Search Me

WTF? Google

This single post, The Cars of the Beast, is responsible for nearly 60% of the traffic on this blog. Folks are coming from around the world to see that page. It's been viewed from one hundred countries just since February     What's up with that?

The Cars of the Beast, on LostBob's Blog

A Google Web search for cars of the beast, the title of the post, shows nothing unusual. My Blog is listed part way down the first page.

Note: Clicking on the images below will repeat the Google Search as I entered it, opening in a (single) new window.


If I put the search string in quotes Google's response is more specific but still nothing to compel folks from around the world to click on it.

A closer look at my StatsCounter reports show that over 77% of my visitors arrive Google Image Search, less than 4% from all other searches and only two of nearly 2000 from Google Blog Search. Isn't that curious?

A Google Image search for the cars of the beast yields this:

OK, the shiny black Porsche Carrera and Lamborghini are pretty cool. I'd click on those. Seems to explain why folks find that post. But watch what happens if you put the search string in quotes:

Every picture displayed, save one, is by LostBob, every link is to this blog. Those on the second page too. Most of the images shown do not appear on the Cars of the Beast post. In fact, clicking most will take you to places in the blog where the car of the beast photos cannot even be seen. Some take you to posts with photos different than the one shown.

WTF? Google

And here's a surprise. If You leave the s off of cars Google gets really personal, ignoring the car photos completely. I think Google is trying to scare me away from Flickr and onto Picasa.


Big Brother really is watching.

Old Blog gets New Life

Once upon a time in a blog much like this one, incompetence and circumstance led to duplication (sort of). A few old posts languishing in the blogosphere. Stories about Hillary Clinton, the girls of Mumbai and an apartment in Kazan. Pictures of a bar in India and some Churches in Rome. All gathering digital dust with nary a virtual viewer.

Such was the fate of LostBob’s Old Blog (sort of). until the discovery of bloggers magic cut-and-paste time machine. That little ‘Post Options’ drop down in the edit window. Suddenly it's 2006 again. My old posts can re-appear in a blog that wasn’t even around then. They have been reincarnated.

Most of what was once there has moved here. So if you’ve stumbled here or there via some wayward link or if Google has lured you here for something that was once there but is no longer. It’s probably here. So there you are.

Actually, it’s here

The pictures are links to the most popular old posts
The Car of the Beast?	Seaview Hotel
Loading Oil in Dubai	The Girls of Mumbai
Ponte Vittorio Emanuele	Santa Maria Maggiore
The pictures are from the old posts. The links take you to the post's new home. The post about "The Car of the Beast" was revised and is now the most popular post on this blog.

Reflecting Self Portraits

It's a photograph not a Photoshop composite. Taken with an Olympus C5050.

Self Portrait circa 1972.

The full size image on my Flickr Photo sharing site gives a better hint about how this was done.

Paranoid Blues Birthday

But something is happening here and we don’t know what it is do we Mr. Jones? ... "there must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief. ... Keep a clean nose, watch the plain clothes and you won't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. ... But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, All the pigeons gonna run to him.

My apologies to Bob Dylan
Note that links in this post external to blogger open in a single new window.

Who am I ?

For many years, I was a telecomm engineer. I lived and worked all over the world.

I put satellite communications equipment on planes trains and automobiles; I installed equipment in the White House and the Pentagon and designed stuff for the folks at Fort Meade. My name is on patents for the satellite telephone system used by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

I was paid to play in private jets, high speed chase boats, railroad locomotives and over-the-road trucks. They paid me to fly over Juneau Alaska in a float plane and over Utah’s canyon lands in a helicopter. I flew over the great salt lake and Colorado Rockies in the cockpit of a Lear. I drove from Tuscan to Tucumcari and Tehachapi to Tonopah (and from Berlin to Paris. And Melbourne to Brisbane). I drove jeeps over sand dunes in the Arabian Desert. It was a magic carpet ride.

Told differently, I was away from home 50 weeks a year, working 60 – 80 hours a week and living in hotels. I got close to a lot of really nice places with little time to see them.

Either way, I loved what I did but came to dislike the folks I did it for so we parted company . I’m whittling away at my savings and bored out of my mind. That’s still a better than working for thieves, even thieves with magic carpet rides.

Thank you very much Rupert, changing the name does not protect the innocent, or hide the guilty.

