Where Do I Land My Helicopter?

During a discussion this morning about Natalie Dylan’s virginity auction (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d use), we visited the BunnyRanch website to confirm some facts.  Naturally, there’s a Frequently Asked Questions section.

Some of these are routine.  The first two: “Where is the BunnyRanch located?” and “Which airport do I fly into?”  Frequently asked indeed.

Let’s keep reading:

3.  Where can I fly my private plane or jet into?
4.  Where do I land my helicopter?

When the fourth most frequently asked question is, “Where do I land my helicopter?” (and the answer is, “The Moonlite BunnyRanch has a special landing pad in front just for helicopter uses”), you know you’re looking at an expensive destination.

I also love this question, if only for its fascinating reflection on our society and values:

9.  How old do you have to be to visit the BunnyRanch?
You must be at least 18 years old to have sex or 21 years old to have a cocktail at the bar.

The real question now is how much longer we can keep talking about Natalie Dylan and the BunnyRanch before my girlfriend will veto the trip to Vegas we’ve been planning.

Things to Sell on Google

Google’s “auto complete” recommendations are getting increasingly absurd, even if they do conform perfectly to real people’s searches.

Today, when I wanted to find a good place to sell my 12-channel audio mixer, I started my search with the word “sell” and Google jumped in with a few ideas for what I might need.

Things People Sell Online

Things People Sell Online

Naturally, “sell textbooks online” and “selling on eBay” are popular search choices.  “Sell gold” has also gained popularity recently, to the point that airports and train stations in Germany have vending machines selling gold wafers.

“Sell WoW account” is a bit surprising (perhaps World of Warcraft is losing popularity as people can no longer afford the monthly fee), but it’s “selling virginity” that’s most striking.

Some careful, “strictly business” research suggests much of this searching is related to Natalie Dylan (a pseudonym), a Sacramento State graduate student who last year auctioned her virginity, having allegedly gotten bids up to $3.8 million.  Fox News is, of course, outraged.

Local CBS affiliate KOVR-TV quoted Dennis Hof, owner of the Bunny Ranch where the auction will be held, as saying:

Natalie is a very smart girl. All she wants to do is get her master’s degree in family and marriage counseling and be a psychologist.  She’s selling her virginity to accomplish that.

Adding a punchline at this point would only spoil the pure beauty of that statement.

Job Insecurity?

Clients occasionally need to send me screen captures of their browser windows.  Sometimes this is for debugging (e.g., so they can show me something that’s broken).  Other times, like today, it’s to show me an administrative application that I can’t access myself.

I spent some time today looking through details in some captured pages before the Google Toolbar atop the page caught my eye:

What's really on your mind?

What's really on your mind?

Anyone else find that recent Google query particularly interesting?

Spiky Bits

I recently asked our resident database administrator if our database server was experiencing any problems, since my applications were getting particularly slow responses.

He opened some system monitoring tools — complete with various graphs of system activity — looked pensive for a moment, and then responded:

I don’t see any spiky bits.

I always thought server administration was more complicated than that.

Bank Use Only

The credit card applications I’ve been getting in the mail lately offer enough bonus airline miles for signing up to pay for two full free tickets.  Naturally, I’m tempted.  For one card in particular, I got as far as the web-based application page, which has this at the bottom:

Bank Use Only

Bank Use Only

Shouldn’t the “bank use only” portion of this form not appear on the version I’m filling out from my home computer?

I can imagine the meeting where someone said, “We need a web-based application that’s exactly like the paper one.”