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Geek It Happened to Me

In Boston

I’m in Beantown to attend the Ajax Experience conference (Ajax as in the web application programming technique, not the cleanser), which starts tomorrow and runs until Wednesday.

The conference takes place at the brand spanking new Westin Boston Waterfront, which still has the “new hotel smell”. It’s considerably more posh than the typical stone’s-throw-from-the-airport conference hotel, and it’s pretty close to downtown (a ten or fifteen-minute walk, depending on your pace, will land you right at Downtown Crossing). I predict the possibility of some post-session expeditions for booze.

Aside from dinner with Wendy’s parents tonight, I had nothing scheduled today, so I walked over to Downtown Crossing and ended up doing what I always do when I go there: buying dress shirts at half-price in Filene’s Basement. I think half my office and going-out wardrobe comes from Boston now. I then handed a guy in a tri-corner hat twelve bucks to take me on a walking tour of the Freedom Trail. This sort of thing would probably bore Wendy to tears (she’s lived in Boston most of her life), so I thought I’d catch it as long as I was travelling without her.

I’ll be blogging about the conference over at the Tucows Blog and Global Nerdy; my non-technical entries about the trip will go here. If you’re attending this conference or just happen to be a friend of mine in the Boston area, drop me a line. I’ve got the accordion with me, and am always up for a little beer-fueled fun.

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Geek It Happened to Me

My Appearance on CityNews

A Slow News Day

It must’ve been a slow news day, because CityNews aired the segment about me Googlebombing my deadbeat ex-housemate ten minutes into their broadcast! You can watch the video here.

My thanks to Amber MacArthur, who read my entry about my deadbeat ex-housemate and turned it into a news story, as well as the charming Kris Reyes and Mark the camera operator. (By the way, ladies: Mark’s a good-lookin’ fella with a cool job. Let me know if you’d like to get set up.)

Still frame from City News interview with Joey deVilla on Googlebombing.
Click the photo to see the video.

The Web Articles

Note the title of the web page corresponding to the news segment: Man Punishes Ex-Roommate with “Google Bomb”. All they’d need to do is change “Man” to “Area Man” and they’d have a title that would fit right in at The Onion.

The web article has another article partnered with it, titled How to Fight Back Against “Google Bombing”. The tips listed within are somewhat useful, but inapplicable in this case. While Googlebombing him is a bit harsh, I don’t just have the legal and moral high ground, I’m in legal and moral orbit, baby.

(Besides, they forgot the most important tip: Don’t welch on your media-savvy, high-whuffie roomate.)

Still frame from City News interview with Joey deVilla on Googlebombing.
Click the photo to see the video.

Cyberbullying? Nope.

Is this “cyberbullying”?

No.

Bullying implies an attack by one party with considerably more power than the attacked party. My ex-roomate is a middle-class twenty-something white male computer consultant living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Simply put, he’s The Man. (Maybe Poor Impulse-Spending Control Man, but The Man nonetheless.)

From a socioeconomic standpoint, we’re in the same weight class. This isn’t David vs. Goliath, it’s Kenny vs. Spenny.

(From a fiscal responsibility standpoint, I’m Warren Buffet and he’s one of those people who wins the lottery and is broke the following year.)

Mission Accomplished? Will I Ever Get My Money Back?

My intent was merely to get his attention and get him to email me back. We’d had an agreement that’s he’d update me regularly about his financial situation — about once a week, even if only to tell me “Hey Joey, I can’t get you a cheque this month”. He’s been unresponsive for the past couple of months, and I got fed up.

I know that there’s a good chance that I may never get paid back. It’s been five years since he started defaulting on his rent, and I get the distinct impression that I’m not the only person to whom he owes money.

And Finally, a Joke…

To rephrase the old joke about professional musicians…

Q: What’s the difference between my deadbeat ex-housemate and an extra large pizza?

A: An extra-large pizza can feed a family of four.

