I pay extra to my webhost for their enhanced web traffic reports, but the only useful thing I get out of it is the raw log files. Their reports are pretty much crap, and I’m going to stop paying for it. I’m also currently using the free versions of Sitemeter and StatCounter, and I’m anxiously waiting for my Google Analytics account.

I like reviewing my visitors because it helps me see how they found my website and what they were looking for when they came here. I get the search terms they used at search engines, and for the slowly growing number of visitors that have bookmarked my site, I have an idea of what they’re interested in by the page they enter my site at.

The trouble is that I often what to write more about the subjects in which my visitors are interested, just because they bothered to come to my site looking for it. When I see a referrer including the search terms dicom header, I think “wow, I have learned so much more about dicom headers that I haven’t included in my posts,” and start mentally sketching out a post on the topic. But of course, I don’t have the time to write out everything I know about everything that people come here looking for. I recently got a big spike of visitors looking for ways to see who’s looking at their MySpace pages, just because I’ve written about my own traffic analysis and happen to have a link in my sidebar to a MySpace page that I set up for myself. I don’t have a clue whether the javascripts I use would work on MySpace. Sometimes, posts in different topics on the same page result in search engine hits from some really bizarre combinations of search terms – sorry, buddy, who came here looking for porn sites working with googlebot – I don’t really know what you were looking for, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t find it here. I feel especially bad when I see Linux search terms, especially if I can tell what the visitor is trying to figure out, and know that I haven’t written out how to do it.

Without going back and checking, I’m pretty sure that I’ve written on this topic before, and I’ll probably write about it again. I’m slowly learning the hard lesson that you can’t please everyone all of the time.

Posted by Greg as My Website at 06:38 PST

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Last month I was very preoccupied and my posting rate dropped severely. I’ve had a lot of things to handle, a lot on my mind, and when I did write, these things weighed on me and I quickly ran out of what little time I had to post, which also discouraged me from trying at times. And there’s still a lot going on.

So I’ll try to get into the practice of rattling off quickies to keep my blog alive, and maybe, instead of making me focus on the things that are causing stress for me, the blog will revert to being a relief from stress.

Must have been about a year ago now that my old barbecue needed a new burner. and the ignitor in the gas oven at home conked out, both about the same time. Things were tight then, and I had to make the choice between the new burner and the ignitor. I like grilling and baking, so it was a tough choice. In the end, not having to clean out the grill rack and pan under the oven won out, and I got the burner.

Since then, I’ve gotten pretty handy with the barbecue. I do pizza, biscuits, tater tots, quiche and meatloaf in it regularly. My piece de resistance was a chocolate cake, which came out fully cooked and not burned on the bottom at all, which is better than I normally do in the oven. There’s been plenty of times when I could have gotten that new oven ignitor, but it’s always been so low on my list of priorities that I’ve never gotten around to getting one. Now if I only had a tank scale – there’s been a few times when I ran out of propane in the middle of something. Why didn’t my condo come with a gas hookup on the back porch? Is it a Hank Hill conspiracy?

Posted by Greg as My Website, Posts About Me at 14:17 PST

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