Captain, There’s a Core Breach in Our Search Engine

First my radio station and now this. . . . A few weeks ago, my favorite search engine, Yahoo!, switched software. For me, anyway, the result has been disastrous.

The other day, I typed in “Cardinal Richelieu” and the solitary result was a link to an Internet game called “Age of the Throne,” which is “based in 17th Century Paris in the time of the King’s Musketeers and Cardinal Richelieu.” How’s that supposed to help a kid research a history paper, or a columnist on deadline, for that matter?

Monday, I searched Yahoo! for a “mojito cocktail” recipe and a Cuban restaurant in Palo Alto came up. Not exactly the perfect combination of rum and lime juice I was looking for. (Typing “cocktail” did bring up several sites with recipes for mojitos, however, including https://www.mixed--drink.com, which was most helpful.)

News reports say that last month Yahoo! switched from Inktomi to Google. The technological details are lost on me, but so far, the switch hasn’t done me any favors. I’m coming dangerously close to losing a running bet I have with my editor, who’s in love with that stupid online butler, Jeeves.

“By definition, every search engine is not optimal,” said Udi Manber, Yahoo!’s chief scientist, who defended the switch. “You will always find some queries that work well on some search engines and not on others.”

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You wouldn’t think weight-obsessed Hollywood would take to a restaurant that serves chicken-fried steaks the size of your head. But svelte starlets Tyra Banks, Shannen Doherty, Kirsten Dunst, Rose McGowan and Reese Witherspoon have all chowed down recently on cowboy food like tenderloin steaks, mashed potatoes and apple crisp at Reata on Rodeo Drive.

Hmmm. . . . Those girls must have some happy dogs.

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Forget Pokemon, Gen-Xers know that the classic arcade games Pac Man, Centipede and Asteroids rule. But what ever happened to them?

Super Auctions Inc. in Fullerton will sell more than 400 arcade games today through Friday at its warehouse. Any that aren’t sold will be auctioned at 10 a.m. Saturday. Info: (714) 535-7000.

“We have a lot of people come in who are in the computer industry, dot-com people, who are nostalgic for the games of their childhood and can now afford to have these pieces in their game rooms,” said Rob Storment, owner of Super Auctions Inc. Most of the machines, he said, cost $200 and up.

A word to the wise: Be prepared to transport your arcade game home or you’ll risk ending up like George and Kramer in “Seinfeld.” Who could forget the time the duo got a deal on a Frogger machine, then wound up in a Frogger game of their own trying to move it across four lanes of New York traffic?

Here’s where I would have mentioned the name of the episode, but, alas, I couldn’t find it on Yahoo!

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Booth Moore can be reached at booth.moore@latimes.com.