Kind of a Close Call ©2012 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Hi! Here's a guest post for ya, it's from Joe Sixtop over at These American Servers™. Oh, hang on a second. It's not a guest post. Sorry about that, it's getting to be a habit. The previous pair of episodes immediately prior to this one were guest posts. And I'm really, really glad they were.
     My neighbor, Jakey G, is about to move. Not to another part of town but several states away. He knocks on my door just a little more often than I'd like but otherwise I kind of hate to see him go. He's told me about his plans and frankly, I think they're pretty retarded and I've told him so. He seems not to have amassed sufficient resources for the relo and he's pretty vague about what he's trying to make happen. Even though I fear they won't, I really hope things go well for my friend. If you get a minute to think a good thought for him, that'd be great.
     Anyway, the other night when we were both off from our respective jobs, Jake asked me to help him set up a Craigslist account. Which is kind of like if Helen Keller asked Ray Charles to drive them somewhere but hey, he needs to sell a lot of his stuff and I'll see what I can do. My internet at the crib has been kind of messed up here lately and Jakey G doesn't have the internet at his place at all. So I was like, "Dude. Let's grab my laptop and go over to Mickey D's® and use their wifi."
     Do you have These American Servers set as your homepage? If not, I'm afraid you're not wringing every last drop of golden goodness out of what the internet has to offer you my friend and I encourage you to get with the program. I had it set as mine but not anymore. If you want to keep something a secret, don't let anybody in on it. I knew what my homepage was when I went to grab wifi but I also knew that McDonald's®, like a lot of "free" hotspots, has their little disclaimer pop up when you log on instead of what your computer usually does at home so I was unconcerned about being busted.
     It took several minutes but we set him up an account and placed an ad. But at one point during the ordeal, the page we were after wouldn't load. So I hit "REFRESH." Guess what popped up? That's right: These American Servers. Uh-oh. I acted like it weren't no thing but inside I was like, "Oh fuck!"
     Jakey G looked at the screen before I could navigate away. "These American Servers. What's that? Who's David Hayden?" That being a guest post saved my ass twice. The first time was when I got to serve up something actually, you know, good to y'all instead of the usual crizzap from yours truly and the second was when my name wasn't on it. I casually acted like I didn't know anything or give a rat's ass about it and returned to the task at hand. Whew!
     Jakey G's a good guy and if I asked him to keep things on the DL for me, I'm sure he'd try. Of course, he wouldn't care about my little project here or my anonymity nearly as much as I do. I just vastly prefer that nobody in this town (besides me) is aware of my struggling internet column. If Jake had glimpsed my name, it'd probably have sparked some questions, maybe even a later search engine query or two. As it stands now though, I think you could ask him about it and he probably wouldn't remember the incident at all and if he did, couldn't tell you what website popped up if the correct answer came with a hundred-dollar prize.

     Lucky for me, my buddy obviously doesn't read any server blogs but that's no reason you shouldn't! I highly recommend, for example, that you check what delights Terry Everton has to offer you at  Working Stiff Review and then there's David Hayden, who's been a ginormant help to me and These American Servers but please don't hold that against him. His myriad projects, sheltered beneath the nurturing umbrella that is The Hospitality Formula are required reading for anyone who cares at least a little about our challenging industry. Thanks again, guys!