Well, if my RSS feed is to be an indicator, the past week or two and the next week or two are to be filled with reviews of last year in various forms. I'm nothing if not unoriginal, so here I am, happy to bleat and follow the herd!
Let us begin with the numbers; in 2008, iBloviate saw some 225,000 requests and served over 100,000 pages since it went live in late March. On average, I served around 9,000 pages each month (save for a massive 30,000+ page December, that is). Thursday is my busiest day for traffic, by far, and 2pm is the busiest time.
On a related but distinctly separate note, December 26th and 27th were absolutely HUGE traffic days, easily 5 or 6 times as large as an average day. At first I thought it was my Christmas Album card thing, but that accounted for a scant 150ish hits, and we're talking a bump of closer to 7,000 hits each day. I guess it is just the power of bored people with days off.
StumbleUpon has become my primary source of new traffic (over half of this year's visitors have “stumbled” in), followed by those that come directly (no referrer, that is)... but those of you reading my LJ and visiting that way are still a pretty significant group. :) The “Open Source Boob Project” continues to be responsible for some not insubstantial inflow of traffic. This notion amuses me more than anything, as I've said relatively little on the subject (it is my opinion that the world can be broken comfortably into three groups: those for whom reading comprehension is a bit beyond them, those who get outraged by everything, and a tiny group that are both able to read and are capable of logical thought. The last group is the group toward whom anything I wrote would have been aimed, and those people have, in all likelihood, already winnowed their way through the madness to find the underlying truth, and formed an opinion based on that).
By virtue of the aforementioned StumbleUpon link, the Father of the Year article is now the number one page on my site by a considerable margin, followed by (in order), my list of Penguicon 6.0 reports, the only thing I wrote in relation to the OSBP debacle—a response to the slut-shaming that was flying all over the place, the tale of my manscaping misadventures (for the record, I'll feel like I “made it” when manscaping no longer gets a red, squiggly underline in Firefox), and my quotes page.
January opened in anger and frustration. While in New York for the holidays, our house was robbed, but by month's end, the vast majority of our stuff had been replaced, recovered, or borrowed to allow the children a life-as-usual situation. ConFusion was a complete success during which new friends were made and old friends were partied with.
In February, I attended my first out-of-state convention, Capricon (which I did an atrocious job of writing about, although I did document a bit of the trip to (semi private), Friday, and Saturday. Aside from that, February was a decidedly uneventful month (and, as it turns out, it was the month during which I last did a major overhaul on iBloviate...so perhaps it is time to do some more work with that, eh? Oh, and it was in this month that I made a major purchase and made the decision to invite a certain someone to become a more permanent fixture in my life. (oh, and it should be noted that The Office stole this idea from me. Just sayin')
I transitioned into March at MPCon and the Gamers for Giving launched to great success. It was also the month that the nascent notion of a lingerie party was squeezed out of Ger and Amanda's wombs and waved in front of fandom. My server died, my car tried to light itself on fire, and the LJ community proved yet again that their dictionaries don't have a definition of “boycott”. I was moved to write about why calling Joss Whedon a rapist is stupid. Oh, and she said yes for those that were keeping track.
What happened in April? Oh yeah, Penguicon had an amazing year (at least, if pretty much everyone can be trusted) and 20 people enjoyed themselves while thousands told them how little fun it really was. And there was great hand-wringing and some amount of bloodshed. I think there might have been virgin sacrifices1.
I finished community college and became the first member of my family with a college degree in May, and immediately dove back into school to finish my Bachelor's program. The very first SMOScast was committed to 1s and 0s. I made an utter ass of myself for the release of the Sex in the City movie.
Ger moved in, the game was conceived of, but not yet executed (but oh yes, it will happen). The Penguicon community was aghast at my use of the word “fuck”. George Carlin died. MedKat's birthday party was the stuff of legends. I may, or may not, have poo-ed myself in June.
It was in July that I conceived of, kicked off, and was utterly underwhelmed by a fairly ambitious idea. Oh well, I suppose they can't all be winners. I attended another MPCon event, met new friends, helped a friend move, and acted in the Dreamland Theater version of “A Shoggoth on the Roof”, and dined with Neal Gaiman's blog. Oh, and I got a year older and found that I really like it.
August was the month of the traumatic, horrifying, ordeal. Thankfully I survived. A group of us managed to hit the Michigan Ren Faire. Ger aged by a year, and had her first ever surprise birthday party.
In September, I began my first full semester at U of M Dearborn, tried sauerkraut juice for the first time, observed the anniversary of the twin tower collapses, and rode the Tour de Troit for the second time. Pretty uneventful.
October was ConClave, Lappy my new laptop, the travesty that was Tour de Livingston, entirely too much political crap. Ger got some uncool and scary news (semi private). The work/school/home/social life/convention combination became oppressive.
Here in the US, November featured a pretty important election. I mean, yes, it was historical and groundbreaking for the obvious reasons, but it is my hope that its importance will be seen in the next 4 years as our economy and world standing improves. That or we all become Canadian, eh? I, for one, love poutine, can attest to the obvious benefits of stronger beers, and look rather fetching in tuques and sherpas. My school asked me to blog for them. I further honed my now-legendary negotiation skills against the Germans in securing Randy's release. I got a haircut. The year pressed onward.
The year was closed in December with a trip to Syracuse during which I was *not* robbed (cheer). I finished my first real semester at the university with all As save for that one pesky B. Serious effort was made toward planning for a certain May wedding and a certain January convention. I modeled my new sherpa (or pompon bearing tuque) while my furnace was out. We sent Christmas cards this year for the first time ever (and next year, everyone that I utterly forgot or failed to send to will get some too!). The old year was rung out with great friends and much Rock Band.
In all, I couldn't complain about a single bit of this year, because, at year's end, my family is healthy, my friends are here, and life is pretty damned tolerable, to say the least. In fact, if I were the sort that said such things, I would even call life today “outstanding”
I don't really do the whole resolutions thing. This year has a lot going for it already. This month is ConFusion. Next month is another Gamers for Giving/MPCon event and Capricon in Chicago. This summer we have Penguicon, my wedding, and a new summer convention. During all of this, I have the same school, work, familial, and friend obligations that always exist. I have joined TMBO's weight loss challenge, so perhaps this year will feature a smaller me, who knows. What I would like to do this year, is write more, so I guess this is the closest thing that I have to a resolution. I love writing, I feel like I do it well, but when things get busy it's the first thing I toss aside. This year I'd like to commit to spending at least an hour each day writing, even if I don't “publish” it, or anything. I don't know, I suppose it's a goal, at least. I even went back and bolded it so perhaps I'd not it next year when I'm reviewing the year again and I can see how I did.
