowen, who on this date, 2001, moved on to a higher calling. That day, and the words above, will always be in my memory.
Still a little dizzy from trying to ride out the current economic tailspin.
Forget the writer’s strike and the lack of quality entertainment (make that a perceived lack of quality entertainment, since some argue a lack of quality requires quality to begin with). I’ve had more fun watching the presidential primaries, with the hopefuls going at each other like verbal ninjas.
May the best man (or woman) win.
Been off the blogroll for awhile…the reason being I’m getting a new computer set up with my old files and programs, and it takes awhile. I “upgraded” to Windows Vista from Windows XP. Enough of a difference to make me flounder a little bit while I juggle files, folders, and directories.
I remember when I first got into the computer game. Windows 95 was the latest and greatest. Many legacy programs ran in DOS. Okay, you remember DOS, don’t you?
cd\
cd\c:
c:\
c:\dir /w
And so forth…
If you have no idea what DOS is, that’s okay, because it’s not that relevant in today’s computing environment. DOS was the real deal back-in-the-day, though.
I had a freeware game that only ran in DOS, called “SkyRoads”. It was the precursor to many of today’s simple handheld game styles (such as cell phone games). Simple, with good graphics, and a killer music score. Did I say it was free? That was the best part. Download it, open it up in DOS, and away you went.
SkyRoads was notable in that while simple and fun, it was also unbeatable when played by mere mortals. I never did master it. Invariably I would “go off the edge” at the critical stage of one of the upper levels.
Well, I kept SkyRoads on the hard drive through Windows 95 and 98, since running the game in DOS was okay with those operating systems, even in the DOS shell (okay, now I really think I’m losing most of you). The game ran at the command prompt in Windows 2000 and XP, but had no sound. Alas, the music score made the game, and it wasn’t quite as fun.
Which brings me back to the present (the future?) and Windows Vista. I had almost forgotten about SkyRoads. I was digging around the Net for some operating system emulators, when I ran into an open source program called DOSBox. DOSBox is a DOS shell emulator which allows one to run old-timey DOS programs in the Windows Vista environment. The best part is, since DOSBox is open source, it’s also free!
You guessed it…I relocated my original copy of SkyRoads deep in the bowels of my third hard drive. I got it running, sound and all, in Vista. Still can’t beat the game.
Another search of the Net determined that SkyRoads is still available for FREE download here. Go get it. If any one of you beats it, let me know.
I’d like to see someone squeeze Skyroads into a cell phone game format. Now that would be something. Back to the future…
Another good day of skiing the Icicle River Trail. The Sleeping Lady can be seen on the ridgeline in the distance as she gets a new blanket of snow.
The snow’s predicted to continue over the next several days, which is good…
Just got back from the Icicle River Ski Trail. The weather was perfect and the track was in excellent shape. Lots of other folks were out for the holiday, including a fair amount of locals.
The trail system is located on Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery property, less than five minutes from downtown Leavenworth. For more information, visit this link.
Truly a wonderful way to welcome the new year. Happy New Year everyone!
January 1, 2008 seemed like a good time to start a blog (hence, ‘New blog, new year…‘). Why another blog in this era of blog-bloat? Well, for starters:
As a web designer, I needed to familiarize myself with WordPress setup and implementation (for potential customers).
I wanted to have a go at creating a WordPress template.
I have a lot to say.
So…stay tuned!