My computer just crashed two times while I was trying to check out some ass clown’s Internext pictures. She emailed me a link to the picture page, which I figured would be harmless. Boy, was I wrong.

When I say my computer crashed, I don’t mean I had to kill Firefox and restart it, I mean my fucking computer died. When you are a big deal like me, you always have tons of important docs opened and you can’t always trust that autosave has your back. Fortunately, I only lost a few minutes of my valuable time. It could have been much worse.

What was the problem? The ass clown (who is incidently extremely hot) slapped together a gigantic page with over thirty gigantic images. How gigantic? Most were over 5MB.

I’m tired of people who don’t understand that I don’t need a high-res pic of them getting drunk somewhere. I don’t need to see the 1280×1024 version of your new fucking baby. It’s ugly enough as an 800×600 pic.

If you are expecting a complex tutorial on how to resize images, you’ve come to the wrong place. Why? Because resizing images is fucking easy and anyone can do it and everyone has a little program on their computer that can take care of it in like two steps.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to download the latest crack of Photoshop. You don’t need to download anything. You can use MS Paint. Here’s how:

Step 1: Open Your Image in MS Paint

Here’s an image that I was resizing for Interracial Jumpoff.

Step 2: Select ‘Stretch/Skew’ From the ‘Image’ Menu

This is extremely easy.

Step 3: Fill in a Percentage Smaller Than 100

Make it small because I am getting tired of seeing your gigantic images.

Step 4: Save Your Image

Wow, look how much smaller and more manageable it is!

Step 5: There is No Step 5

That’s it. Go post your smaller image on forums and email it to your friends. You will find that people will actually take the time to download a smaller image. Yes, that 5MB image you sent to your friend of your first gay experience was ignored.

I flew into Las Vegas to pack in as much business as possible in a little more than twenty-four hours. I was disappointed that I did not have enough time in the last several weeks to prepare properly for Internext, so I decided to just do a night of partying and a day of meetings rather than attending the entire show.

I checked into my hotel around 4PM, where I somehow ended up with one of the presidential suites for an amazing rate. I don’t know if it was some kind of Orbitz mixup, but I wasn’t about to ask anyone how I was able to land a suite with three rooms, two bathrooms, a jacuzzi, and a huge plasma TV for less than what I would have paid for a regular room at Mandalay Bay (where Internext is being held this year).

After exploring the two bathrooms and three bedrooms in my suite, I made my way to the Bellagio buffet for an impromptu meeting with some people who work on the technology side of the industry. At my table were account representatives from major hosts, programmers, SEOs, and project managers. The buffet was amazing, and the conversation was just as good. We talked about everything from RSS feeds to database replication and load balancing.

After dinner, I went to The Mix Lounge at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay for a birthday party. I had never been to The Mix, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. After my last trip to Vegas, I was pretty disappointed with the quality of clubs, but the people at The Mix were super nice with no attitudes and the view of the Strip from the club is amazing. The Mix is up on the 64th floor of THEhotel, which is located all the way at the end of the Strip, so you can imagine what the view is like. The staff was even nice enough to show us to the elevators and help find our floor when we were all to wasted to do it ourselves.

After leaving The Mix, I did a pretty lengthy suite party circuit. I hit up about four different suite parties and got to hang out in some of the largest hotel rooms in Vegas. What am I talking about? Full bars, jacuzzis, multiple bathrooms, plush couches, personal butlers, bidets, and plenty of hotties.

I had a great time hanging out with major program owners in their suites, and I ended up doing a lot of business. I left the Mandalay Bay around six in the morning, and at this time I was on a mission to get laid by a cougar. Cougars run rampant in Vegas, and I noticed two super hot cougars at a blackjack table when I returned to my hotel at 6:30AM. I figured it would be a great time to pick up some cougars which were obviously neglected during the night, so I attempted to play blackjack with them. Unfortunately, since I don’t ever play blackjack, I lost about two hundred dollars after half an hour and three Heinekens. In true cougar style, the ladies tossed me two hundred dollar chips, which I used to win another fifty dollars, but I was unable to get them back into my room despite spitting my a-game, so I gave their money back plus the fifty dollar profit, and returned to my room a little before 8AM.

I ordered some hotel porn and continued drinking until around 10:30AM because I couldn’t sleep. I slept for about forty-five minutes, checked out, and made my way to the opening of Internext a little after noon.

