Happy Birthday to Brenda! She has to eat enough cake for two these days, so I hope she gets a big one with plenty of candles.

During lunch today I walked a ways over to a nearby mall to get some free Ben & Jerry's ice cream (they have a free cone day once a year). Their brownie batter flavor looked good, but was too soft to serve, they said, so I got pistachio pistachio instead. Had to stand in line for about 20 minutes, and the scooper didn't go overboard in generosity, but being outside on a nice day made up for it.

Last week Google purchased the company where our good friend Kenny works, so I was looking at their advertising rates today after hearing about their pricing scheme from him on Friday. Quite interesting. I'm thinking of making May "Flattops Month" and pushing the game to new heights of featurism and playability, then buying some time on Google to promote it.

The best thing about their scheme is that you set your budget limits, and pay only for actual clicks, not just the screen space. When enough people have clicked on your ad link, you can add more money, or not. And perhaps just as good, they don't accept those ultra-annoying flashing ads, but pleasant unobtrusive text ones instead. According to a recent usability study, this kind of ad works significantly better than garish ones -- at least for now.