Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Some of you will know where this is going

Stan's seemingly random wanderings in southwest Missouri and eastern Oklahoma reminded me that I needed to get back to planning this summer's vacation. Since no one has invited me anywhere, I decided I would visit California -- since according to the Discovery Channel and the History Channel it is in imminent danger of being crumbled by an earthquake, wiped away by a tsunami, or becoming uninhabitable because of Hispanic gangs.

While actually meeting people that you meet online is clearly not a good idea, I have toyed with the idea of arranging a meeting with the blog's most frequent visitor, who resides in Sunnyvale, California. While some of you visit twice or more a day, my Sunnyvale visitor drops in almost every hour on some days. Besides, Sunnyvale is just a cool-sounding place to visit.

Since the visitor from Sunnyvale has never left a comment, I knew it was going to take a little thought as to how to identify who it was, and how to set up a meeting -- all somewhat delicate undertakings. I started by searching for information about Sunnyvale -- I knew that it was mostly fruit factories before it became part of Silicon Valley. It has a giant fruit-can water tower (photo above). I live not far from a giant catsup-bottle water tower (photo below). That's not enough to build a friendship on, but it would get us through one or two courses of dinner.

As it turns out, Sunnyvale is also home to Yahoo! and my most-frequent visitor is not a people but a bot, one of the little devils that search engines send out in order to index the web. Bots find page content, which is then stored on the search engines computers -- when you use a search engine, you are searching its index and not the web per se. All of which means that I have no actual person in Sunnyvale with whom to share the Chicken Tikka Massalaa and some Kebabs. Oh well, maybe my second most-frequent visitor will have chromosomes.

6 comments:

stan said...

I also wandered into Arkansas the other day, but no, I didn't see any rusty-fendered Camaros (Camaroes?) driven by guys with three teeth...between them.

I did, however, see an ad for something called "Mule Beer" which contains real Ozark water; a free-standing, vending-machine (and pickup-bed) sized unit of post office boxes—not secured to any building (that's great postal security right there); and this fine establishment on the Mo./Ark. border.

Isn't this a great country?
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Branson changed that whole part of the world a bunch, the hillbillies are driving Ram trucks and attending NASCAR meets!! :)

this is what the real Ozarks used to look like:

UnHoly Diver said...

Isn't Sunnyvale where Buffy the Vampire Slayer lives, or is that Sunnydale?
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and, I thought I had strange TV viewing habits :)

Jay Noel said...

I get someone from Sunnyvale almost daily as well, but it's always via search engine. They're looking up the story
I did on the haunted Toys R Us store in Sunnyvale, CA.

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I remember that post, I haven't been able to play with my Mr. Potato Head since

Metal Mark said...

We don't have food towers here. However the KFC that was here in the 1970's used to have a sign that was a big chicken bucket. In the mid-1970's a hurricane hit and it bent the sign so that the bucket was hanging upside down. My dad would kid and say that all of the chicken fell out.
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I had forgotten the KFC's had big buckets, some revolved I thing -- I also seem to remember that in Texas they were all Hart's KFC -- I like your dad's sense of humor

Anonymous said...

Hey, if I still lived in Charleston, I would invite you to come vacation there. Although it beautiful and historic, Charleston, SC may not be the best choice for a summer vacation anyway. Somehow I don't think a vacation in North St. Louis County is quite as interesting.
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I went in the Wal-Mart south of I-270, it was interesting!

stan said...

Portland's pretty close to the beach....
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I've heard about Collins Beach on Sauvie Island :)