The Smarmy Carny

March was 53's second full month online. The site experienced a significant drop in traffic after it dropped off of the first Google page for Numa Numa searches. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Also, I have no idea why 70 people would have read last month's post regarding February 2005's statistics. It's a weird, wacky world out there.

Posts: 20

Comments: 27

Hits: 13,224

Users: 5,550

Top 10 Visited Individual Posts (excluding feed and trackback hits):

1. Numa Numa Dance 2,366
2. Hey buddy, can you spare a defective quarter? 1,703
3. The Roach Is Not Hung 1,322
4. Napoleon Dynamite vs. Fender 200
5. Burger King's Weird, Wild Ad 99
6. Bobby Fisher pains 73
7. Gnome Sweet Gnome 72
8. Are Free iPods a Scam or Not? 71
9. February 2005 Statistics 70
10. Academy Awards / Oscars Prediction Contests 53

Top 5 Referring Sites (excluding search engines):

1. 1754blog.com 67
2. Blogwise 56
3. The Evangelical Outpost10
4. The Volokh Conspiracy6
5. Scared Monkeys4

Top 5 Browsers:

1. Internet Explorer 6 9,082
2. Mozilla Firefox 2,745
3. Mozilla 299
4. Opera 7 258
5. Apple Safari 224

Top 10 Search Terms:

1. numa numa dance lyrics 267
2. wisconsin quarter defect 266
3. numa numa dance 239
4. Mary Roach video 162
5. Numa Numa lyrics 154
6. mary roach Audition 119
7. defective wisconsin quarter 91
8. mary roach audition video 72
9. numa dance 53
10. numa numa dance video 51

February was 53's first complete month online, so I figured I would post some statistics for the month. Perhaps I'll do this every month, but no promises!

Posts: 25

Comments: 31

Hits: 19,194

Users: 8,186

Top 5 Referring Sites (excluding search engines):

1. 1754blog.com 55
2. Blogwise 21
3. all-encompassingly17
4. Technorati12
5. Kate Stelnick4

Top 5 Browsers:

1. Internet Explorer 6 13,523
2. Mozilla Firefox 3,002
3. Mozilla 573
4. Apple Safari 502
5. Internet Explorer 5.5 374

Top 10 Search Terms:

1. numa numa dance 2,217
2. numa numa video 317
3. mary roach video 308
4. wisconsin quarter defect 265
5. numa numa dance lyrics 228
6. numa dance 218
7. numa numa dance video 181
8. numa numa 160
9. mary roach audition 154
10. numa numa lyrics 117

Billy Strayhorn

I just upgraded to the latest, greatest version of WordPress (1.5 strayhorn), and I'm having quite a bit of fun. The blog community will certainly benefit.

The upgrade went flawlessly. When I brought the website back up, however, no one was able to connect, except I could from my local machine. Bad times. Everything else was working on the server except serving the webpages. It was fairly stressful. Eventually, all was well again. I have no idea what was wrong or why it started working again. I did pray about it, though, so I'm not counting that out!

You may note some digital dust remaining as I iron out some of the changes from 1.5 that are wreaking havoc on my old format. Please excuse this confusion while I figure out whether I will conform myself or conform the blog.

Thanks for understanding.

Update: Particularly messy at this time are category and post pages. Sticking to the main page is safe, but other pages are not guaranteed at this time. Sorry!

Foghorn Leghorn

�喜�财!!!

Erm, what I meant to say was "Happy Chinese New Year!"

The Year of the Rooster is now under way, thanks to the Chinese New Year, Lunar New Year, Spring Festival, or whatever you wish to call it. I personally call it "New Year's for Procrastinators."

This Chinese New Year makes me sad. We are no longer in the Year of the Monkey. How could this year possibly be interesting???

Well, here's to the new Chinese year. May it be as much fun for you as a barrel of . . . oh, never mind.

Phil saw his shadow!

That's right, woodchuck chuckers, it's GROUNDHOG DAY!!!

Including this year, Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow 95 times and has not seen his shadow 14 times. That's not very many early springs! Check up on the festivities.

We also have Dunkirk Dave in Western New York that predicts the weather each year. This will be his fifth year predicting. Read more about Dunkirk Dave.

There might be a groundhog in your area, too! Check this list out to see the rest of the prognosticating groundhogs (and other animals, too)!

Update: Phil saw his shadow! What's that mean? Six more weeks of winter. Dunkirk Dave saw his shadow, too! Since he speaks for Buffalo, I guess his prediction would mean the usual six more months of winter.

4 more years!

There are less than five days until the 55th Presidential Inauguration Ceremony. It should be about as fun as any of the inauguration ceremonies, I suppose.

Mentally, it's a relief for me that the elections are long past us now. Without fail, I end up getting wrapped up into politics from the time the first candidate announces that he (or she) will be running in the primaries all the way through election night. Of course, 2000 was particularly taxing for anyone who cared, so 2004 was a bit of a relief. Whatever happened to the days of Ronald Regan, when a candidate could win it all except for Minnesota and DC? Back then, you could go to bed at 10:00 knowing who won. Nowadays, you've got to take at least a nap while you watch the pundits repeat the same pieces of information hour after hour after hour. Well, enough of this rambling. Why in the world am I writing about something that tires me to think about, let alone write about?

I noticed on the inauguration website that you could sign up for tickets. By now, I'm sure all of the tickets are more than gone, but part of me would like to go down there and be there for that. Of course, the same part of me would also like to go down to Punxsutawney, PA for Groundhog Day, too. That's only 2-and-a-half weeks away. I'm sure that by the time I'm dead, I still will not have attended either an inauguration ceremony nor the official Groundhog Day celebration.

Marvin of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

As this is my first post, I figured I would give it a fitting name. The title I have chosen for my blog is the phrase spoken numerous times by Marvin from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I don't like hearing the word "blog" or "blogosphere," or whatever the pundits kept referring to it during the election mayhem. The worst part is that blogs are now littering the web and have pushed themselves into meaninglessness, due to the overwhelming numbers.

I don't particularly care to read blogs at all, though I have paid attention to several lately due to my curiosity about RSS and how well Firefox may or may not use it with LiveBookmarks.

The worst part about this blog is that not only do I not particularly care about other people's blogs, but I really don't care for my own blog, even as it is fresh and new for me. I'm also certain that most everyone in the world will feel even more apathetic than this regarding my blog, and those that do care really should get some sort of a life.