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The Fracus

/ Shane / 3 Comments

On Friday I wrote a post about the Olympics and Chicago. It went live at 10:49 a.m., as soon as I heard the announcement. I had actually written the post the night before, and I was so sure Chicago was going to be awarded, that I wrote the whole thing as, “Yay, we did it!” So I had to totally re-do the post that morning.

At 11:54 I was notified that my post was promoted to the top story on wordpress.com, where it stayed for the rest of the day as the only Olympic related post. I was pretty excited about this. Too bad I had just completed my important moments in blogging timeline post! As expected, the post proceeded to blow up, dwarfing all of my previous high traffic numbers. I had over 1,500 hits on my blog that day (my previous high was like 150) and around 22 comments on the post, many of them from Brazil (and some not in English!) It remained on the front page Saturday and Sunday, netting me another 28 comments and 1,400 hits and 20 comments and 1,300 hits respectively. So, in three days, my blog had over 4,303 people visit, and that post received 70 comments.

I’m not going to lie, it was a lot of fun. I couldn’t stop compulsively checking it all weekend. I would go away for a few minutes and when I came back, there would be more comments. I was trying to approve the comments as fast as possible to keep the discussion going. It’s kind of funny because I didn’t really put any more time and effort into that post than any of my other posts. So it is kind of interesting to read all of the comments and really analyze that post in detail. I’m guessing my post was picked because it is somewhat informative, with a hometown view, without being critical or nasty. I wonder how much thought they put into picking posts for the front page. It’s probably totally random. 🙂

Anyway, in order to capitalize on the traffic, I put posts up for Saturday and Sunday as well. Many people who stopped did go and check out the next post back, to see if there was anything interesting. What post was it? The Toot Hole. <sarcasm>Lovely. I couldn’t have picked a better one if I tried, that’s exactly the post I would want the world to read. </sarcasm>

As of today the post is still on the front page, though it’s not the top post anymore, moving down 7 spots. I don’t know how often they change it, but it seems like it might be up there for a couple of more days. As much fun as it was to constantly see the stats going up, I don’t exactly feel like personally accomplished. After all, it was more of a “right place at the right time” kind of thing than a “my blog is awesome and deserved it” kind of thing. Still, I guess you make your own luck to some degree, and if you put enough stuff out there, something’s bound to catch on.

So, if you were wondering what was going on here over the weekend, now you know. And knowing is half the battle. The other half is getting your lazy keister off the couch. If only G.I. Joe would have had 10 more seconds each week to explain the second half of the battle, they could have changed the outlook of an entire generation.

“Mommy, I wrote this in my blog”

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Today’s post is from a very special guest blogger.

evie's blog

Evie drew this picture and then said, “Mommy, I wrote this in my blog!” Ah, a chip off the old block. And if you’re wondering what sort of blog she would write, “the red things are creatures”.

Blogging Timeline

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I had thought to make a post about my “top 5 blogging moments” but I couldn’t come up with a good 5 for the list. I thought about changing it into “my top 5 favorite posts on my blog”, but I eventually turned the concept around a little bit, until it became, “notable events in the history of my blog”. So here is a timeline of sorts of important blogging events:

2/17/2004 – My first post ever. Not very exciting.

8/3/2005 – This was my first post back after a one year blogging hiatus. This was significant, not only because I resumed blogging, but also because it marked a new era. Previous to this, my blog was more of a personal journal, after it became more of a “best of the Internet” aggregator and link place holder, which is more or less what it is today.

8/2/2007 – Announcing the birth of Evie. This post straddles the line of important event in my life vs. important in terms of the blog. However, I think it is safe to say that Evie has had a big impact on blog, both in terms of giving people a reason to check here, and for giving rise to the “Evie Update” category (79 items), and the “From the Mouths of Babes” category (27 items).

3/26/2008 – My first post on WordPress. I can’t say enough how much better WordPress is compared to LiveJournal. LiveJournal has some advantages, particularly in the facebook type community aspect, but in terms of pure blogging power, there is no contest. So switching over to WordPress had a big impact on how the blog evolved after that.

6/21/2008 – Childhood hero of mine, Commander Mark Kistler, comments on my blog post about him.

6/23/2008 – A title mishap (in which I may have implied their product causes rickets) brings me to the attention of Bob’s Pickle Pops, ultimately leading to them sending me some free samples. This was the first and only time this blog led to any sort of compensation.

8/25/2008 – Someone from my favorite store ThinkGeek comments on a post. Of course it is the one and only time I am bashing one of their products (for something that was totally not their fault, mind you), but hey, I’ll take it.

1/3/2009 – First post of the 3rd incarnation of my blog, in which I started blogging every day. It wasn’t exactly formal, I was just sort of testing myself to see if I could do it, and then I just kept doing it. At first I planned to blog 7 days a week, but I eventually settled into a M-F pattern. Coming up with 5 topics a week is extremely difficult, and I was worried that the quality would drop off. I don’t think it really has, though I might not be the best judge.

1/21/2009 – My 500th post.

2/17/2009 – My 5 year blogiversary.

2/24/2009 – My 500th comment.

5/21/2009 – The first post after I started to push my posts out to Facebook (and then later, Twitter). This was significant because I think most people I know didn’t really know I had a blog. So this opened us up to a much wider audience (although they still rarely comment, or comment on Facebook).

I think that’s about it. Anybody else know of any big moments on my blog? Anybody have any particularly favorite posts? What is the first post you remember? Put them in the comments.

Now that’s what I call a daughter!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Tonight for dinner, Evie had 11 pieces of bacon. Then afterwords, she took a bath and we played with pirates. Isn’t parenting grand?

P.S. This is published post 666, the post of the beast. I hesitated to put a post about my daughter as the 666th post, but if you count private posts, it’s not really 666. I’m sure satan will take things like private posts into account.

Godzillionaire

/ Shane / 2 Comments

There is a humorous blog I read by the annoyingly named comedian Myq Kaplan (that’s right, his name is Mike spelled Myq) called Godzillionaire. It is kind of hard to explain what this blog is. It’s like a play on words where you combine two words together and then explain why that’s funny. See, there’s just no way to describe it that sounds funny, so I will give you some examples:

Sudan.
Danza.
Sudanza.

One of the worst things in history, PLUS genocide in Darfur.

Please help stop these atrocities.

or

Know.
Nothing.
Knowthing.

Socrates and Confucius both claimed that true knowledge was in knowing the extent of one’s ignorance.

So if they DIDN’T know that, then they would have been even wiser.

Socrates.
Confucius.
So Confused.

I’ll give you another one:

Adultery.
Terrycloth.
Adulterrycloth.

Using a towel that isn’t yours.

Philander.
Drying.
Philandrying.

Well I don’t care what you say, I think it’s funny.