Appliance Repair Wisdom for the Ages

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

I got back home late last night from the hike from hell. I grabbed a Sapporo and checked email to read about the latest broken things in the world only to find my inbox jammed with emails from irate Icelanders who had mysteriously discovered my dossier on my web server. The weird thing about this is that I don't have any links at my website to this document that so inflamed the Icelanders. I've read that Google can spider pages that are not linked--if you have unlinked pages lurking on your server, Googblebots will sniff 'em out.

So what of this irksome dossier? Well, it's just a sophomoric piece I wrote several years ago that clumsily recounted major events from my adolescence through my years in the Navy, college, and my engineering career. If you're morbidly curious, you can read the offending document at this URL: http://fixitnow.com/dossier.htm -- I'm not writing it as a hot link because I don't want to help Googlebots index it. It's not very interesting or well-written but the Icelanders took umbrage at my description of the time I spent in Iceland while on active duty in the Navy. I'd like to thank all my new Icelandic friends for taking the time to correct me on a few key points I raised in the dossier.

For example, I wrote that Icelandic fathers commonly bed their daughters. But many Icelanders have written to inform me that this old custom has been largely replaced by the new custom of strangling puppies. Thank goodness! I mean, what kind of life could a puppy have huddled on a frozen rock in the North Atlantic sea? Those poor puppies would be condemned to a life of shivering boredom, with nothing to do for fun but lay around licking their own backsides. It's great to hear that a degenerate and self-indulgent custom is being displaced by selfless acts of mercy and compassion for such vulnerable creatures.

Another point the Icelanders objected to was my call to use Iceland as a nuclear testing ground. This, of course, is such a ridiculous notion that it doesn't even warrant a serious response. The radioactive fallout from such a campaign would very likely contaminate unintended targets, such as Canada. And I really like Canadian beer, especially Kokanee beer. When we were backpacking in the Canadian Rockies, we would buy Kokanee beer by the case--damn good stuff!

Uhhh....what were we talking about? Ah, hell, it doesn't matter. How 'bout another brewski? Here's to Iceland!

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