Jerry Timms

You might remember from March of last year that I made a big deal out of getting ranked in Google for the term “lemon flakes.” I started out as #9, then quickly rose to #1. Since then my ranking for that term has slipped, and then once again regained its #1 ranking. My blog actually slipped for quite a few terms after the conversion to WordPress, as it seems that Google doesn’t like WordPress as much as it likes Blogger (for obvious reasons since Google owns Blogger).

Well, it was so much fun tracking my ranking for that term that I decided to challenge myself on another much more difficult term this year. Remember, this is part of what I actually do for a living! Besides, I’m kind of bored tonight and I had nothing else to write about or do.

So, the term for 2008 is p h o e n i x g a y b a r s. I added a bunch of spaces there because I don’t want this posting to affect the results. Right now the term doesn’t appear anywhere on my website, but it soon will.

My current Google ranking for that term, at the time of writing this post, is #407. My goal by the end of this year is to be in the top ten. The reason that I haven’t set a goal of being #1 is because I’ve been watching the goings-on of another site that I think will get #1, and it simply isn’t possible for my site to beat it without me spending thousands of dollars toward that end.

Oh in case you don’t already know, SEO means Search Engine Optimization. And in case you’re wondering, there’s a lot more to it then simply putting the text on my site - that’s only about a quarter of the effort.

So, wish me luck…top ten here I come!

Here is a repost of the review I wrote on Yelp about Club Forbidden nightclub in Scottsdale.

Club Forbidden - 3 Stars

After nearby BS West, Club Forbidden is only the second gay bar in Scottsdale.

Anderson’s Fifth Estate was transformed into this gay club a short time after owner Tom Anderson settled a relatively high profile dispute with a transgender woman, whom he removed from the former club after complaints about her and other transgender individuals using the women’s restroom. It is unclear if this new club is a direct part of that settlement, or simply a result of Tom Anderson having some sort of epiphany during the negotiations, but I suppose it really doesn’t matter.

I’m going to be gentle with this review because the club is new and I think it will continue to get better as it finds and develops it’s identity. Club Forbidden was opened just prior to Burn Nightclub closing in Phoenix, so many regulars from Burn now come to dance at this club. DJ Jeremy, who used to spin at Burn, now works here as well.

Physically, Forbidden Nightclub is the same as Anderson’s. It is split into two main rooms, one much bigger than the other. I came here on both a friday and a Saturday, and on both nights the larger room was playing more mainstream dance and hip hop music, while the smaller room had what could be described as more electronica/circuit (what you may call “techno”) dance music. I enjoyed the music in the smaller room (where DJ Jeremy was spinning) but found the music a bit unpredictable and annoying in the larger room - where the DJ played everything from Timbaland to the B-52’s.

As far as the crowd, it was sparse and not very pretty on the two fridays that I came here. However, things were much better on the Saturday night that I was here last weekend - relatively crowded and attractive. Everyone seemed really friendly and social, with none of the attitude you’d obviously expect to see at many of the straight dance clubs in Scottsdale. The attitude and look of the crowd was definitely the highlight of the club.

The low-light of each evening was how long it took to get drinks. It surprised me how long I had to wait each time, because the club actually has four bars in it. But at each bar, the staff seemed to struggle to keep up with demand - even on the relatively uncrowded Fridays. I think the management may still be uncertain how much they want to staff the club on each night, and the staff may still be training.

Another critique I had was with the lighting. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine to hang out in a club and be blinded by cheap “Spencers Gifts” quality strobe lights and other lighting gimmicks, which was the case here. Burn Nightclub actually suffered from the same problem, and I’m not sure why quality lighting systems are such a rare sight in the Phoenix area.

There was no cover on any of the nights I went, and the drinks all seem to be low to moderately priced. As all gay dance clubs, dress is casual.

Overall I’d still recommend this club - unfortunately we as gay men in Arizona don’t have very many options, and this place is as good as any of them. Although lighting, music and bar efficiency could be easily improved to make this a four or five star night club destination.

