sell out with me, oh yeah

you may have noticed a slight change. no, i haven't lost weight, but thank you (quite the contrary, actually). every time you log in to your blogger account there's a little box that says 'make money from your blog!' i figured, hey, lemme try it out... and a few mouse clicks and social security numbers later, i became one of the millions of members in google's AdSense network.

why the hell would I do such a thing as that? well, first off, i have nothing better to do. and yes, the very remote possibility of my earning a few sheckles from the experience exists. but most of all I think I have some sort of blind faith in Google and all they do. I now exclusively use google maps to get driving directions and figure out where I am in the grand scheme of things. I have Picasa on my work computer and liked it so much I installed it on my mom's back home. I've proudly flaunted Google Earth as if it were my own to friends and coworkers who are inevitably blown away by the ability to seamlessly 'fly' from lake titicaca to tehran to malden (and I'm really jealous that they don't have a mac version yet). Google apparently just bought a company called Zazzle, which got me to consider putting a Focusin store up there (stay tuned for that). Oh yeah, and this whole choosing Blogger over all those other free options... I think my decision ultimately boiled down to the fact that Blogger is the spawn of Google.

So back to the AdSense nonsense. First off, if you don't even see it, good job. That means you're most likely using something along the lines of Firefox with ad-blocking extensions installed so your internet experience isn't sullied by the likes of fastclick, doubleclick (sorry, Kurt), and google cramming 'targeted' ads down your throat. If you want to know how to do this, a quick search with our best friend can point you in the right direction. I had to load up IE to get the google ad to appear, and when I first saw the relatively unobtrusive banner show up on the right side of my page, I still wasn't too happy. It sort of cheapens the whole experience (which google is providing to me completely for free, but still).

I'm thinking I'll keep the banner there for a little bit to see what happens. I believe it's google's policy to shoot me and anyone who is a member of the AdSense program who talks about the kind of revenue they're making from the ads like a Scientologist who blabs to the world the story of Xenu (here I am again with my Scientology-bashing!). I'm obviously not running this blog to make a profit- if I did, there would be a lot more pornography and pyramid schemes- but it would be kind of interesting to see if I make even like $0.50 off this thing. How about this... if I make any money off of the generosity of your beautiful eyes and oh-so-supple mouse finger, I will repay each and every one of you with an amount of beer equal to or greater than the amount of money I recieve from said payout. Get your eyedroppers ready!

Plus it's pretty fun to bait the targeted AdWords to see what kind of advertising links come up. So far, I have seen links for FREE CROSSWORDS and JOB SEARCH TIPS- both pretty relevant to what I've been talking about around here. So stay tuned! Let's see what ads google has for my step-by-step cleveland steamer instructions!