I had four meetings scheduled before my return flight, so the day was busy. The show looked good despite all of the criticism that it has gotten over the last couple weeks. Hopefully, the Internext people will be able to turn the show around with this one.

Was I successful in doing a shitload of business and getting wasted in slightly more than twenty-four hours? Fuck yes. I got to talk a lot about celebrity traffic for my newest site with very experienced people, which was one of my goals for this show, and I ended up closing not one, not two, but three major deals, one of which was a major investment deal in a new technology. My Internext quickie was definitely successful.

I am about to settle down to a few hours of sleep before I embark on my quickie trip to Vegas for Internext. I won’t be in Vegas for the entire show, but the game plan is to pack as many meetings as possible into a twenty-four hour timeframe and still manage to get wasted and possibly have sex. Can I do it? You’ll have to check subsequent blog posts to find out.

I leave at around 2:00PM today (it’s 4:20AM right now), and I plan on being drunk by 4:00PM. Good times.

As I am a little tipsy right now from a night of drinking followed by an extremely awkard near-sexual experience (possibly more on that later), I would like to make my to-do list for tomorrow morning completely public. Here is what I have to do before I leave for Internext:

1. Do Laundry
   If you are a regular blog reader, you know how I feel about the importance of wearing a nice shirt to social gatherings, so naturally I need to get my clothing in order for this trip.
2. Shave My Pubes
   My southern region is like a forest right now, and being in Vegas means that getting laid is a definite possibility. For the convenience of the ladies, I need to run a #2 clipper over my pubic region and ass before I leave today.
3. Email Various People
   I have to finalize various important meetings before I leave so I can actually do business in Vegas in order to write it off as a business expense.
4. Buy Some Cigarettes
   Why? Because being able to smoke inside of a building is fucking sweet. Here in Los Angeles we are not even able to smoke within twenty feet of a building now.

So that’s about it.  I already have some plans in order for tonight in Vegas, and I could not be more excited about doing business now.

If you are a porn fan or do business with porn fans, chances are that you have at least considered heading to Las Vegas this week for the AVN Adult Expo.

What can you expect?

Well, if you are a webmaster, prepare yourself for plenty of business cards and copious amounts of free booze and hookers great networking and business opportunities. If you are a porn surfer, prepare yourself for long lines of dudes with halfies trying to squeeze into a picture with Jenna Jameson. Either way, everything will probably be a haze since you’ll be in Vegas, and you’ll probably have an awesome time.

For your convenience, here’s a full list of all of the pornstar hotties appearing at the AVN Show. If you wait around long enough, you can probably finagle an autograph.

Suggestion: have the autograph made out to an ambiguous name, or no name at all, and sell it at a later date on Ebay.

And, of course, there are the AVN Awards on Saturday night with award categories including Best Anal Sex Scene, Most Outrageous Sex Scene, Best Specialty Series - Squirting, and Best Tease Performance. Who am I rooting for? I don’t know.

The AVN Show is more about tangibles (video production/distribution, sex toys, etc), and it is completely packed with horny fans. Considering I don’t do much business with companies involved with the show and companies with significant online divisions will be sticking around for Internext a couple days after the conclusion of AVN, I will be skipping the AVN Show completely. I’ll rely on detailed accounts from my friends for my taste of the madness that is Vegas during the AVN Show.

Oh yeah, and if you are going to the entire AVN Show and then attending the entire Internext Show, you are fucking crazy. I may be skilled at drinking heavily, but I know where to draw the line. If I ever find myself in Vegas for a full nine days of porn shows, instead of heading home after the conclusion of the madness, I’ll be on the next plane to Guatemala to get myself a black market liver transplant.

Enjoy the show, and if you happen to see Shane’s World contract star Casey Parker, make sure to ask her whether she thinks Fat Dick Simon is legit. Private joke.

I finally decided on a schedule for my trip to Las Vegas next week for Internext, and I did a search on Google to find the Bellagio website. I was pretty sure that it was bellagio.com, but I searched just to be sure. Here is a screenshot of my results:

What’s wrong with this picture?

Well, the marketing team over at Bellagio is paying for Adwords clicks on this search when the same site they are buying clicks to is actually ranking #1 for the search. What does this mean? Essentially, they are wasting money.

