I'm a huge fan of ranch dressing. It's good on all kinds of things – vegetables, fried cheese curds, breadsticks, french fries.. and burgers.

There are currently only 2 ways I know of for getting ranch on a burger. The first is just that, putting ranch dressing on a burger – but you never really get enough with each bite. The second is dipping the burger in the ranch – but that can get messy depending on the burger and the container the ranch is in.

I propose a third method: putting the ranch IN the burger before cooking the meat. Instead of using actual ranch dressing I like the idea of using those packets of ranch dressing seasoning, or ranch dip seasoning. In a powdered form it would be much easier to mix in.

I'm not sure what the ideal ratio of seasoning to meat would be, so that'll come down to trial and error. But I think I'm going to have to test this one out soon… it just tastes way too good in my head.

And once it's perfected, it's only logical to crumble up cooked bacon and add that into the burger too.

Just now, both going up and coming back downstairs in the elevator, the darn thing opened up as I was walking towards it. No sound of it coming from another floor, no one inside, no glowing light like if someone had pushed the "Come Here Elevator!" arrow button and walked away. It just opened its doors as I got near.

I still haven't figured out what to call this thing – in the magical source code I just refer to it as "sparx Niche" – short, simple.. incredibly non-descriptive.

A description, since I've referred to it several times now – basically, I create a new page, giving that page a title, write up a bit of content so the search engines smile at it a little more, and a keyword search. When someone views that page the script goes out, asks ebay for a list of items matching the keyword search, and displays that list of items to the visitor. If someone clicks on one of the links and signs up as a new user on ebay, bids on the item they clicked on, or wins any other bids – I get a commission from ebay.

The difficult part is trying to find markets and items that many people search for, but that there aren't a lot of pages targetting. The idea is that someone looking to buy "widget x" would use google (or another search engine) to search for "widget x" and that's there's little enough competition that one of my pages would come out in the top search results. The searcher would click through, find something that they wanted listed on my page, and then go and buy it. The commission from ebay is kind of like a "finder fee", since I'm helping someone find something that they might not have found, or found through a source other than ebay.

Does it work? Yep. 🙂 I've got 2 test sites up, one that I'm actively working on, testing, and promoting.. and it's actually making some money.

When I started this, I thought that using WordPress as the backend would make things easier, and especially simplify setting up new markets and pages within them. Unfortunately, I was wrong. By using WordPress I was able to get to the testing phase faster and find out that my idea actually worked, but now it's becoming a bottleneck. So… eventually I have to remove WordPress from the mix and write a bit more code to make this thing completely standalone. The best part is – I love that part. 🙂

I posted a few weeks ago about the problem involving my car's engine misfiring. Well, I guess it wasn't fixed. Yesterday I got to spend the entire morning waiting for it to be fixed – which is a problem when the car refuses to act up when it's being looked at and the onboard computer suddenly starts claiming that everything is fine. Long story short (I'll type up the full deal later, maybe tomorrowish) I drove off to work in my newly fixed car and everything was good. Until I stopped for food and my check engine light came on. The car isn't acting up, but the light is on again, which means…

I'm taking another half day today and driving it back in for more fixin. I have a strange feeling that when I get in my car in a few minutes, the engine light will be off and I'll be grumpy.

I work in a library.
I get asked a lot of questions.
Some of them are pretty.. ridiculous.

Actual conversation:

Girl: How do I get to the "3rd floor main collection"?
Me: Just head up the stairs behind you.
Girl: Oh! That's what I did last time.

head.desk.

I was walking back to work from the coffee shop and saw a black kitten, that looked like my old cat Luna, chasing after a butterfly.

I miss that cat.

I miss not having to worry about anything, and being able to play like that.

After perfecting my turkey sandwich croissant pocket thing last week, I got to thinking – what else could I wrap with this delicious Pilsbury croissant dough? Some ideas:

• Pie filling – the stuff they sell in cans. Just slop some on the dough, seal it up, and bake. mmmm canned cherry pie filling
• Thinly sliced apples, butter, sugar and cinnamon – a small apple pie.
• Apple slices and a Snickers bar – it's like a caramel apple pie but better!
• Peanut butter and chocolate – a peanut butter cup with a delicious shell

I find it much easier to come up with ideas that are very dessertish, which I'm more than fine with.

Anyone else have any ideas?