Riddle me this, Google

re: Riddle me this, Google

chris hollander — Wed, 12 May 2004 01:05:00 GMT

fricking. Hysterical. certainly your most entertaining post to date. :D

as for guys stringing you along; perhaps your readers should try to use string.IsInterned to determine if their guy is in for the long haul, or just trying to invoke a string.Split() operation on them. ;)

re: Riddle me this, Google

Kingsley Tagbo — Wed, 12 May 2004 01:33:00 GMT

Would you be making your log analysis software available?

re: Riddle me this, Google

J.P. Stewart — Wed, 12 May 2004 03:24:00 GMT

Foo does stand for something though. While it is a metasyntactic variable, it has roots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo

re: Riddle me this, Google

Scott Duffy — Wed, 12 May 2004 05:17:00 GMT

Inpired by Eric's blog entry, I wrote a small VB .NET program to analyze my dasBlog referrer logs for Google search terms.

The search terms I found are here:
http://www.mydemos.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=9f292139-c2aa-4ae4-9c40-389db5569c36

And the source code/executable for the program is here:
http://www.mydemos.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=a0f21693-5d63-4b89-afc8-072ad09ad304

It's not perfect. But it was an interesting programmatic exercise.

re: Riddle me this, Google

Peter — Wed, 12 May 2004 06:49:00 GMT

It reminds me of Rory Blyths weekly session of Google Wierdos on dotNetRocks ... but not that wierd.

re: Riddle me this, Google

Mattias Sjögren — Wed, 12 May 2004 10:32:00 GMT

"For example, when you say class blah { int foo; } in C#, you've elided the public on the class"

C# classes aren't public by default, so the the elided keyword would be internal (or private if the class is nested).

re: Riddle me this, Google

Dave Verwer — Wed, 12 May 2004 10:49:00 GMT

It never gets any less funny to hear that people are still typing questions like these into Google

My favourites from this post are Are you a traveling man? and What are the best ways to get a boy to like you?

I might do it to mine one day, release your application :)

re: Riddle me this, Google

Robert Hahn — Wed, 12 May 2004 13:23:00 GMT

What a great way to start a day!

Eric, methinks that the intent of this question: "Where do cufflinks come from?" was asked in a historical context, not a "where can I get some?" context.

2 Google searches later, and man, is it hard to find that info out. So here's my grand theory, based almost entirely on speculation, seasoned with a bit of half-remembered art history from university. I think they come from France back in the days when men were women, and women were, well, women, and everybody wore makeup and wigs and pantyhose.

re: Riddle me this, Google

Shike Maffer — Wed, 12 May 2004 14:08:00 GMT

Where I used to live (Maine) the answer to

Who can say where the road goes?

was

Don't go no where, just lays right here. A Mainer accent is required for the full effect.

re: Riddle me this, Google

David Pickett — Wed, 12 May 2004 23:40:00 GMT

Wow. Glad I found out about asbestos vinyl flooring. I never knew such a thing existed. Think I'll just tile OVER the kitchen floor instead of tearing it up!

re: Riddle me this, Google

Eric Lippert — Wed, 12 May 2004 23:58:00 GMT

If you can get away with it, that's the preferred solution. But in my case, doing so would have meant about an inch step up to get into the kitchen.

When we took apart the kitchen floor we discovered that in fact it went like this:

vinyl
asbestos backing
glue
particle board
butt-ugly linoleum
paper
tongue-in-groove pine
subfloor

Whoops. Didn't know about that other floor under there! No wonder it was so thick.

re: Riddle me this, Google

Charlie Hensler — Wed, 12 May 2004 23:58:00 GMT

I actually DID drop an anvil on my foot once (junior high metal shop), and it DID break my foot! (I'm still waiting for the Darwin award...)

re: Riddle me this, Google

Eric Lippert — Wed, 12 May 2004 23:59:00 GMT

The Darwin awards are only for people who removed themselves from the gene pool. Had you dropped it, uh, somewhere else, you might qualify.

re: Riddle me this, Google

Charlie Hensler — Thu, 13 May 2004 00:01:00 GMT

Well, there's always the next time... :)

Geek Notes 2004-05-12

Geek Noise — Thu, 13 May 2004 06:11:00 GMT

re: Riddle me this, Google

Keith Gaughan — Thu, 13 May 2004 19:31:00 GMT

A better answer for the "I see things with my eyes" one might be: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/22/ :-)

re: Riddle me this, Google

Chris S. — Fri, 14 May 2004 13:11:00 GMT

It's linked in that Wiki article on Foo, but if you've never read it, RFC 3092 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3092.html is a hoot.

