Day 931

For several days, I've been receiving e-mail from other bloggers warning me that Google Chrome browsers were restricting access to this blog, saying that it contained malware. What? There have never been any malicious widgets on the blog, and I hope there never will be. Since I usually use Firefox instead of Chrome, I wasn't even aware there was a problem until I received so many messages that I figured there must be something to the warning. I fired up Chrome to take a look, and sure enough, I was locked out as well. When I looked at the code for the blog, I discovered the words blogarama.com, which Google doesn't like. Like many bloggers, I used to display a button that linked to this site in hopes of getting more traffic. I removed the button over six months ago though, so I was still puzzled about why Google blocked me.

Well, it turns out that they blocked me just because I was lazy. Typically, I remove widgets, pictures and a wide assortment of other things from websites by just putting HTML comment tags around the material that I want to disappear. It only takes a few seconds to do this, and it's easy to reinstate the content if I change my mind later. I do this on my commercial websites all the time because my clients change their minds so often. Apparently, turning a link into a comment wasn't good enough for Google. They wanted everything scrubbed clean.  OK. You win. It was certainly easy enough to remove the comment too.

All this does leave me wondering about a society that is dead set on protecting everybody from themselves. Shouldn't we be able to decide for ourselves whether we want to visit a particular website? Shouldn't be be able to decide for ourselves whether to wear a bicycle helmet, smoke a cigarette, or drink a big gulp soda at a convenience store? It's all gotten pretty crazy. Most of the people riding bicycles in the park wear helmets, even though many of them are riding very slowly. On the other hand, I see people almost every day riding their Harleys down the freeway at 70 miles an hour with no helmet at all. Who is right? The Harley riders or the bicyclists? I'm probably on the side of the helmetless Harley riders, even though half of them will eventually get themselves killed. You really should be able to decide about motorcycle helmets, bacon, and websites on your own.

Today was even slower than yesterday. I think half of Texas is on vacation now. Other than searching for malicious code on my own blog and writing a little new code for for the website project I'm currently working on, I didn't get all that much accomplished today. I did make eggs and sausages for breakfast though, so it was a better day than yesterday.

Bob Hope is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day