World Wide Wrosen

I didn't start this blog lo those many years ago as an ego trip. I started it because I had things to say and couldn't afford a new shoe box and notebook every time I thought of something that made me giggle. So I started blogging. Bad jokes, off the cuff observations and maybe the longer, more serious bit. I knew that a few people, out of pity and the goodness of their hearts, occasionally looked at the page if, for no other reason, to know what kind of mood I was in month to month. Knowing this makes asking for money at the right time easier.

As facebook began intruding, I saved my one liners for it and focused here on my 2 line jokes. My extended rants are still sitting on my screeds page, elsewhere...go find it, but the blog has plodded on as a place for me to vent, think and stir up thinking. But really, with no advertising, and only the mildest word of mouth as my PR, I expected this to stay not just below the radar, but below the ground. But not quite underground. That would be too cool. I figured this for a relatively private place on the web.

So when an anonymous reader (I'm sure s/he has a name, so s/he isn't anonymous, but simply withheld the name) commented on my blog a couple of posts back, I was a bit shocked. Someone from outside my sphere found my page on the mighty sea of the internet and thought that what I had to say meritted response. This has happened only once before -- at the very start of my blog (when, I guess, the blogosphere was less cluttered and crap like mine floated to the top more readily) when someone complimented me on a joke I wrote. Now, I'm used to people reading what I write and responding to it. I have been active online for years (and years). BBS's from when I was 13, intranets during grad school, ask/answer boards, forums and chatrooms for the last 15 years. Maybe even an email or two along the way.

But a response to my blog? Wow. That seems cool. So, I went to the dashboard here at blogger and started to look at my statistics. First off, isn't it neat that I have statistics and they don't include anything by law enforcement? I looked at the number of page views I have had over the life of this version of my blog (remember, I migrated in and brought all my stuff from blog-city) and saw that I have had some 2500 page views! And that's excluding my own!

My pulse racing, I delved deeper. I was shocked when I saw that just this past month, I had a reader in Alaska. Cool, Alaska. But what was this? According to the stats, I had a reader from Iran this month! I'm international!

This blog isn't the kind of thing that comes up as the top result for any search other than for this blog. I am not the default page on any OS or browser. I'm just this guy, you know? How did someone from Iran find me? More importantly, why?

More digging. Here are the stats as of today (page views) from when I started in May of 2009:

United States 2,235
Israel 134
Germany 77
Russia 77
Luxembourg 61
Canada 41
Slovenia 38
Denmark 36
United Kingdom 36
Iran 29

Are you kidding me? That I have 2,200 page views in the US I can sort of understand. Over 2 years, that averages out to about 3 per day. If mom or dad or one other person keeps a tab open and restarts the computer once a day, I'll get a page view. Fine.

134 in Israel...well, some former students...maybe my sister. OK, I can deal with that.

Then we get freaky.77 in Germany and Russia? and 61 in Luxembourg? I did some research and found Luxemboug on a map. Did you know that there are 511,000 people in Luxembourg? That means that over 1 one hundredth of a percent of the population has gone to my page. Or one really obssessed Luxembourgian (Luxemborghini?) is refreshing his page over and over. Whatever. By comparison, the per capita view in the US is way lower. I'm very big in Europe, apparently.

41 in Canada? I can live with that. I know a guy in Canada. Could be.

38 in Slovenia? No offense to the 38 of you but I have to admit that I didn't know that Slovenia was a country. I had heard of Slovakia and I assumed you guys were a vaudeville team ("enjoy the wacky comedy stylings of Slovenia and Slovakia!"). Now I know. I must schedule a speaking arrangement in Ljubljana some time soon (thank you, Wikipedia...).

36 in Denmark (well, I always knew that they were enlightened) and 36 in the UK. Could happen. People often stop over at Heathrow when going to and from Israel so anyone glomming the wifi over there and booting up would show as a UK IP.

29 in Iran? Really? Am I going to get in trouble for this? I mean, really? 29? So not a single person in all of Bolivia has found me. All of South Africa ignores me. Heck, Iceland doesn't know I exist, but 29 page views in Iran? Shout out to Iran! woo-hoo.

So here's the bottom line. Please, post a response to this post if you aren't someone I would already know is reading this (like the two students reading over my shoulder as I type...get back to work, guys) let me know you were here and why you were here and where you were when you were here.

I won't let all this fame go to my head, trust me. I have kids to remind me how unimportant I am.