Day 56: Why Use the Plus Sign When Searching the Internet

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 56: Why Use the Plus Sign When Searching the Internet

With the arrival of the Internet, the world is your oyster.  Unfortunately, it’s not just your oyster, it’s anybody’s and with a pearl of information, you find a whole lot of junk.  Along with reputable companies, advertisers, spammers, bloggers, and other Internet users all vie for your attention.  If you’ve heard of the plus sign and you’re wondering, why use the plus sign searching the Internet, your life is about to become a whole lot easier.

The problem

If you’ve never used the plus sign when searching the Internet, you probably shake your head in frustration wading through pages and pages of useless information.  You know what you want, you formulated your request in your favorite search engine, but you still have to put up with bogus sites, websites with misleading ads, link farms and false listings.

The solution

Next time when you use a search engine, start your search with the plus sign (+).  As an experiment, say that you’re looking for information on owls.  Type “owls” in the search engine and you’ll be presented with 72 million listings.  Now type “+owls” in the search engine and you’ll only get 71,000 listings.  The plus sign removes all the rig raff.

What does the plus sign do?

The plus sign removes (almost) all undesirable info from your search.  The plus sign tells the search engine that whatever you’re looking for has to include the word that you specified.  If you’re looking for owls, the search engine will only bring up information on those birds and will ignore pages that link themselves to info about owls.

Broaden your search

In addition to the plus sign, try broadening your search for a particular item.  For instance, if you’re looking for sugar-free drinks, don’t type just drinks in the search engine. Typing “+drinks” produces about 8,660 results, while “+sugar free drinks” generates only 2,300 results.  Try to be as specific as possible.

Where it goes wrong

Clever advertisers know that subjects such as “love”, “employment”, “pets” and “cars” are hot topics.  They link their marketing pages to those popular sites and as a result, you get flooded with millions of search results.  Fortunately, a few search engines are on to those advertisers and eliminate their ads automatically.  Still, it doesn’t take long to type a plus sign before the word or term you are searching for, letting the search engine know that you are not willing to put up with useless pages.

When it gets worse

You might find that, at certain times of the year, you get presented with more and more junk pages while looking for valuable information.  The problem is obvious, annual celebrations such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother and Father’s Day bring on a stream of advertisers all trying to lure you to their sites.  

Wonder no longer about why use the plus sign searching the Internet, try it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised and save a whole lot of time finding what you’re looking for.

www.connymanero.weebly.com

Black Friday

Intrepid souls all over north America, and perhaps elsewhere too, are whipping out their credit cards and heading to the stores for Black Friday bargains.

Others, who prefer to do their shopping online, fire up their computers and prepare for a day of Internet surfing, looking for deals.

I won’t be doing either.

It started out so innocently. I had noticed a red swelling on my leg (where the leg meets the tummy) on Monday. I assumed it was some sort of an insect bite and that it would go away in due time.

This was not the case. If anything the swelling got bigger and became rather painful. So painful in fact that I had to cut my underwear as the elasticized material was too tight around the leg where the swelling was.

Yesterday, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. Not only had the swelling grown from the size of a blueberry to a cherry, I couldn’t keep cutting my underwear.

The doctor diagnosed the red swelling as a boil, a giant boil. He suggested antibiotics or opening the boil to drain the blood and pus. He was going to give the affected area a local anesthetic, but he said and I quote “I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, it’s gonna hurt.”

He was right. When the needle entered the skin it was just a tiny pinprick, but as soon as he started injecting the freezing liquid it felt like the boil caught fire.

The surgery itself was painless, although more complicated than the doctor had anticipated. He had to cut three times. Eventually, he had to give up because he said he couldn’t cut any deeper because he might hit an artery. 

He said that by Sunday the boil should be better, if not I will have to take antibiotics (which I rather not). He advised me to apply warm compresses every two to three hours and stay off my feet.

“So no Black Friday shopping,” I asked him.

“Better not,” he said, “put up your feet and rest.”

This ruined my plans for early Christmas shopping. I was gonna go to the mall, and even though dealing with a crowd of shoppers would be hell, I was prepared to put up with it for the sake of finding some bargains.

