Yesterday, I went to the Durham Fair. In a little while, I'll get on the road to head up to the National Conference of State Legislature's Redistricting Seminar in Providence, Rhode Island. It hasn't left me a lot of time to develop blog ideas, so this will be a collection of random notes.

It has been a busy week, and since I'll be in Providence this evening and since I haven't had a chance to resolve the technical problems with BlogTalkRadio, we are canceling Fiona's Radio Show again this week. I was hoping to do a video show from the Durham fair, but the battery on my cellphone was nearly dead so I didn't get to it.

I try to visit a lot of blogs every day. In doing so, at various times, interesting themes emerge. These might be common themes between different blogs. For example, sometimes a paid post theme emerges when everyone is writing about the same pair of eyeglasses, resort, or electric wheelchair.

Other times, I see warnings about sites with Malware problems:
Warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer!

Recently, I've been seeing this a lot from sites that use rpc.blogrolling.com. As a general rule, if it is part of a larger problem, like blogrolling, I just skip over it. Sometimes, it might be a fellow blogger having unexpected problems, and if that is the case, I try to let them know. Blogrolling comes in 18th on my list of referring sites according to Google Analytics.

Another issue that happened recently was that BlogCatalog was down for a while. This slowed down sites using BlogCatalog, so I removed the widget for the time being. I'll probably add it back a bit later. BlogCatalog comes in 14th on my list of referring sites.

It is a pretty eclectic mix of blogs that I read. Everything from politics to cancer survivors. I just read a very interesting combination of the two where a cancer survivor wishes that Mike Huckabee gets cancer. While I would not wish cancer on my worst enemy, I hear where she is coming from when she writes:

this loser, this alleged "Man of God" dares compare me and millions of other Americans to a house? For all posterity he is on the record as comparing a pre-existing medical condition to that of insuring a home that has already burned down

Here in Connecticut, just about every other Google Ad that I see is for Linda McMahon who is spending millions of her own money on her campaign. Every ad looks the same.

As I did a little preparation for this blog post, I stopped at Rick Green's: More From The Linda McMahon Stepford Wives! Oh Yeah! On this page was an advertisement for Warren Mosler, one of the other candidates running for U.S. Senate that you don't hear much about. Hmm, I wonder if I should run for U.S. Senate as well.

I stumbled across Rick's column in searching for "linda mcmahon stepford wife" because the one Linda McMahon ad that pops up everywhere makes her look a bit like a stepford wife. Others have commented that some of McMahon's ads need to be redone as Thelma and Louise. Any creatives out there want to do a Thelma and Louise, Stepford Wife, and Linda McMahon mashup? Perhaps the best mashup would be to bring in as many different movies as possible exploring stereotypes of women, especially Connecticut women. Ice Storm. Legally Blond. Fairytopia. The Disney Princesses. Maybe even a few WWE clips. Got other ideas?