I’ll keep at him continually. You never know, he could come through.

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In the News It Happened to Me

Tonight on CityTV: "Ugly Debt-y!"

(Sorry about the title. When a good pun makes itself, I cannot resist!)

As I mentioned in a post yesterday, a couple of folks from CityNews dropped by the office to interview me for a segment on Googlebombing based on my article about my deadbeat ex-housemate. The segment airs on CityNews tonight at six.

I’ll write more about the interview later tonight, after I’ve seen it myself.

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It Happened to Me

When Life Gives You a Deadbeat Ex-Housemate, Make Deadbeat Ex-Housemate-ade. Or Something Like That.

About a half hour ago, the phone rang…

Phone voice: Hi, I’m calling from CityTV. We’d like to interview you for a news piece tonight about Googlebombing.

Me: (Uncontrollable fit of laughter)

Phone voice: I see I’ve reached the right person.

It looks as though they’d seen my A Special Message to My Deadbeat Ex-Housemate entry, in which I started to Googlebomb my deadbeat ex-housemate. They’re coming to the office to shoot the piece, and I believe it’ll air tonight.

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Geek It Happened to Me

Update on the Deadbeat Ex-Housemate Story

(You might want to read the entry titled A Special Message to My Deadbeat Ex-Housemate first.)

As of this morning, a Google search for deadbeat ex-housemate, both with and without quotes, returns the weblog of my deadbeat ex-housemate as the number one result in both Canada and the U.S..

I also got an email from him last night, in which he explained his current situation. Hey, I’m a nice guy and am willing to wait a little longer, but I want my replies to my questions and some guarantees that I will be paid back. That money could buy a lot of appliances for the home that the Ginger Ninja and I shall eventually buy.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in with a comment. I’ve made a note that there are still some legal options available to me, but I also have a “nuclear option” which I have not yet disclosed. Yes, I know that I’m beginning to sound like a James Bond villain.

Anyhow, I am pleased. Sastified grinning will commence in 3…2…1…

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It Happened to Me

A Special Message to My Deadbeat Ex-Housemate

Attention, Deadbeat ex-housemate. You have not been responding to my emails about when you’re going to finally start paying me all that back rent (and that $1000 phone bill) you owe me from starting from October 2001.

Being five years later, I might normally let this go, but you were a pretty crappy housemate: you almost never helped with chores, often insulted me in front of my friends (and who knows what you said behind my back) and that incident with the con man has not been forgotten. I am left with no option except to use my considerable Googlejuice to make it so that the number one Google result for your name is also the number one result for the phrase “deadbeat ex-housemate”. Since you work in the field of computers, I trust that have this Google stigma will inspire you to take some fiscal responsibility and start writing cheques. This Googlebombing will stop when the cheques — certified cheques, you little rat-bastard — start coming in.

To my readers: this Googlebombing will be annoying, so I promise that any such post like this will be accompanied by an interesting or amusing picture. I’ll mark this post, which could be the first of many, with a very amusing and psychedelic animated graphic of Christopher Walken floating through space:

Christopher Walken in space

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Geek It Happened to Me

Today on "Global Nerdy"

George Scriban and Joey deVilla
George was the Best Man at my wedding; this is us at my wedding rehearsal dinner.

Pictured above is the writing team at the new techie blog Global Nerdy. On the left is my buddy George Scriban, whom I met back at Crazy Go Nuts University. He’s a research director at a New York-based private think tank serving senior technology executives from the Global 200. The handsome dude on the right is Yours Truly, and I’m Technical Evangelist for Tucows, a Toronto-based supplier of Internet services and download libraries with a global distribution network of 6,000 service providers.

Together, we write a techie blog with both our perspectives , with George as the “top-down” enterprise computing guy and me as the “bottom-up” web developer, and I think the combination will be a potent one. Go check it out at www.GlobalNerdy.com!

Articles on Global Nerdy thus far: