What to write about?

Well, as you know, it's been awhile since I was blogging regularly. In 2007, I blogged almost daily and read many other blogs ever day as well. Well here it is near the end of 2008, and I have returned to blogging.

I stopped because it bugged my girlfriend (at the time) that I was talking about my life and people were reading it, and I was reading about other people's lives. She was almost jealous of it, but I think it was more of a slight disgust than jealously.

I am no longer dating her, and it took me awhile to get over her. I really loved, and in part still do love her. She's in the past, and I am trying to move forward. I am trying to reclaim some of the things in my life that I truly enjoyed to do for me, and blogging was one of them.

Now of course I can't blog about work, because I would probably be fired. I can't blog too much about my recent forays into the dating world, as I don't want to scare off any potential future "sweeties"... Or have them think I am a weirdo (at least not until they get to know me!)

I could write about current events or politics, and I do have passionate opinions about those topics. I could do movie or book reviews, or comment on the latest episodes of some TV show I just watched, but to what end? Everyone and their neighbor are writing about those things, and while I might have a bigger audience with those subjects, that's not the reason I write.

I write because I enjoy writing, and I write about the subject I know the best: My Life. So I ramble on and on about my life, and some people will find that boring... I live it, so I know that's true. Some people might laugh at some of the stupid things I do, because I laugh at myself often enough... or maybe it's just my wacked out sense of humor.

So I am going to continue writing about nothing, or something, or whatever comes to my mind, and hopefully someone somewhere will read it and comment on it. Maybe my future "Sweetie" will read it and say - "There's the soul mate I have been looking for!"... Ok, yeah, I was reaching!

Later Lou

The Faces of Lou

100% Pittsburgh

A coworker of mine sent me a quiz to see how "Pittsburgh" I am. I have spent most of my life in the area (north west of da 'Burgh), so I am not surprised I got:

You are 100% Pittsburgh.

Great job! There's nooooo doubt about it. You're from Da Burgh. You deserve a reward, so go have an Ahrn City or two. And GO STILLERS! How Pittsburgh Are You See All Our Quizzes

Later Lou

100th post...

Woo Hoo!

Today I am having a celebration of sorts...

I am celebrating a monumental occasion: This post is my 100th entry to this Blog!

Who would have thunk I had that much to write about? Well I don't, actually which is why I just ramble along... and it's taken me almost three years to get here!

Thinking to myself:

Wow. I am good, I just worked the the title of the blog into the post... just like those screen writers work the title of the movie into the script. Maybe I should become a screen writer? Nah, I like my mediocre income and complete lack of fame. Of course if I did write a movie, I would probably be even less wealthy than I am now, and I would be famous only in as much as I was known as the worst movie writer ever... oh wait... I believe that title has already been taken... by _______ (you fill in the blank).

OK back to the post...

I use StatCounter to provide the little "ticker" that shows the number of people who have visited my blog, and another one that counts the visitors to my family's website, that I manage. Even though I have posted 100 times on this blog, I only have a little over 6 times that many visitors, and most of those visitors are me. So if you take away two for each post for my own visits, that leaves on average 4 people visiting per post. Not much of an audience, huh? Oh well, I write for myself anyway. :-) The visitor counter, is not all that StatCounter does for me. It has other less obvious features as well. One of these less obvious features of StatCounter is the additional reports it provides about the Internet visits to the website. Of course some people think this is invasion of privacy, and maybe they are correct, but whether or not it is, I think it's fun information. It's not like the reports provide very much detail anyway, but it does provide a little fun data like:

• The general area the visitor is from (city, state, country). Of course this is only the location of their ISP, not the location of the individual's home or office, but it gives a general idea of where the person is that is reading the page.
• It lists the various pages the person viewed while visiting the site
• And of course it shows the time and day they visited, and if possible how long they may have visited the site.
• The only other information it provides is and what search engine, or link referred them to your site.

This last bit of info is the one that I always find the most interesting.

There are of course the normal expected referring links from my family's website, from one of my kid's blogs, or from my various profiles on sites like Blogger, Yahoo or Flickr. These expected links are the ones I often intentionally plant in hopes of leading people to my ramblings in hopes they would comment, laugh, or otherwise be amused. The unexpected referrers come from the search engines. Now I am not surprised that people can find me through the search engines, but I am surprised at what they are searching on that leads them to me. Now it's extremely possible that they weren't really looking for me, but rather something much more exciting like porn or something... but they stumble across my site and read a little and then skitter away without leaving so much as a whisper that they were here. BTW: There isn't anything on my site that could remotely be considered porn, but then again, what else do people really search for on the Internet now a days? I mean, here it is Thursday, and I am not even doing the HNT ("Half-Nekkid Thursday"). The funny thing is, I actually get thank you notes for not doing HNT. :-) Well let me share with you some interesting search phrases that have brought people here:

1. "hit a rock mower stopped working" (from Missouri)
2. "dream interpretation 1 half slipper" (from Hawaii)
3. "my property is very sloped" (from Florida)
4. My favorite: "old person's rambling" (from Western Australia)

Yes, I have written something about all of those topics, except the "1 half slipper" part, and yes, I am an old person rambling... (well old enough to know I am not quite young any longer...) But what type of person searches for these kind of topics? I don't believe I know or have met any of these people. If you are one of those people that actually searched on those topics I listed, please don't be offended... I am glad you found me, and hopefully you added my blog to your favorites and you visit often... But I have to believe you weren't looking for me when you searched for those things, or were you? If not me, then what were you actually searching for? I think today is a banner day, no matter how people get here... The only thing on my mind now is whether or not I can create 100 more posts before the end of 2008? Later Lou