If I couldn’t walk the stores, I figured I might as well join the Internet shoppers and go online. Not that that worked out well. Not only did I get for all selected items the message “May arrive after Christmas”, the shipping and handling charges were outrages.

I was about to give up when I found an email in my inbox that a particular website offered 75% off on over 10,000 items. I clicked to check it out, only to be disappointed again. 

Items that were $120 were now $115, items that $45 were now $43, items that were $14 were now $12. Where was the 75% off?

So I gave up and my Christmas shopping will have to wait until December. With any luck, the stores in the mall will have Christmas specials. And yes, dragging my purchases home won’t be easy, but it will be cheaper than the shipping charges.

www.connymanero.weebly.com

Why Use the Plus Sign When Searching the Internet

With the arrival of the Internet, the world is your oyster.  Unfortunately, it’s not just your oyster, it’s anybody’s and with a pearl of information, you find a whole lot of junk.  Along with reputable companies, advertisers, spammers, bloggers, and other Internet users all vie for your attention.  If you’ve heard of the plus sign and you’re wondering, why use the plus sign searching the Internet, your life is about to become a whole lot easier.

The problem

If you’ve never used the plus sign when searching the Internet, you probably shake your head in frustration wading through pages and pages of useless information.  You know what you want, you formulated your request in your favorite search engine, but you still have to put up with bogus sites, websites with misleading ads, link farms, and false listings.

The solution

Next time when you use a search engine, start you search with the plus sign (+).  As an experiment, say that you’re looking for information on owls.  Type “owls” in the search engine and you’ll be presented with 72 million listings.  Now type “+owls” in the search engine and you’ll only get 71,000 listings.  The plus sign removes all the rig raff.

What does the plus sign do?

The plus sign removes (almost) all undesirable info from your search.  The plus sign tells the search engine that whatever you’re looking for has to include the word that you specified.  If you’re looking for owls, the search engine will only bring up information on those birds and will ignore pages that link themselves to info about owls.

Broaden your search

In addition to the plus sign, try broaden your search for a particular item.  For instance, if you’re looking for sugar free drink, don’t type just drinks in the search engine.  Typing “+drinks” produces about 8,660 results, while “+sugar free drinks” generates only 2,300 results.  Try to be as specific as possible.

Where it goes wrong

Clever advertisers know that subjects such as “love”, “employment”, “pets” and “cars” are hot topics.  They link their marketing pages to those popular sites and as a result you get flooded with millions of search results.  Fortunately, a few search engines are on to those advertisers and eliminate their ads automatically.  Still, it doesn’t take long to type a plus sign before the word or term you are searching for, letting the search engine know that you are not willing to put up with useless pages.

When it gets worse

You might find that, at certain times of the year, you get presented with more and more junk pages while looking for valuable information.  The problem is obvious, annual celebrations such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother and Father’s Day bring on a stream of advertisers all trying to lure you to their sites.  

Wonder no longer about why use the plus sign searching the Internet, try it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised and save a whole lot of time finding what you’re looking for.

www.connymanero.weebly.com

Do I have a mental problem?

I received a comment today, asking if I had a mental problem.  This person was doing research for an essay and had stumbled across my blog.

I briefly considered defending my point of view, but then I thought ... neih, it’s not worth it.  If I say something, he/she is going to say something back, and then I’ll say something back and before you know it a simple comment has turned into a heated argument.  So, I left it alone and moved on.

The comment got me thinking though ... do I have a mental problem?  If I do, there’s a perfectly good explanation for it.

There was a time that I occupied myself with cleaning, cooking and gardening.  In my spare time I wrote a weekly letter home, did some knitting, crocheting, embroidery and beading.

The house was always spotless, something was simmering on the stove and my family and I had plenty of sweaters, scarfs and hats.  Even in the bathroom there was evidence of my creativity ... the spare toilet roll was kitted out in an original jacket.

