David Tate: Why Backlinks Are Important

This Blog reached a major milestone, last week: we are now being “crawled” by the major Search Engines. Hooray! We are now on the internet map. Just barely, however.

In other words, http://analyticalassociates.blogspot.com now qualifies for being included in Search Engine results, when a person searches for specific keywords in their internet browser. Of course, our Blog listing will currently appear on results page 145, or even higher, until we get some regular visitors and until we get a bunch of things known as, “Backlinks”.

A Backlink is a link on someone else’s web page which points to your web page. Simple as that. The Search Engines consider a Backlink to be a “vote” by someone else for your web page. It is altogether fitting and proper that they do this, because, only through a combination of website keyword relevance, visitor audience and Backlinks can the Search Engines determine where to place a given web page in their search results.

At our Analytical Associates Blog, we do not accept advertising, for two reasons:

● We have no substantial audience, at least, not yet.

● We feel that there is not enough, “screen real estate” on our Blog to present the advertising in an attractive manner.

But, until we solve the issues noted above, we are offering free Backlinks to any of our Blog visitors who wish to increase their own website or Blog presence in the Search Engine results.

In future Blog postings, we will periodically Blog about some of our visitors and invite our other visitors to view their web pages. Yes, we are offering you high-quality Backlinks, at no charge whatsoever. Over time, a Backlink on http://analyticalassociates.blogspot.com will increase your own Search Engine results.

And, our offer of totally-free Backlinks comes with our iron-clad, money-back guarantee, so you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Simply send an email to our Analytical Associates Vice-President of Backlinks, Mr. Louis T. Goldfarb, Jr., at the following email address:

lougoldfarb@usa.com

Simply tell Mr. Goldfarb, briefly, why you think a Backlink on our Blog is relevant to our visitors and, periodically, we’ll present a list of web pages which conforms to our standards of relevance and good taste (maybe, yours) and all of those web pages will get a free, high-quality, Search Engine Backlink from Analytical Associates.

Such a deal.

David Tate: Warning, Writing Code May Be Hazardous To Your Health

As I observe the two juxtaposed images shown above, two things strike me:

● 1978: I would expect that the software developers who are depicted in the 1978 photo probably didn’t write a single line of production code in the year, 2008. Even William H. Gates, III, who is shown at the lower left-hand corner of the first photograph, at about age 23.

● 2008: The developers who are depicted in the 2008 photo probably didn’t write a single line of production code in the year, 1978. Most of those gentlemen were not even born, yet.

Well, I’ve written production code in both 1978 and 2008 and I can tell you that the world of software development has changed, dramatically over those 30 intervening years. You see, I, David Tate, am one of the pioneers of microcomputer software development and I’m still attempting to do it, professionally, even though I am now pushing 60 years of age.

More importantly, I’ve learned that sitting in a cubicle, glued to a computer screen for 9 hours each day for 30 years can take a toll on a person and can result in potentially serious health hazards, among them:

● Severe eye damage: Computer screens, like television sets, are not healthy to gaze-upon for hours at a time, year after year. My eyesight has deteriorated to the point where I can’t see a darn thing within the exact distance between my eyes and my workstation’s LCD screen. I can hardly read what I’m writing, at this very moment, even with 300% magnification reading glasses (up from 125% in 1998).

● Repetitive injuries to hands/fingers/wrists: Just last week, I contracted a wrist injury known as, “Radial Nerve Palsy” (also known as, “Wrist Drop”) in my left hand. I am typing this Blog entry with my right-hand fingers, only. My left hand is currently almost useless; it will require expensive treatment and the damage may be permanent. I know more than a few of my IT colleagues who suffer from, “Carpal Tunnel Syndrome”, which is a similar injury to mine and, quite often, more painful.

● Lumbar, posterior injuries: Human beings have not evolved to sit in an office chair for hours and hours, year-after-year, hunched-over a Dell Optiplex. I can assure you that my Lumbar MRI is not a pretty picture, particularly my herniated L-1 and L-4 vertebrae.

● Stress complications: The IT industry is 24-hour crisis management. Any programmer worth his or her salt always worries that one line of carelessly-written code will bring-down the entire enterprise in the middle of the night and, as a result, computer programmers have higher incidences of stress-related maladies, including high blood pressure and insomnia. I have both.

● Obesity: Again, sitting in that darn chair all day, for years on end, prevents IT workers from everyday work activities which exercise the body.

I readily admit that other occupations have their own health threats and that the health issues I raise in my Blog today are applicable to almost all office workers, these days. But, these issues constitute serious health threats to ourselves, to our managers and to public policy makers who are attempting to reform our nation’s health care system.

So, to my fellow developers and all office workers in today’s technology-enabled workplaces: I plead with you to try to avoid my fate. Stay away from your electronic devices whenever you can. Try to take regular breaks from your cubicles. Take a nice, long walk after lunch and after work.

Don’t let your profession, no matter how much you love it, cripple you.