I've never seen something that seems so much like a joke talked about so seriously.

re: Riddle me this, Google

Jeff Talley — Sat, 15 May 2004 16:35:00 GMT

The whole thing is entertaining and hilarious, but the best line, by far, is the one explaining that we live on a planet that orbits a giant ball of fire. I am supposed to be working right now and that one tipped off my wife.

re: Riddle me this, Google

Eric Lippert — Sun, 16 May 2004 17:13:00 GMT

Thanks -- though, obviously, I stole the line from Tycho and Gabe. Sincerest form of flattery, theft.

re: Riddle me this, Google

Mike Schinkel — Wed, 19 May 2004 05:37:00 GMT

>> the vast majority of the Google queries were from people who would have gotten their questions answered by various articles.

Eric, I first learned of your blog via Google while trying to get answers to some VBScript questions. Now I'm hooked!

re: Riddle me this, Google

foobaruser — Fri, 28 May 2004 20:46:00 GMT

I thought foo and bar evolved out of fbr or fubar, as in "f***ed beyond all repair".
True they are commonly just used as symbols or place holders now, but everytime I see them still this is what comes to mind. A little bird told me this when at university. As in when things did not go quite right in the old days it was considered "foo bar'ed".
In fact I will often say (when pissed off), "Oh FOO!", etc. That you can get away with when saying it outloud in your cubicle.
Well regardless, quite a few programmers do of course swear out loud anyway.

Roadtrip hell but had to post this...

Euan Garden's BLOG — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 21:14:45 GMT

I&rsquo;m on week 3 of my 3 week trip to Europe, lots of blog material but I am tired, grumpy, sat in&nbsp;a...

The Funniest Blog Post Ever Written

Korby Parnell's WebLog — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 01:02:25 GMT

This post by Eric Lippert is pretty high on my list: Riddle me this, Google. I've been collecting interesting...

re: Riddle me this, Google

Michael Greene — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 15:29:05 GMT

Simply stunning... and fascinating, interesting, engrossing and captivating. Well done, Eric.

This Week's Google Questions

Joe Grossberg — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 21:47:39 GMT

Inspired by "Riddle me this, Google", I will answer your questions. The following are all from my Google referrer logs:...

re: Riddle me this, Google

Newt — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 23:02:16 GMT

you have a good sense of humor. no wonder you had that girl for six years! girls really go for the guys that are funny, oh, and don't forget tall. but i'm not that shallow. i don't care how tall guys are. some girls are just stupid.
And going on sports teams is a good way to meet guys. i played on a three on three hockey team and we were the only girl's team in the leage. lots of guys were there.
(the url up there is my website)

Error Handling in VBScript, Part Three

Fabulous Adventures In Coding — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 20:55:08 GMT

Apparently I've sparked a discussion amongst the super-geniuses of LtU on various innovative language

Free Food! And Meet The Compiler Guy! And Win an XBOX 360!

Fabulous Adventures In Coding — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 03:11:19 GMT

FYI, I will be live and in person available for questions about C# 3.0, working at Microsoft, relationship

re: Riddle me this, Google

John Kovarik — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:04:56 GMT

Eric, you are still talking about your floor! Long time no see, wondering how you r doing?

If it would be okay with you I would really appreciate a visit to your kitchen to take some

pictures, and do a 36 month evaluation- with your input- as to how everything has held together.

Hope all is well with you, couldn't help but think of you this week with your "Longhorn" work

Finally coming out! Congrats!

re: Riddle me this, Google

John Kovarik — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:07:53 GMT

This might help... j_kovarik@hotmail.com

Find out what your audience is after « Rowan Simpson

Find out what your audience is after « Rowan Simpson — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:34:56 GMT

PingBack from http://rowansimpson.com/2007/04/11/find-out-what-your-audience-is-after/

Riddle Me This, Google, Part Three

Fabulous Adventures In Coding — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:04:14 GMT

Happy New Year everyone! Let's start 2005 off with another episode of Riddle Me This, Google. Yes, once

Riddle Me This, Google: Part Two

Fabulous Adventures In Coding — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:13:07 GMT

I knew this would end up being an agony column. Of the 29950 Google-referred hits since the last time

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Fabulous Adventures In Coding — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:18:43 GMT

I'm back, and I've almost made it through the 525 not-automatically-sorted email messages, caught up