A friend, who works at Microsoft, told me there's already a movement underway to start a "Scoble dead pool." In other words, word is that some folks inside Microsoft are wondering how long it'll be before I get slapped for something I write on my weblog.

I wonder that myself. I think I'll start a little counter on my page so you can keep track of how many days it's been since my last "slapping."

I figure I should get slapped at least once a year. If not, I'm not taking enough risks here and I'm not being outspoken enough. If more, I'll be seen as just writing to piss people off. Of course, if I do that then do you think I could get a job at the Register?

Adam Barr: "on May 12, Microsoft hooks what may be its biggest blogfish yet, when Robert Scoble gets his blue badge."

Mike Sax enumerates the way Google could remove webloggers from its index.

A friend just wrote me, and asked to remain annonymous, but says that Google is planning to remove webloggers from its index and that it could do that by looking at blogrolls. Hey, maybe I should get rid of my blogroll anyway. I didn't have one for the first two years I weblogged. Maybe I should put sites there that I hate. Will they get removed from Google's index?

My brother is now working for a law firm and already he's telling me to "lean on the Office team" and get them to fix their software so that he can dump Word Perfect. He told me, here, read what Ernie the Attorney said about Word.

The Iraqi weblogger is alive! Dang, how come that wasn't on the news this week? Instead I learned all about a hazing in some high school I neither know about, nor care about.

OK, now back to weblogging. Let's head over to Scripting News and see what Dave's been writing about.

Heh, first link is to Evan Williams saying that Andrew Orlowski of The Register is "full of crap." Oh, Andrew is trolling for links from webloggers again? Heh.

So, will Google remove webloggers from its index? God, I hope so. Webloggers are how Google is outperforming the other search engines -- and despite what Andrew over at the Register has dug up, Google is still far better than other search engines. I far prefer to read a weblogger's opinions on, say, what's fun to do in Seattle, than read the usual commercial pablum that's out on the net.

But, what's Google's competitive advantage is MSN and Yahoo's achilles' heel. MSN and Yahoo still haven't figured out how to really outperform Google's algorithm. So, if Google were to do something stupid, like say, remove webloggers from their algorithm, then they'd help out MSN and Yahoo. Since I'm a Microsoft employee starting tomorrow (and will be a very minor holder of some MSFT stock options too) that'd be a good thing.

Let's say, though, that Orlowski is right. How would Google remove all Webloggers from its search index? How would it insure that it didn't remove "real" content? How does Google know that this site is a weblog? From its URL? Well, I could host this on any domain, which would get around that kind of block. From its rapidly-updated-content? From its format? Lots of "real" sites have rapidly updated content. Lots of "real" sites have their content in date format.

Is what Orlowski is advocating is some sort of "ban" on people? Say, "if you're site is linked to from Glenn Reynolds, you'll be banned from Google?" Is that what he's thinking?

Oh, oh, Dave is saying that Microsoft is going to "fuck all of us."

I saw the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier that George Bush landed on. It's currently docked in Everett, Washington. They aren't giving public tours, but they say that during the fourth of July weekend, they park it down on the Seattle waterfront and give tours then. Hopefully I can take Patrick to that.

Oh, Chris Pirillo broke the news that Nick Bradbury is coming out with an RSS Aggregator that'll be killer. Nick's stuff is always top rate. Check out Chris's links on this topic.

Since this week was vacation between the two jobs, we visited the first Starbucks. It's near the market in downtown Seattle. The Pike Street fish market is cool too. It's a must see if you're in town. Patrick wanted to go up in the Space Needle, so we went there too.

What was Patrick's favorite thing to see in Seattle? The Microsoft Company Store. He already has a list of games he wants me to buy. (The store, by the way, is not open to the public -- you need to talk an employee into letting you in -- the museum, though, is open to the public and is quite fun. Patrick and Maryam spent a while emailing their pictures around).

Whew, taking four days off of the computer is quite interesting. I see that NVidia's stock went up 33% yesterday. What happened? Someone figure out that the world is spelled 3D?

Yesterday, we visited the Boeing 747 plant. Thanks Buzz for recommending that. Being in the world's largest building (by volume) is pretty awesome. Oh, they make 747s, 767s, and 777s in Everett, Washington. If you are up here, I'll take you for a tour.

Some facts. A 747 holds about 54,000 gallons of fuel. It uses 2,000 of those just to get off the ground. They are building a new 747 once every five days, but can speed up the line to produce one every three days. Unfortunately, since 9/11 Boeing has laid off 7,000 workers at this plant alone due to slow aircraft sales worldwide.

We've been here since Tuesday evening and my son Patrick wonders "where's the rain?"

Hellllllooooo from Redmond, Washington!