This blog is an attempt to put it all in some perspective and help me decide what I want to be when I grow up.

I’m too old to become a postal employee

Site Seeing in Italy

For far too many hours of nearly a year, this was my view of Italy. The corner of my desk at Telespazio (check out the quickBird satellite phots on the link )
i.e. Centro Spazio del Fucino Piero Fanti, in Italy’s Fucino Valley.

The Fucino valley is near Avezzano in Abruuzzo, in mountainous central Italy. The valley, once a lake, has no natural outlet, The lake was first drained by the Romans nearly 2000 years ago. . The site is major telecommunications portal and home to more than 100 satellite dishes, some more than 30 meters in diameter. The site is also home to the remains of the ship Marconi used to send his first wireless message. Click on the picture to see the view outside the office.

My three sons are seen in the picture in the center. It was taken far too long ago on the Shore of Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. The aspirin bottle on the desk is nearly empty; that says a lot in it’s self. I miss my bright ceramic coffee mugs. I bought four different ones in a shop in Avezanno. I left them behind when I moved to my next assignment.

The book is Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. I liked the movie, I’m a big Nicholas Cage fan, and Penelope Cruz doesn’t hurt either. Buy it paperback and tear out the last chapter before reading it. The ending is just not believable. Watch the movie, the director does it better than the author.

Maastricht Reflections

Shop windows in Maastricht, Netherlands March, 2003


I was working in Dubai during the lead up to the war in Iraq. When George Bush issued his 48 hour ultimatum I was directed to leave on the next available flight. I was flying to Frankfurt when the war broke out. Air traffic disruption added 2 hours to flight time. I left my baggage in the left-luggage office at the airport and took the train to Maastricht. I know some folks at a great little bar called Blues Café’ Duke there. I tagged along to an Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets concert at the Muziekodroom in Hasselt, Belgium about 25 km away. They're a great band and they kicked ass. The venue reminded me of the Grand Emporium in Kansas City where I saw them once before. I took these photos back in Maastricht the next morning.

Click onthe pictures to see them full size on my Flickr photosharing site.

A Day at the Races

Porsche Carrera GT 666

Taken at Dubai's Autodrome in October of 2004 on the day of the inaugural race for the newly opened track. It was a typical warm and sunny Dubai day. I was there with my friends Wageh who is Egyptian and Stephen from Scotland. Sergei was home in Kazan on paternity leave enjoying his recently born son.

Stephen honeymooned in Cuba and now lives in Mexico. Wageh is married to a Moroccan woman. We used to smoke sheesha and watch the Dhows and Abras (Dubai’s water taxis) at the creek side Lebanese restaurant in Bur Dubai.

I was told that this car is owned by Dubai's Sheik Maktoum. He drove a U.S. made Dodge Viper in the feature race on that opening day. I don't recall where he finished.

My friend Amos Anon says "The world is a very strange place" I think he is right.

You can read another post about the Sheik's cars in The Cars of the Beast Check it out.

Note: All Links in this post (except the last) open in a single new window.

Self Portrait

At the Race, Dubai 2004

It's not my car.

For many years, I was a telecomm engineer. I lived and worked all over the world.

I put satellite communications equipment on planes trains and automobiles; I installed equipment in the White House and the Pentagon and designed stuff for the folks at Fort Meade. My name is on patents for the satellite telephone system used by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

I was paid to play in private jets, high speed chase boats, railroad locomotives and over-the-road trucks. They paid me to fly over Juneau Alaska in a float plane and over Utah’s canyon lands in a helicopter. I flew over the great salt lake and Colorado Rockies in the cockpit of a Lear. I drove from Tuscan to Tucumcari and Tehachapi to Tonopah (and from Berlin to Paris. And Melbourne to Brisbane). I drove jeeps over sand dunes in the Arabian Desert. It was a magic carpet ride.

Told differently, I was away from home 50 weeks a year, working 60 – 80 hours a week and living in hotels. I got close to a lot of really nice places with little time to see them.

Either way, I loved what I did but came to dislike the folks I did it for so we parted company . I’m whittling away at my savings and bored out of my mind. That’s still a better than working for thieves, even thieves with magic carpet rides.

Thank you very much Rupert, changing the name does not protect the innocent, or hide the guilty.

This blog is an attempt to put it all in some perspective and help me decide what I want to be when I grow up.

I’m too old to become a postal employee.