Sorry for the lack o’ blogging for the last few days. Here’s what I’ve been up to.
– Early last week, I was at an all-day offsite with my team. It was fun, but meant that I had to catch up on work/email.
– Later in the week, in-laws came into town to visit for the next week or so.
– This morning, I tweaked my back pretty badly. I spent most of today lying in bed and I’m going to stay home tomorrow.
I’m hoping to get a chance to blog more this week, but we’ll see.
Matt, I would be happy to help. Just give me a holler.
dk
If the typing is an ordeal because of the back condition….
– This presents an excellent time to test popular speech to text technologies to determine just how advanced they have become.
Evaluate some and choose the best and present the findings on this blog.
– Another great idea would be to select a few of the more colorful readers as guest bloggers.
This would add an extra dimension to the blog and would allow for interesting discourse.
– Another great idea would be a Free-For-All, again allowing the more colorful readers to intrigue and bedazzle with the wit, sarcasm, and confrontations that these blog posts have entertained so many with.
– Another great idea is to give SearchEnginesWeb a homepage link without the NOFOLLOW tag – this will instantly cure any back problems and promote extreme longevity, ecstasy and prosperity throughout one’s life
As a fellow ‘I-probably-spend-to-much-time-in-a-spinal-position-that-doesn ‘t-promote-good-health’ computer and web enthusiast, may I suggest you get yourself a shiny new inversion table off eBay? As gravity, and our computer addiction, compresses our vertebrae whilst pushing them in a far from ideal shape, problems will aggravate over time. By hanging upside down, these processes are reversed. We have one in the office and we all love it!
JT
Hope you feel better. If the back pain comes from sitting in your chair at the office most of the day, you might consider doing more exercise, and stretch more, the more elastic your body is, the more it handles stressed muscles.
Actually, its a relief Matt!
Life seems really busy for everyone, so its nice to not have dozens or hundreds of RSS feeds to catch up on every day… thanks for keeping us up to date only with the real juicy bits of info.
Matt,
So you have tweaked your old back 🙂
In my case, Ice Bag usually solve the back problem within 2 days!!!!
Wish you a speedy recovery.
Hey matt,
you hurt your back ….I feel sorry about it,
hope u get recovered soon, I am a regular reader of your blog, but I dont post in any comments often as I only know a few things about SEO , I have a great passion and love towards google, but my profession is an ERP consultant which is nowhere related to what google does ).
I cleared the first round of google interview for a “Search Quality Evaluator” from India – Chennai . But i didnt get a call for the second round and I still dont know what is the reason behind it .Just thought of informing you about my state.
Matt
I hope you will be fine soon, if you said I will pray for you.
Deb
Take care of your back, we need a healthy Matt Cutts!
I feel for you Matt… back injuries suck big time. Doesn’t Google have a pool of personal nurses you can pull from though to help you out? Ones with exceptional typing and editorial skills as well, to help you keep up with your blogging duties…? 😀
Hey Matt, sorry to hear about your back
You have been giving us, the community, so much info and tips that I taught I would give you one. I’m pretty sure Google offers a super nice gym to their employees!
Try incorporating a bit of training into your routine, and those back injuries will arise less and less frequently
get better!
If you wanted a suimmers vacation why not just say so!
Is this why there has been a delay to the page rank update?
Only kidding Matt, here’s to a speedy recovery.
Ouch, I know the pain of back problems. Hope you feel better soon. In the meantime, this might cheer you up. Did Someone Say LOLCutts?
Friends!
Anybody of you also getting this error message when trying to visit Matt’s blog?
———————————-
WordPress
Error establishing a database connection
This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at db70c.pair.com. This could mean your host’s database server is down.
* Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
* Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
* Are you sure that the database server is running?
If you’re unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.
—————————
or this one:
——————–
WordPress database error: [Unknown error]
SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.* FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND (post_type = ‘post’ AND (post_status = ‘publish’)) ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 5
WordPress database error: [Lost connection to MySQL server during query]
SELECT FOUND_ROWS()
WordPress database error: [Lost connection to MySQL server during query]
SELECT DISTINCT YEAR(post_date) AS `year`, MONTH(post_date) AS `month`, count(ID) as posts FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = ‘post’ AND post_status = ‘publish’ GROUP BY YEAR(post_date), MONTH(post_date) ORDER BY post_date DESC
Yowch! Heres to a quick recovery Matt 😉
Mike,
Your in-laws are in town, and you tweaked your back(are you serious, or is it something else :D).
Get well soon !
Dr. David Klein, I appreciate the offer. I’ve been taking it easy, so I hope with a little bit of rest I’ll feel much better.
SearCHEnGinESWeB, I tried speech recognition software back in grad school. It worked relatively well, but now I’m a hard-core skeptic. Why? I shared an office with someone, and speech recognition would have driven him crazy.
Yari McGauley, the bright side is that it’s getting to the dog days of summer in the U.S., so lots of people are on vacation.
Harith, I’ve stopped re-installing WP-Cache each time after I upgrade WordPress, so sometimes my blog gets a little overloaded. Since I am also my IT department for this blog, I normally just wait and it passes pretty quickly. Regarding the ice bag suggestion, I broke out a bag of frozen peas yesterday, and I’m feeling slightly better today.
DazzlinDonna, that brightened my day–thank you!
Sorry about your back problem. Being a ballroom dancer, I get all kinds of aches and pains. I would recommend some of the following:
1. Take an epsom salt bathe
2. Ice it
3. See a (recommended!) chiropractor
4. Treat yourself to a massage
5. Find a book about stretching and do a bunch of them
6. See what you can learn about your posture (take a dance lesson?) 🙂
Good luck!
is your back in any connection with in-laws visit 🙂
Where’s Homer Simpson’s magic trash can when you need it?