Why pay for a sponsored link when you are number one for a search? I tend to buy adwords clicks only on search terms that I have a shitty ranking for.

How much money is Bellagio wasting? I used the Adwords keyword tool to come up with the following estimate:

Even though the estimated average costs are hardly ever correct, the results prove that this ineffective Adwords buy could be quite costly over time. I don’t expect the people over at Bellagio to go broke over this considering that they have tons of money to burn, but why waste money when you don’t have to?

I did a little more detective work using the Overture keyword suggestion tool. For those of you who don’t know, this tool gives an estimate of the monthly search volume for a given term. I used values for the US. Here are my results:

You can see for yourself by performing all three of these searches, that the official Bellagio site appears as both the first organic (non-paid) result AND the first sponsored result.

Let’s Do Some Math

These three search terms yield a total of around 24986 searches each month. This number, in reality, is much more, but we’ll use it for fun.

Let’s say that Bellagio’s Adwords campaign for these three search terms has a click through rate of 7%. I think this is realistic considering that the Adwords domain is the official Bellagio site, which will cause users to see it as relevant. In addition, Bellagio is obviously bidding enough to be placed in sponsor position number one, which also accounts for the high click through ratio. Ad copy is mediocre, but does mention an ‘online special,’ which will raise CTR.

At a click through rate of 7%, of the 24986 searches performed each month, about 1749 will yield an sponsored link click to the Bellagio site.

Let’s say Bellagio pays $7.25 for each of these clicks. This could, or could, not be close to what they are paying. I do not have Adwords experience with anything hotel-related, but Bellagio is obviously the top bidder for all of these search terms. At $7.25 per click, Bellagio is spending $12680.39 each month on this ad campaign when they are ranking number one for the same search term. At $12680.39 each month, Bellagio spends $152164.74 each year on the campaign.

Again, this does not break Bellagio’s bank at all, but why spend it when you don’t have to?

Why Does Bellagio Do This?

The only reason that I could think of for what seems to be a waste of money on the part of Bellagio is that they do not want to have another site, such as Expedia or Orbitz, outbid them for this spot. I wonder if they have worked out the costs of being outbid on this campaign and found that it is more cost-effective for them to ensure that the majority of Adwords clicks go to them so they do not have to pay out commissions on hotel rooms bought through Adwords clicks.

With Adwords, it is easy to exclude search terms for which your campaign will not appear, so what I noticed caused me to think a lot about whether this result was a calculated effort on the part of Bellagio to make sure that users book rooms directly through them, or if this was simply overlooked by Bellagio marketing. Or if Bellagio doesn’t give a fuck about $152164.74 each year. The latter is very likely.

The results above are the same for nearly all Las Vegas hotels, with more popular hotels receiving even more searches, and thus causing Adwords spots to cost more.

Is there a method to this madness, or are the results due to simple oversight on the part of Bellagio? I’ll probably never know, but I enjoyed investigating this one. See you in Vegas.

I hate tequila, and before last night, I honestly think I have never ordered a tequila shot from a bar. Unfortunately, on a fairly regular basis, I find a tequila shot in front of me late at night, and I get pressured to take it. I’m a total sheep, so of course I down it and yell something like ‘Cuervo!’ or ‘Te-Kill Ya!’ but I know that as soon as I down the phantom tequila shot, the night is about to take a turn for the worse.

What do I mean by ‘turn for the worse?’ Included in the ‘turn for the worse’ category are such events as fucking fat chicks, passing out under a car, puking on myself, getting into a bar fight and wetting my bed.

Last night, I found myself at an authentic Irish pub in San Francisco with some friends discussing this very topic. Accordingly, we came up with a plan to take on the Tequila-Only Challenge. You can do it at home! Here are the rules we came up with:

1. You May Only Drink Tequila
   No mixed drinks (this includes margaritas), no water, no red bull, and no other liquids unless they are tequila. Tequila on the rocks is ok as long as you down it before the ice melts too much (thus becoming ultimately a mixed drink).
2. Lime Is The Only Acceptable Chaser/Additive
   My compadres called me pussy for coming up with this rule, but I can’t really deal with the taste of tequila and thought that it was a necessity.
3. Once You Drink Something Other Than Tequila, You’re Done
   That’s right. No ‘taking a break’ from the Tequila-Only Challenge. Once you stop drinking tequila shots, you are done drinking completely and you must return to your residence.
4. Only Pay With Cash
   This is not an official Tequila-Only Challenge rule, but I imposed this rule on myself because, on a night where I am only drinking tequila, there is no way that I am going to be sober enough to close a tab.

