D'oril. Beginning the Journey

D'oril.  Beginning the Journey

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Oh, what to write about? (No balloon tales, please)

Unlike many other blogs out there, I won't comment on the obvious.  (I hear a chorus of cheers out there...)

On the other hand, I want to step away from writing commentary for a day or two.  (yes, I'm making progress for those who are worried.)  I scratched my head for quite a while, thinking about what I should write about.  Past topics came to mind, including musings on personality again (but I immediately started linking it to writing, so I dropped it), Adventures in Handymanland (but nothing has broken lately, and all maintenance chores of late have been uneventful things like raking leaves), or the FAA (but I don't want to write about stupid today, so...)  So, forgive me if I meander while I seek a focus.

I've been wondering who has actually been visiting my blog.  I know a couple of you have commented to me, some privately thru email (thanks, Matt), others directly on comments (Art and yarnspinner on wordpress, Lou, Jeff, AML, and others at blogspot).  I know from my statcounter that there are several other regular visitors, but I've never been able to lure them in to comment, or even identify themselves.  I wonder if they are folks I know who want to remain anonymous, or if they are strangers who, for whatever bizarre reason have kept up with these random musings of a slightly mad air traffic controller who imagines himself a writer.  I suppose it's even possible that my mystery visitors are folks who I knew in the past, whom I've lost touch with, and are perhaps curious if "old what's his name" ever did anything with his life.

Statcounter logs visits to my blog and identifies from what part of the country (or world) they have come from through IP identifications.  I'm not convinced it is terribly accurate, for example, when I visit my blog from work, it identifies me as coming from Oklahoma City, OK (which make a bit of sense to me, since a lot of the FAA's computer services are routed through OKC.)  Others seem to jump all around, there's a verizon sourced visitor who's logged as being in Washington State some of the time, California other times.  There are a couple of visitors from the UK (or maybe one who uses two different ISP's).  Someone in Iowa, another in Florida, and...

Then there are the odd visits.  I've had visits from Japan and China, Saudi Arabia (wonder if that's a US serviceman) and a couple of times, visits from Columbia. 

It makes for an interesting puzzle, I've been able to guess who some of the visitors are by linking a posting time for a comment to an ISP listing, except some of your ISP's change IP's regularly.  For example Lou's comments, though they all identify from Denver, have no common IP to label.  Anchorage, on the other hand, is a stable IP, and knowing that, I can tell when my brother visits, even if he doesn't always comment.  If folks don't comment, however, I've no way of identifying them, other than guessing.  My visitor from Iowa for example, I've no idea, there's never been a comment linked to that visit time.  Interestingly, Iowa's ISP name is constant, but for a time this year, according to statcounter, they came from New York.  Unless that's someone else entirely (though I suspect it is the same person, because of the regularity of the visits).  Are we confused yet? 

Is this important?  Not really, except in a curiosity sense.  Some regular visitors I know found me because I emailed most of them and announced my start up.  Others arrived (on wordpress) because of tag-searches (when I label a posting, others who look for posts at wordpress with that label may be directed to my blog).  However, other visit reasons are a complete mystery.

So, I'm going to ask the question for the regular readers who didn't find Doriltales through my direct email contact:  How did you find D'oriltales?, what were you looking for?, and why do you keep returning?  Post a comment, anonymously if you wish, and satisfy the curiosity of this developing writer.  I promise not to use your answers for any illegal or immoral (or even ill-advised) activities.  ;-)

Beyond my own curiosity, I wonder what you want to know about.  My profile is a bit vague, I'm not even sure if anyone's looked at it since I first put it up some two years past.  Thus, part two of my questions, is there anything that you want to ask?  I'll answer most questions, so long as it doesn't involve credit card numbers or the secret rituals of an air traffic controller.  ;-)  Let me know...

Clear skies,
Jim

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!