However, in the recent months I have been doing some hobby hacking, for example my project Nular Shell and a tiny MS Fiddler GZip inspector plugin, and it felt like a loss that pages like these would be Google-censored. So in July 26th, I mailed help@google.com and explained the sitation and ask if they could re-evaluate their decision to exclude my domain and possibly start indexing me again. I got two replies: one automated "we have received your e-mail" response, and later on a (perhaps also automated) "we have forwarded your issue to our engineers for further investigation". Surely, I assumed that the Google engineers would toss the issue into /dev/null and assign it the flag "WORKSFORME" in whatever trouble ticket system they are using. About six weeks later, I mailed them again asking if they were still looking into it, whereupon they replied that no further information was available but that the issue was still being worked on. Again, I more or less assumed this meant that nothing was to be expected.

So tonight, when I was endulging into my regular webserver access-log browsing, checking for funny user agents and referrers and whatnot, I was surprised to find that the almighty Google bot had been visiting me for the last couple of days. Some Googling confirmed that I was indeed visible again.

I guess the sensmorale of this story is that A) Google actually reads their e-mail and B) there is hope for re-inclusion in the index even if you've been banned from Google.

Other news:

A couple of weeks ago, I applied for a position as a J2ME developer at Opera Software - their Linköping/Hern Labs offices to be exact. I made the mistake of re-reading my application e-mail, which I scribbled down on impulse when I realized that it might actually be a job I want. I found that it must have been the single worst job application ever submitted. Well, not really, but it was unstructured and in some pieces it didn't make sense without re-reading it a couple of times. That shouldn't have been such a worry if it wasn't that I had emphasized my writing skills as a merit. If they judge the truthfullness in the rest of the e-mail from the appearant lack of reality resemblance in that particular area, they probably tossed the application away quite quickly. What a shame. I think I would have liked that job. Tomorrow is the last application date, so maybe I'll get the usual "we'll keep you on file" response this week.

I'll be in Stockholm on tuesday, meeting my MrFriday friends. It's time to get working again.