Things I've Learned

I’m going to take a page from my fellow blogger Lex at www.lexinthecityblog.com and discuss what I’ve learned from my 5 months or so of blogging. 

I haven’t learned much.

1.    I use Google Analytics to track how many people visit my site. The word analytics has one C. I pronounce it with two C’s most of the time – analyictics. It sounds more scientific to me though I’m not doing it on purpose; I just mispronounce it.

2.    Getting the font style, font size, and spacing consistent throughout the entire blog seems impossible. I’ve tried everything. Three posts are the same and then – BAM – different. Sometimes the spacing is bigger and sometimes the font size is different. I think the fellows at Blogger are trying to drive my anal-retentive wife crazy. If my font ends up in wing-dings, we’ll all know the conspiracy is on.

3.    Apparently, font with curly letters is hard to read. My wife and my brother both told me to fix it. I used Courier before because I thought it looked like a private investigator from the 1920’s would use it – like I was cracking a case about the ass splitting pants, but no, it’s actually hard to read.

4.    Getting followers takes work. I don’t mean followers as in readers; I mean followers as in people who will put their picture on the side of my blog. No one wants to do it. I see other people and they have like 700. I have 16 (11 of which are people I saw at the last wedding I went to). My brother told me that it doesn’t do anything to officially follow and anyone who wants to read it will just RSS it. But, I like to have their smiling faces looking back at me when I post. It lets me feel like I’m doing this for them to read when they are supposed to be working. Or just want to relax with something to read on the can.

5.    What the hell is remroom.ru? It’s apparently a Russian furniture website, yet I consistently get readers from that site. I tried to read it but it’s written in the same language as on the outside of Superman’s incubator-spaceship from Krypton. If you’re the remroom guy, what’s up?!?

6.    Another thing with foreigners: are you really reading my blog? On my little site visit trackers, I get visits from Denmark, UK, Argentina, Slovenia, Philippines, etc. I suspect that someone I know is travelling the world and stopping off at little cafes and using the WIFI to read my blog.

If that’s not the case and if you’re one of these guys, I apologize for how I present Americans. We are not all ass splitting, fast food craving, idiots a la Hank Hill, Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson – just 90% of us are.

7.    Drawing pictures is the easy way out of truly writing and describing something. It’s like the caveman’s way of blogging. “You don’t get how I killed that mammoth? Just look at the cave painting! It clearly depicts how he was pooping and got him in the neck – BAM with a spear!”

8.    It has taught me how obsessive I can be. I look at my stats constantly. Why does it matter? I think my stats basically keep up with how many times a day I read my own blog. “Ooo, I had 5 hits last hour! It came from my IP address?!? Oh no! Is someone in my house?”

9.    I’ve learned that not too many guys blog and, furthermore, not too many man blogs are of the humorous variety. Most are super serious. Usually, bloggers read blogs; therefore, not too many guys are reading my blog.

10.  With that being said, maybe I should make my blog more woman friendly. I’m read-YYY! Who wants to chat about wine, boys, and ponies?