I’m with you on the speech recognition software…it almost never seems to work properly. That, and OCR (especially MICR-based OCR), are still all but useless so many years later.
Matt, couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a blog post. 🙂 Also, I know a great chiropractor in Palo Alto if you’re ever seeking one.
What did the chiropractor say to Matt Cutts? “Glad to see your back-links!” LOL
No need for excuses 🙂
BTW, what new Gmail features do you like the most?
David, thanks for the advice. I’ve been doing at least a couple of those.
had, it’s a coincidence, I’m pretty sure. 🙂
M.W.A., the other thing is that proofreading speech-recognized text is really hard. The errors is makes are (for me at least) insidious enough that you have to pay very close attention.
From experience the only way forward is rest. Its normally related to stress. I can really relate well to getting stressed because I have not been able to get to my work. Thing is I have an excuse – I am a workaholic. Rest, relax and take care.
Get well soon.
Matt:
Your contributions do indeed impact more people than you might imagine.
I can also speak from experience when I say that those who have never suffered back pain can hardly imagine what you are experiencing.
Please take your time getting well, and don’t hesitate to dicatate and delegate until you are.
Your health is *everything*.
Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,
Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Paramedic
Public Information Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department
Ouch!
I know that pain all too well – the key to avoiding future problems is to make sure your stomach muscles are strong enough to support your frame. The only relief I have ever gotten is that once a chiropractor is done working me over – I go to the gym and work on my stomach muscles (yes, tons of stomach crunches).
Best of luck,
Brian M
If you need someone to massage your back, let me know.
Hey Matt, I would have thought Google would fly in some swedish masseuse to tender your back 🙂
If it is lower back that can hurt for a week or so.
If you are still able to move around but just barely I think the key is to do it in really small spurts such that you are not stressing it any more than you have to.
When I met my (then) girlfriend last year we went and played tennis. She was actually beating me, and fearing losing I started to serve like a professional tennis player. I won, but couldn’t walk by the end of the night. I threw my back out and was stuck laying in her bed for about a week.
Her mom mentioned something about sending me to the hospital if I was still hurt day 8, and magically my back improved marginably so I was able to walk for greater than 5 minutes the following day.
If you have wireless and a laptop now could be the perfect time to catch up on all your feed reading, and perhaps write a book too. The key is finding the right things to do to get some productivity without hurting yourself any worse.
aaron wall
“If you have wireless and a laptop now could be the perfect time to catch up on all your feed reading, and perhaps write a book too.”
Thats a great suggestion!!
Matt,
Please stay home for a while to write your comming bestseller:
Ethical SEO for Large News Sites 🙂
Matt,
Try biofreeze – I’ve used it for sore shoulders/neck pain which is chronic with all the hours on the computer – it helped relieve shoulder and back pain almost on application. Biofreeze is available from chiropracters, massage therapists and physical therapists, massage it in for best effect.
Sorry to hear about the back – thanks for posting anyway!
I hear acupuncture can be relaxing for the lower back. Or maybe you can blog from bed! 🙂
Do you answer random questions from people? I’m just learning about SEO and I’ve been told you are THE Master!! I was wondering if you would be willing to answer some newbie questions? 🙂 After your back is healed. BTW, I’m sold on Chiropractors for back issues. That, massage and Accupuncture 🙂
Sorry to hear about the back problem – hope you get well soon!
Matt:
I always like to hear you speak at all the events, SES, Pubcon, looking forward to hearing from you in San Jose in 2 weeks.
I work for a ergonomic chair manufacturer, the best in the business. you are rougly same build as me, I will send you a chair to see if that helps. Just need the shipping address so it gets to you.
Also, if you are reading this, I am coach for a six year old boys soccer team. Once of our players suffered a brain tumor rupture of some sort last weekend and is no longer with us. I set up a small memorial site for him, http://www.spencersquire.com, so that friends, family, and people from the community here in Texas and elsewhere can share their stories of Spencer. This will always stay a memorial web site (non commercial), and I think due to some sandbox related issues, it could take some time to be indexed and show up in the engine. If there was a way that the site could show up if people search his name, it would mean a lot to alot of people.
Matt: I hope you back is better now. Thank you for all you do, it is appreciated. I will try to say hi to you at SES.
I hope you will be fine soon
have a great day Matt
It seems like Google should have massage therapists standing by to work out all of the aches and pains of the employees. You want me to email those 2 guys who started the company for you? 😉
Find a good physical therapist and ask for a streching routine to do everyday. Get a square pillow (kinda like the auxiliary pillows on couches) and put that between your lumbar and your car seat. It will feel funny, but will do the job. Get rid of all your sofas and normal furnature. That stuff is evil. Get an “executives chair” for any computer work (got mine at Costco for $99). Don’t sleep on your stomach.
I had it bad until I did all that. Never had a problem since. I also sleep better because I do the stretches before bedtime and release a lot of seritonin.
Until you try these things, your problem is psycological, not physical.
you might say, “my situation is different”. But it’s not. Until you cradle your back in proper living forms, you are abusing it.
Matt,
Hope you get better and just wanted to say hi on your personal blog. I met you at a google party a couple years ago and you were saying how google was really looking for unique content from sites that rank high.
Anyway I took that to heart and started my own seo agency. Focused on new digital markets and google search. I did the seo and design myself and after a few trial and errors have produced what I hope is a white hat seo company. One probally never knows but I was really impressed with how you handled questions from companies that time.
I think promoleaders was asking about link building. Anywas Hi and just another inspired seo person.
Tim
Hi, Matt:
I have six herniated discs. Here is what helps me the best: Tai Chi exercises.
Sorry to hear about your back Matt: hope you’re feeling better now. I hate to think we’ll be missing out on your posts!