Half of Google Adwords Traffic is from Worthless Link Farms

Is anyone surprised by this? I have asked no less than 20 people if they ever click on ad words ads and have never gotten a "yes."A couple of months ago I started in earnest tracking the advertising hits that Google generates for me. And what I found is not a happy picture. About 30-40% of the traffic generated - ie. the traffic that I pay for - comes from link farms, that is Web pages that have nothing more than a bunch of links that redirect to Google Adsense links...

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A New Earth (of Golf)

Yes, I had to do it... I'm reading Ekhart Tolle's A New Earth and doing Oprah's web master class to boot. I'm very much enjoying it and learning a lot about myself and my ego. I will try to blog more about A New Earth later, but wanted to connect the dots to my current golfing obsession with a quote from a golf book I just finished.

Bob Rotella's Golf is a Game of Confidence is a terrific book (read more here on my golf blog). I read it while on a trip to Seattle while I was finishing up the Rotella book. In a chapter about how Byron Nelson won eleven straight tournaments, Byron told Rotella that he never knew how he had scored until after his round. "He felt as if he played in a trance."

The book goes on however, and startlingly hits one of Tolle's key concepts right on the head.

"I would come in and I'd have to go hole by hole on my scorecard, carefully, to realize what I'd shot. I didn't ever know if I was five under, three over, or whatever it was. I never carried that in my conscious mind," he said. "I never knew where I stood in a tourament."

He won eleven straight tournaments this way!

It's is remarkable how often I'm seeing parallels between what Tolle talks about in his books, being present and living each moment fully conscious matches what great golfers do themselves. Astounding!

This post is cross posted to my Golf is Hard Blog as well.

Graphic Novel: Glacial Period

Randomly picked up the graphic novel Glacial Period off the shelf at the library and was pleased to have stumbled onto a neat book. The first of a series, this book shows what archaeologists thousands of years from now might think of our culture (or at least a portion of it).

This is a neat read and certainly got me thinking about how temporary things really are... a continuation of my mind numbing thoughts around the Singularity and society in general.

Opening Day

Ahhh... opening day...

My top 5 All-time favorite Yankees list (was chatting with my sister about this)

1. Nettles
2. Mattingly
3. Jeter
4. Munson
5. Guidry

If my dad were still alive - he most certainly go with:

1. Mantle
2. Ford
3. Richardson 4
4. Clete Boyer (but he'd admit that Nettles had just as good a glove, and a better stick)
5. Yogi
6. Jeter

Finally, while nothing would make me happier than a 0-162 Mets season, here's my top 5 Mets list, just 'cause we were also talking about the Mets...

1. Doc Gooden (also a Yankee)
2. Lee Mazilli (I do believe he was a Yankee)
3. Strawberry (also a Yankee)
4. D. Wright (will one day certainly be a Yankee)
5. Keith Hernandez (just remember not to ask him to help you move - my sister pointed this out for me)