What should I begin with? Keeping with my own old tradition, let me start school and research related things. School’s been going pretty fine and let me repeat – having no classes to take is really a great feeling. Part of Tuesday was spent in tryiing to compile ICECAP on Räma – it didn’t work, that’s a whole different story though. Rest of the week, till this afternoon, was spent in writing a script+program for some ICECAP related thing. Procedure (I made it a 12-step process) itself is quite complicated even to just explain. Using C shell scripts and C programs, I got it done, with about 600 scratch files – though there is no denying that it could have achieved in a smarter way. I have been planning to learn PERL scripting during Summer but didn’t think the need would come this quick – no regrets and it’s probably all for the good. Our Department had a visitor in the last few days, Dr. Windl, from Ohio State University. It was nice interacting with him – research and otherwise.

Coming to sports, no – weather before that. Spring is finally here in Houghton area. How did I get so smart to know that, you ask? I didn’t but Dr. Beck (indirectly through Dr. Windl) gave the following pointer – when something drops down from the sky in our area and we don’t have to shovel it, then it’s Spring!. This means that we need to get things rolling for the upcoming softball season. I consider it a previlige to be co-ordinating the league this time but it wouldn’t be me but we; we as in all teams and all people who have been part of this leage – some much longer than my lifetime! I did meet Wil Slough, Dr. Weidman, Dr. Suits, Matt Seguin, Bob Gilreath, Matt King, Nick about proposed rule changes and I will be meeting Rick Vendlinski following Monday. I will write in detail about the agenda for Team Managers’ meeting in a subsequent blog entry.

Finally, Google! AdSense responded to my appeal — before I post their reply, I must post my answers to their questions:

From: “Gowtham S”
Subject: Re: [#xxxxxx] *Google AdSense Account Disabled
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:17:11 -0500

Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to appeal the disabling of my account and I am providing all the information that you asked for:

> Your name :
S Gowtham

> Your company’s name (if applicable)

> Your publisher ID number (located in the AdSense code on your website with the format, pub-################)
pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> Your website’s URL
http://sgowtham.net (http://sgowtham.net)
Former is a symbolic link to latter – a measure that had to be taken to overcome dynamic IP address allocation problem of SBC Yahoo! DSL service.

> Date your account was disabled
Friday, 24 March 2006

> Your website’s audience
Type A : People who are interested in learning about Linux, who are trying to install Linux on their machines and who are trying to do post-installation customizations. (Beginners as well as Geeks)

Type B : People who are interested in learning about LaTeX (as in document preparation system) and other things mentioned in Academic Links section of my website.

Type C : People who are interested in Photography – Gallery section of my website has over 700 pictures, taken during my travels in US.

Type D : People who come to read my blog, research interests, resume and check my schedule.

> The source of your website’s content
Linux and LaTeX related content is my own – I make note of every configurational change I do to my systems and post them in my website – in a step-by-step fashion, so that others don’t have to go through the same struggle. I also provide a local repository for packages (all of them released under GPL) mentioned in these pages.

As far as LaTeX goes, I have prepared template files for different formats (starting from a simple text-only document to quite complicated one with text, graphics, equations, bibliography, etc)

All photographs were taken by me using my own camera(s).

Blog, schedule and research pages contain things that I do on a daily basis.

> Frequency of content updates
Linux, Blog and Photography related pages are updated on an average once a week. Very rarely few times a week when I change the style sheets in my site or add new features or while I am travelling.

> The primary sources of your website’s traffic
Google! Search Engine — 90% of my traffic originates from Individuals, Small/Medium/Big Industries, Academic Institutions in & outside United States – searching for Linux/LaTeX related things. Many pages of my site have also been cited in several discussion forums across the globe (Linux Users’ Group of some European countries, CNET, FedoraForum, Photography related websites, …). Some others come through the Graduate Students list of Physics Department, Michigan Tech University,

http://www.phy.mtu.edu/gradlist.html

and very few through our research group website:

http://www.phy.mtu.edu/pandey/

StatCounter.com keeps track of last 100 visitors to my website and given below is the link:

http://my5.statcounter.com/project/standard/pageload.php?project_id=202915

> The number of people involved with the administration of the site
Just me (only one person)

> Any relevant information that you believe would explain the invalid click activity we detected
My rough guess is that one (or some) of visitors must have wanted to know the contents of links displayed in Google! Ads.

I am certain (and honest) that the invalid clicks detected on my ads were not due to my actions or negligence. Hoping to hear from you.

Regards,
Gowtham

I personally do not have absolutely any idea as to what they did with my request, but I noticed some hits for my website from a familiar looking entity:

Navigation Path

So, all that Google! spent in analyzing the contents of my website was 2 minutes and 32 seconds, and I get an email (please note the time of arrival) with following contents:

From xxxxx@google.com Fri Mar 31 13:22:06 2006
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:09:17 -0800
From: Google AdSense
To: Gowtham S
Cc: mail@sgowtham.net
Subject: Re: [#xxxxxxxxx] *Google AdSense Account Disabled

Hello Gowtham,

Thank you for your appeal.

After receiving your response, we re-reviewed your account data thoroughly. We have reconfirmed that invalid clicks were generated on the ads on your site in violation of our Terms and Conditions and program policies.

https://www.google.com/adsense/terms

https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

We have these policies in place to help ensure the effectiveness of Google ads for our publishers as well as our advertisers. According to our policy on this matter, we are unable to reinstate you into the program.

Please bear in mind that subsequent or duplicate appeals may not be considered and you may not receive any further communication from us. We appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Well, anyway I will convince myself that I never displayed ads for Google! and/or for their advertisers, and conclude that Google! AdSense didn’t really make any sense (cents). Hopefully, Google! will return the money back to their advertisers. Recently, one of my friends reported a milestone – having crossed 1000 hits. Though I am very much sure that it had taken much longer for me to reach a similar milestone, following is the graph displaying number of hits my site has got since July 2003, till 28 March 2006 – just to satisfy my ego (or as is said locally, just for kicks).

Hey, give me a break – I am human too!