Sometimes you see a story and think “Isn’t that just ridiculous?” It happens way too often these days. This one involves McDonalds. According to an AP story on Oregonlive.com, a judge is “allowing” Mickey D’s to conduct an $8.5 million educational campaign to settle a lawsuit brought against the company for failing to reduce its use of partially hydrogenated oil. What is the deal here? Is there some kind of law that I don’t know about that says a company has to use a certain kind of cooking oil? Give me a break!

Stoned cows. That’s what this story is about. Actually Cindy alerted me to the full story which you need to read, including the comments. It’s on Muley’s World. The picture was one of the best parts and it’s not the only one you’ll find.

It’s the end of the day, the last session. The main thing I got out of the “metrics” session had to do with registering you blog on search engines, using “keywords” in posts and keeping an eye on how you’re doing. One place to look at how your website (or blog) is doing is Marketleap. It has some neat online tools for seeing how your site is doing, especially in comparison to other sites and for keywords!

I didn’t realize that we weren’t really supposed to take pictures of the presenters and post them without asking permission (whoops). I only know this because they have a big screen slide that was up with this instruction between sessions. So I gave myself permission to post my own picture.

Back to the BBS. Right now we’re on “Blog Writing Style” with Molly Holzschlag and Darren Barefoot. Prior to this today we heard about different types of blogging software with explanations of how each might best fit a particular application and level of experience for someone who wants to start blogging.

We’re now into the Keynote session “Why Microsoft is Betting Big on Bloggers & RSS.” After Dean Hachamovitch got us started with a little review of how we’ve gotten to the point where blogging is so popular we’re now getting the Robert Scoble perspective. He’s discussing why he blogs and where blogging has taken him, especially in terms of building relationships with people. He’s now doing video internally with different employees which is distributed to other employees. Great way to communicate and I assume build team spirit internally at Microsoft.

Here’s where the Blog Business Summit (BBS from now on) takes place in very cool San Francisco. We’re getting ready for breakfast and to learn about WordPress. It’s the software I use and recommend but can use some instruction. Do we ever really learn everything there is to know about any software?

I got into San Fran this evening on time and made it to the Blog Business Summit reception where I met several interesting people. One of my main “targets” was the people here from WordPress and I was introduced to Matthew Mullenweg. He very patiently answered my questions and I’m looking forward to learning more tomorrow at breakfast (they’re sponsoring). Thank you to DL Byron for introducing me!

I’ve never been to San Francisco for some reason but that’ll change later this week. I’ll be attending the Blog Business Summit. Call it blogging professional development. Want to see what I’ll be learning? Check out the schedule here.

I know I’m going to get in trouble for this post. But it’s a good story. This is the kind of stuff you can find when you use the Google RSS news feeds by the way.