Yes, late in the evening but just under the wire. I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween!

Last week my company sent me and three co-workers to Simi Valley, California for a three-day training course with Bruce Clay. Bruce Clay, if you didn’t know (and likely you don’t; it’s pretty niche) is a Search Engine Optimization specialist and the training was, naturally, for SEO.

It was actually pretty worthwhile and interesting, despite my skepticism of SEO. But for purposes of this post, it got me thinking as to what search terms my three blogs rank well for on Google. Here’s a preliminary list:

• bandage man: #1 (chuggnutt.com)
• bill gates house: #2 on Google Images (chuggnutt.com)
• matrix name generator: #1 (chuggnutt.com)
• cowboy dinner tree: #2 (chuggnutt.com)
• smoke alarm beeping: #4 (chuggnutt.com)
• pumpkin ale recipe: #1 (The Brew Site)
• pumpkin ale: #2 (The Brew Site)
• budweiser american ale: #7 (it was #3 at one point) (The Brew Site)
• simcoe hops: #1 (The Brew Site)
• best cheap beer and cheap beers: #1 (The Brew Site)
• beer online: #5 (The Brew Site)
• pumpkin patch bend oregon: #2 and #3 (Hack Bend)
• kbnz: #2 (Hack Bend)
• 92.7 fm bend: #1 and #2 (Hack Bend)
• free kibble: #4 (Hack Bend)
• three creeks brewery: #3, #4 and #5 (The Brew Site and Hack Bend)

Since the year is now three-quarters over, I thought I’d post about some of the best books I’ve read so far for 2008. Yes, I’m keeping track (again).

Fiction:

• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. So, so messed up. Really curious to see how the movie turns out.
• World War Z, by Max Brooks. Really well-done zombie mockumentary.
• Coalescent, by Stephen Baxter. I actually found this book to be in some ways frustrating, but overall I think it was a well-done departure for Baxter. Though he does revert to some of his own cliches too.
• Hornet Flight, by Ken Follett. Very pleasantly surprised by this World War II-era thriller.
• Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. Holy crap this is a most excellent book.
• Spook Country, by William Gibson. I really liked his earlier Pattern Recognition, and the same applies here.

Non-fiction:

• Ambitious Brew, by Maureen Ogle. A history of American brewing, from the mid-1800s onward. Very engaging.
• Cabin Fever, by William Sullivan. Simply a fun book to read.

I’ve read several beer/brewing books this year, but they were more technical and I don’t really rate for that.

Snickers Charged: with caffeine, taurine, and "other B vitamins"—essentially the same stuff they put into energy drinks like Red Bull.

Really? Was Snickers not… I don’t know… "loaded" enough? Next thing you know, they’ll be putting guarana and ginseng and who knows what else into them.

No, I haven’t tried one. There’s a review here, if you’re interested.

FAIL Blog: This is not so much "weird" as "spastically funny."

The horse: I forgot about this til just now. A woman was riding a white horse across the lawn of the Barnes & Noble at 27th and Highway 20 (here in Bend). This was a week or two ago. Right across the lawn and up to the crosswalk at the intersection… waiting to cross, I guess.

Yeah, one of those things I have a cameraphone for, but I was driving, so I didn’t get the picture.