Let me reiterate that I absoutely hate tequila.

Like I said, we were in an Irish pub, so we figured that it was the perfect place to begin the Tequila-Only Challenge by taking some inaugural Tequila-Only Challenge tequila shots. After all, there is nothing more Irish than tequila. Shots one and two were not at all easy and I had difficulties keeping the tequila down even after sucking on about four lime slices.

After we embarked on the Tequila-Only Challenge, I knew that the night would be a complete mess. It was. Here is the timeline:

8:15PM Gather More Supplies

We left the Irish pub at this point to pick up some tequila from a nearby liquor store. I knew it would be a late night, and I did not want last call to get in the way of our fun. We purchased three (3) bottles of Patron, two (2) handles of Jose Cuervo (not my idea), and two (2) bottles of Tarantula (my favorite), along with fifteen (15) limes.

8:20PM Return To My Hotel

My room was fucking huge this weekend, so I figured it would be best to make use of the extra space by having some people over to drink tequila heavily.

8:35PM First Puking Incident

After tequila shot number five (Patron), I puked. Did I mention that I hate tequila?

8:55PM Second Puking Incident

After tequila shot number seven (Jose), I puked again. I was craving water at this point because the tequila tasted like homeless man asshole, but unfortunately water is prohibited by Tequila-Only Challenge rule #1.

9:15PM They Have Tequila At Sports Bars

We ordered a round of tequila at the sports bar downstairs at my hotel. Why not finish off the tequila in my room? We were trying to recruit more people for the Tequila-Only Challenge. We were unsuccessful, but we were six strong at this point, and we were about to meet up with a larger crew at a club.

10:05PM Tequila Bottle Service

We took a cab out to one of my favorite San Francisco nightspots, and got some bottle service. What did we order? Two bottles of Patron, silly! At this point, I would like to commend one member of our party. Unfortunately I am not able to mention her name on the blog, but her commitment to the Tequila-Only Challenge was amazing as she literally threw a bottle of chaser brought out by out waitress across the room. Amazing.

10:40PM Third Puking Incident

I was most likely around shot number twelve when I had to puke into a napkin at our table. I promptly walked to the middle of the dancefloor where I dropped the napkin. Hopefully someone stepped on it.

11:00PM Not Just Drunk, Tequila Drunk

You know how you get all weird and want to slap chicks while fucking them up the ass after you drink a few forties? There is no way you would be in that kind of mood after a couple vodka tonics. Malt liquor gives you a different kind of drunk feeling. What is a tequila drunk feeling like? Aside from wanting to pick up a Latina hooker on Craig’s List, I wanted to pass out pretty badily. I had difficulty with nearly all motor functions, and all I could think about was passing out while getting blown by a Craig’s List Latina hooker.

12:15PM Hit On A Bartender

By this point of the night, word had gotten out that the Tequila-Only Challenge was underway. I got a bartender to take two tequila shots with me after giving her a hefty tip. I’m pretty sure that I hit on her at this point, but I was talking jibberish game, which proved ineffective in landing pussy.

12:50AM Tequila Shower Wake-Up

I want to thank whoever woke me up at our table by pouring tequila all over my face. Aside from almost drowning, I almost puked (again) and my face smelled like shit. Thanks again.

1:20AM Back To The Hotel

A pretty large group came back to my room, where a fairly large tequila supply had our names on it.

1:45AM Fourth Puking Incident

Things were starting to get pretty bad. I was seeing double, and must have had at least twenty tequila shots at this point.

1:50AM Possible Remedy: Stimulants

Typically, when I dip into the devil’s dandruff, I am able to consume more alcohol and my drunkness is dampened. In order to attempt to get out of the tequila hell that my body was trapped in, I suggested taking it to the rails (allowed in the Tequila-Only Challenge). Everyone agreed that it was a very good idea, and I began chasing lines with tequila shots. Bad motherfucking news.

2:45AM Slightly Less Drunk

My suggestion proved to be successful, but I began getting nervous that an all-nighter was coming on. While the Tequila-Only Challenge was still in full effect, the crowd was substituting tequila shots for rails more and more as the night continued. I thought about this for a second and then realized that I was really wasted and I didn’t care.