Club Forbidden
6820 E. 5th Avenue
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
http://www.forbiddenaz.com

Several months ago a paper was published detailing how mankind’s newfound ability to measure and ascertain certain attributes of the big bang may have actually shortened the life-span of the universe itself. You can read an interesting article summarizing the paper here. Of if you’re feeling particularly energetic you can also read the original paper by Lawrence M. Krauss and James Dent from Case Western Reserve University, titled The Late Time Behavior of False Vacuum Decay: Possible Implications for Cosmology and Metastable Inflating States.

Now that the proper citations are out of the way, the reason why I bring this up is because I’m been studying this topic for awhile now. The basic premise here is that we may actually change the universe simply by observing it. This is well illustrated by a thought experiment devised by Erwin Schrödinger, who describes a cat that may be both alive and dead at the same time. The cat’s fate is only determined by observation of a single radioactive particle that controls a cyanide gas bomb - if the particle decays then the bomb is released, if it does not then the cat lives. The observer in this case is a Geiger counter that controls a switch to the gas bomb.

It is nearly well understood in quantum physics that particles can exist in multiple states (or locations) at once. A famous experiment (the delayed choice quantum eraser) deals with light that ends up as either a particle or a wave. It is only our observation of it that determines which state it’s actually in…and this experiment has been used to understand some of the creepy temporal cause and effect laws in quantum mechanics.

I started off with all this science so you don’t think I’m crazy. This has been a serious intellectual pursuit for me ever since high school when I first started noticing an odd connection between my own scientific observations and the world.

I continued thinking about this idea as I started working on business reporting systems during the course of my career as a business analyst. Indeed if I was affecting business revenue simply by enabling my clients to measure it, I needed to understand how we could be sure to affect it in a positive rather than a negative way. I haven’t figured it out yet…or even if it’s possible to influence a positive or a negative path. That horrible movie “The Secret” would have you believe that you can influence a positive outcome simply by imagining it, although I am more inclined to believe that the outcome is arbitrary (or nearly impossible to predict) even though it is nonetheless directly influenced by the visualization itself.

Whew! Are you still with me?

So I was again reminded of the predicament after installing a glass orb in my living room that’s connected to the internet to show me how my stock portfolio is doing. It glows different colors in order to reflect whether my stock price is up or down, and by how much. My stock portfolio was doing fantastic until I set this up, and then it tanked almost right away.

Although I can say with 99% certainty/belief that the two events are merely coincidental, it still makes me wonder.

Using all of the available theories I could say that the stock had a 50% chance of trending up, and a 50% chance of trending down. The orb itself did not make the stock trend down, but it did force a choice between the two possible outcomes. If I hadn’t plugged in the orb then chance would be greater that the other outcome would prevail, no? From my perspective anyway. Of course this ignores the fact that there are a nearly infinite amount of other variables affecting the outcome, although I’m not sure how much those variables matter in the final choice that the observation forces. As proven in the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment, cause and effect do not necessarily always happen in the same order.

I’m just about done with this for tonight, and I don’t have any final statements for you other than to thank you for reading a bit of my intellectual masturbation for the evening. I’ll continue this another time, but would enjoy reading any comments you have on this topic!

Then again, maybe this is not how it ends…maybe this is just where it gets interesting…

So I’ve had a month off and I told myself that I would only return to blogging if I really felt like I needed it. Which is funny because I think that statement itself actually identifies the reason why I stopped blogging in the first place; because I saw it as a weakness.

I started blogging because I was emotional, confused and upset. I continued blogging because it was fun, although my blog’s self-described identity as a form of therapy continued to loom over me. So when I felt like I didn’t need the therapy any longer there was this idea that I didn’t need the blog, and that it’s continued use actually made it ineffective. However what I should have realized is that things can persist in our lives while serving changing purposes.

And that purpose materialized in a new lesson, easily summed up in two words:
why not?

After I decided this afternoon to return to the blog, I started salivating at the idea of sinking my teeth into some new ideas and discussion. I missed this. And although I tried to keep myself busy with other evening activities, things just didn’t feel nearly the same, or as satisfying.

So I thought, why not go back to blogging since I enjoyed it so much? Well if you’re thinking it’s painfully obvious that we ought to do things we enjoy just for the sake of enjoying them, and you’re not sure why this is something I’ve only recently figured out…well, then you still don’t know me very well.

So there you go…false alarm. The blog isn’t over yet. In fact, it’s just starting to get interesting. Settle in you guys, I’ve got a few more things to say!