The Cupertino Courier

The Internet is a maze-ing

By Ingrid McCleary

While recently checking for Sunnyvale's population on the Internet, I came across USA Today's listing of the nation's 200 biggest cities. When I saw that New York City was teeming with nearly 7 million people, I couldn't help but think of the song "New York, New York," made famous by Frank Sinatra. "If I can make it there," Ol' Blue Eyes sang, "I'll make it anywhere."

Since I was on the Internet anyway, I decided to gather some statistics to find out how hard it actually would be to "make it" in New York--vs., say, making it in Sunnyvale, which offers 107,600 jobs for 129,250 people. So I set out to figure this same ratio for New York, figuring I could gather the statistics on the Internet in just a few minutes.

Mistake. Big mistake.

The Internet gives you information at your fingertips. Or so you'd think. I've also found it to be quite maddening because you can get lost in the maze. You do a search, then refine the search until you have a manageable number of leads. You follow one lead, clicking as you go, only to find the site doesn't contain the information you need, so you backtrack and follow another path. Hansel and Gretel would never have made it home if they'd taken the Internet path, crumbs notwithstanding.

It took me three hours of searching (and waiting for each new page to download) before I reached my destination (or so I thought). Searching on the Internet requires well-honed skill, and my blade is dull.

After running through the key word searches (New York, census, jobs, labor, population) with no luck, I thought, why not start at the top? So I did. I contacted the White House. The White House on the Internet, that is.

The White House led me to FedStats, your "one-stop shopping for federal statistics" (their words, not mine--honest). From there, I found the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Eureka! This must be the place!

I downloaded it, and it opened in gobbledygook--compressed data which looks like "dõph(b9ÉcâA)b2è." Not only that, but the document was 3,007 pages long.

So I spent another half-hour trying to convert the document. I tried opening it in Notepad, WordPad and Microsoft Word, then as Text Only, RTF (Rich Text Format), Word 6.0/95 format.

The computer is a genius. Unfortunately, I'm not. One time I thought I had it (again). I grew excited when I spied the words "converting to RTF." But it converted to zobbledyzook, a distant cousin of gobbledygook.

In desperation, I called a friend who had a five-year computer jump on me. Nada. Maybe I needed a special decoder ring?

My final attempt took me through 27 sites before I gave up and sent a message to the East Manhattan Chamber of Commerce CEO. Let them find it!

The closest I got was that New York City had a labor force of 3,474,200 people, which, I assumed, meant the number of people who were able to work but not the actual number of jobs held.

Maybe Ol' Blue Eyes should do a new rendition of the song and call it "Internet, Internet." When applied to finding a fact on the Web, the refrain "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere" would describe a truly amazing feat.

Ingrid McCleary is a freelance writer and a frequent contributor to the Cupertino Courier.

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