With the arrival of the computer – and especially the Internet – everything changed.  Suddenly there was a fine layer of dust on the furniture and the windows had lost a bit of their sparkle.  Occasionally we would have take-out and bought sweaters replaced hand knitted ones.

I don’t even know how or when it happened, but suddenly I spend my days writing.  If I don’t write articles, I research articles.  If I don’t surf from website to website, I write emails or answer emails.  In between, I post this, that and the other on Facebook and leave comments on other people’s posts.  Via Facebook I visit blogs and leave comments there too.  Write, write, write, that’s all I do.

Okay, I play a fair amount of games on Facebook too, but that’s beside the point.

When I finally retire and go to bed, I have to share my space with two or three cats.  They curl up or stretch out and I have to adjust my sleeping position accordingly. 

It wouldn’t be so bad if they were quiet sleepers, but they’re not.  Mickey snores, Charlotte sighs and Gabriel makes funny little meow noises. 

In addition, Mickey has a tendency of kicking me when I don’t give him room to stretch, Gabriel swats his fury tail in my face, while Charlotte walks all over me.  She tramples over my chest, pushes her cold wet nose in my ear and says “krrrrrr, krrrrr, krrrrr!”  You try sleeping with that lot.

(Meantime, Dieter sleep with Chanel, a perfectly good and quite kitty cat ... even she too has a tendency to snore.)

Finally we all go to sleep, but only until dawn.  As soon as the sun rises Gabriel awakens and his theory is ... if I’m awake, so should everybody else.  So, he starts meowing.  Not softly mind you, but loud and insistent, and increasing in volume.  In fact, his meowing is like singing an aria from Aida.  Verdi would be proud of him.

After they had their breakfast, the kitty cats go back to sleep and so do I.  Not for long though, their internal clock is finely tuned and sooner or later they decide that it’s time to get up.  So I get up.

If you think I can shower and brush my teeth in peace and quiet, think again.  It doesn’t take long before there’s scratching on the door.  I open the door and Mickey walks in.  He takes a look around and wants to go out.  I open door.  He hears the water being turned on and he wants to come back in.  I open the door.  The bathroom is too hot for him and he wants to go back out.  I open the door.

There’s more scratching at the door.  I open the door.  Charlotte walks in.  She wants a drink at the sink.  She too decides that the bathroom is too hot and wants to go out.  I open the door.  Jeez Louise, these cats need a concierge.

For the remainder of the day I have peace and quiet.  The evening though brings a flurry of activity.  While I try to concentrate on writing, the cats play games.  Games that increase in roughness as time goes by.  Occasionally I have to yell “Guys!  Calm down!”

For a few minutes they behave themselves until the madness starts all over again.  They’re favorite game being racing, NASCAR style.  They sprint from room to room, jump on chairs, fly over tables, only to go sprinting from room to room again. 

I yell again for them to calm down when there’s a loud crash ... that was my favorite lamp.  (I can’t tell you how many pieces have bitten the dust at the hands/paws of my fury kids.

Writing and cats ... not a good combination.  Is it any wonder that I have a mental problem?

A resolution for August

I’m taking a break.

My goal this month is to write three article per day. This may seem easy to you, but judging by past experiences this will be tough for me.
Some days I manage two or three articles per day, most days I only manage one.

Too many things get in the way: sleeping, emails, looking at job sites and applying for positions, commenting on forums, spending time on Facebook, tending to my farm on Farmville, tending to my garage at Car Town ... you know what I mean. Playing is nicer than working.

I also lose a lot of time looking for suitable titles to write to. If I had titles all mapped out for me, that would definitely save time.

Gosh what did I ever do before the computer and especially the Internet came along? I remember those days, I was bored.
I would wander through the house, looking for something to do.

I remember knitting, I knitted one sweater after another. I remember crocheting, needle pointing and even doing some bead work. It’s a good thing I lost interest in that, because my eyes aren’t anymore what they used to be.

And then I got my first computer and everything changed. How long ago? Well, let me put it this way. The boy in the picture is Dieter and he is thirty now.



I was so pleased with my new friend. I even wrote an article about him.

http://www.helium.com/items/1710827-unlikely-friendships