In today News of 'Nut Insanity, we have PeaNut. PeaNut is one of the luNUTics who decided to "do it myself" when it came to managing their campaign. Today he's bitching because a stats package isn't properly directed to the (nonstandard) website he's chosen to use and claiming he needs this done instantly because he needs "real time reporting" for campaign management.

You would be proud of me. I just emailed back to him that I would pass his request to NewBoss Anais.

I did not point out that reporting in Webstrainer runs about 3 hours behind "real time" (as per the note on the front page of his campaign). I did not point out that reporting on the Webstrainer stats program runs as much as 24 hours behind "real time" (as per the note on the front page of his campaign).

I did not even point out the complete insanity of sitting hunched over your keyboard, mouse at the ready, waiting breathlessly for something to happen so you can make a change.

I mean, I'd heard through the grapevine that MadBoy (or his "I took a four-hour class and now I'm an expert" offspring) was spending "hours and hours a day" on "managing" his campaign, but I swear, I had no idea that the rot was so pervasive. I now have this image of all of the DIY 'Nuts all neglecting their businesses for the pleasure of staring at a (largely) unchanging screen of data hour after hour, determined to prove that "any idiot can do it."

(Speaking of MadBoy, I glanced at his overall stats as I scrolled down the account list this morning. He's still spending a lot of money and getting nothing in return. If that's how success is measured, someone should have told me. I could have done that.)

One of the Local 'Nuts is coming in today for a "surprise" award of some kind. I forgot, so I didn't dress for it. (I look fine - I'm just not dressed up.) This week, I'm largely focused on finding those items in my wardrobe that are appropriate for high summer temperatures. Some kind of inversion-front-thingamajig seems to have settled over Denver and temperatures are forecast to be close to 90.

I mention that by way of explaining that sitting in a building cooled by central air is, some days, something of an offset for the pain of all the 'Nuttery.

In the meantime, I have Good News I'd like to shout about, and there's no one available. Gidget is offline, and she's the only one who would really understand what a triumph this is. Even NewBoss Anais, who doesn't really understand but who is really good at faking interest, is in a meeting.

Brief background. Webstrainer assigns "quality scores" to the words you advertise with. 8-10 is Great. 5-7 is OK, with 5-6 being on the pathetic, get a life side of the scale. Below that? Google wants you to go away.

The goal is a Perfect 10, of course, but this place hasn't had a lot of experience with perfection, and no one ever seemed to care.

Improvement isn't easy--it's not just the words you choose, it's the ads you write and the web pages you link to (and how often you update said pages). When I drifted into the Argonut Café, most of their quality scores were sevens, with a sprinkling of 4-6 scores and the occasional 8 or 9, just to tease.

I whined at the rest of the department until I got them to make occasional updates to the website. We did some SEO, fell in line with some "best practices" measures, I increased bids drastically, I deleted poorly scored words when no one was watching, and, starting in January, started ruthlessly replacing poorly performing ads after giving them a week or so to prove themselves.

Today, I weep to report that I logged into one account and found fourteen words tagged with quality scores of 10. Fearing an anomaly, I logged into a different account and found thirty-two words with sparkling Perfect 10 scores.

There's no one here to care. Sigh.