3:00AM Second Wind

I got my second wind around three. I don’t know what brought it on, but I suddenly realized that tequila had stopped tasting like shit. I was so wasted that tequila became completely tasteless, which allowed me to drink more. Much more.

5:00AM Tap Out

After consuming copious amounts of tequila and blow without any water, I had to tap out at around five. The Tequila-Only Challenge was over. Other Tequila-Only Challengers finished shortly after.

When I woke up this afternoon, I had a horrible taste in my mouth which nearly made me puke, and I had the worst hangover I have ever had. This is exactly what I expected when I embarked on the Tequila-Only Challenge.

Feel free to post comments with your Tequila-Only Challenge experiences. I suggest you do this at home.

I don’t really like smoking weed, but every once in a while I’m in the mood to hit up the chronic.  Unfortunately, immediately after smoking I remember why I don’t smoke regularly.

I’m up in San Francisco for the weekend, and yesterday, after a busy day, I took some business associates out for a night tour of Alcatraz.  The tour was pretty creepy, but the best part was the ferry ride out to the island during sunset.  From the top level of the ferry in the middle of the bay, you can see the entire San Francisco skyline, and it was a perfectly clear day (no fog), which made it a pretty amazing sight.

The problem was that by the time I got on the ferry to depart for Alcatraz, I was pretty stoned off some weed that was described to me as ’some bomb shit,’ and my trip made the Alcatraz audio tour pretty scary.  At first blazing and checking out the sunset on the top of a ferry and then getting scared at Alcatraz sounded like a pretty good idea (not my idea), but once I got high, I started hearing some crazy echoes and giggling while getting lost in D-Block.  Another blunt was burned outside on the dock at Alcatraz, which made my evening even more trippy.  I kind of started freaking out and while walking through the hospital at Alcatraz, I wished that I had not blazed the magnificent Cali greens.

So that was my ‘Oh yeah, that’s why I don’t smoke!’ experience.  I’ll be good for another few weeks.  Actually, it could have been much worse.  Being stoned and on the Rock was a pretty trippy and creepy experience, but I guess that is how it’s supposed to be.

After dinner last night, we ended up blazing up a little more and checking out some excellent deep house music out at DNA Lounge until about 4am.  Relatively uneventful, but I danced my ass off for a solid six hours.

Tonight, well, I have a feeling some crazy stuff is going to go down.  I’m not sure exactly what this crazy stuff is, though.  Perhaps CraigsList hookers.  No one knows.

All of the other trendy bloggers are linking to this story, so I figured I should as well. I’m a big time follower.

Mozilla just reported the 2005 earnings for its Firefox browser, and they aren’t too shabby, especially when you consider the source of these earnings. A $52.9 million year is pretty damn good for an open source software project.

Where does this $52.9 million paycheck come from? While Mozilla doesn’t disclose the exact breakdown of revenue sources, most of the revenue comes from the little Google searchbox in the top right of your Firefox window. That’s right, whenever you perform a search using that searchbox and click any of the sponsored Adsense links, Mozilla gets about 80% of the ad revenue that Google receives.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a bad thing at all. I’m all for the advancement of the Firefox browser and the continued success of the Adsense program. I think it is an ingenious source of revenue for a software project going up against the big boys. By simply providing a useful feature to its users, Mozilla gets to cash a big ass paycheck.
I need to start a browser.

Sidenote: about 25% of FatDickSimon readers use Firefox.

Somehow, I managed to not completely belligerent last night during my New Year’s Eve festivities.  When I woke up in my own bed (I was hoping to pass out under a car somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area), I was pretty disappointed, and I’ll definitely have to hit the bottle extra hard this week in order to make up for my sub-par drinking performance last night.

Above is a picture of the party supplies that my roommates and I purchased for last night’s festivities.  Needless to say, we spared no expense as we picked up twenty bottles of Charles Shaw wine and ten bottles of Andre champagne (strawberry and brut).  For me, it doesn’t get much better than assigning the task of downing at least one bottle of wine to each one of the partygoers (but mostly the females).

Hopefully, you also had a fun and safe New Year’s Eve celebration, and hopefully you didn’t end up fucking a fat chick last night (*cough*).  Your boy Fat Dick wishes you the best of luck in 2007.