Tracking Your Blog Stats

A few people asked me how I knew what keywords led to my site.

Blogger actually provides this service for free.  When you go to blogger.com for your profile, there's a new 'Stats' tab:

If you click into 'Traffic Sources' you'll see where your visitors arrive from and the key words:

Google Analytics does a more thorough job but you need to add code on your blog to get it to work. 

If you don't use Blogger, try Googling 'track blog stats'.

Physical habits

At the company I work for an email went around asking us not to work in Explorer because of some new security threat that Microsoft hasn't patched yet. So here I am checking out my peeps in Firefox, which opens a new tab every time I link from my blog list to a blog. Once I have read a post and left a comment, I close my browser. And each time I think, AAAARG , I was supposed supposed to just close the one tab. Then I have to reopen my blogger dashboard and start over.

I've been doing this all morning. Apparently I am incapable of learning a new physical habit. Fortunately the kids are at their grandparents this morning so I have all the time in the world to be inefficient.

On a side note, if you're feeling a bit unfit (fat) after Thanksgiving gluttony, or starting to think about Christmas presents, check out these shake weights.

Mwa.

Women don't like Megan Fox

Breaking news from Jezebel: Women don't like Megan Fox.

I can't think why. She looks so nice.

Now I know I've arrived

The other day I asked some of you to go comment on my other blog, which gets between 20 and 60 lurker hits every post but not many comments to show for it. Different target audience.

None of you commented except my close personal friend Reforming Geek. Thanks, RG!

But that's OK because I have a new international bloggy bud who LOVES my other blog and of course writes an amazing and totally legitimate blog of his own where he unveils the secrets of generating wealth through blogging:

I have SO arrived!

Why not ask a dead person?

Bloggie friends are different than real friends. For example, they actually remind you about their birthdays if they want you to remember them. Their advice tends to be more unbiased by their protective and/or competetive feelings towards you. And they don't typically babysit your children, although if someone comes up with a mommy blogging network with childcare, watch out!

But they are also like real friends in the way they are always ready with an encouraging word if you're sick and sometimes have useful advice or information, like when Patti posted the NSC code for Saybrook Sage or Kristina helped me create my own church sign proclaiming my righteousness or the Dental Maven offered free dental advice or Sara explained how to drain a pond.

Thanks, girlfriends.

And I hope I've been able to help all of you with my frequent reminders about how society's going to collapse when we run out of oil and I'm still not seeing any solar panels so why the h-e-double-hockysticks are we talking about health care?

But anyway, occassionally a blog post stops me cold with either a wish that I'd written it or its relevance to my own life. The first time this happened was Kristina's New Year's Resolution post.

That was a darn good post.

I've had quite a few 'Wow' moments since then but most recently the Ask a Dead Person series over at Jezebel has captured my attention. The idea is that you send in a question and dead people like Freud and Kafka weigh in with advice.

I LOVE that!

A recent post ponders how to keep one's bratty daughter from alienating one's rich boyfriend. Well, that's just spot on in it's relevance to my life. Or, it could be if I weren't married because I would naturally only date rich guys. I found Jack Kerouac's advice particularly helpful. This is blogging perfection and I'm kicking myself that I never thought of having dead people guest post on my blog.

Of course, to pull that off you have to, like, know stuff. About history. And people. And what dead people are likely to say.

Anyway, if you want to help me look good on my other blog, which is being considered for the next Carnival of HR, please click here and leave a comment or two.

Or, if you want to know how to explain to your friend that her poor mothering drove her daughter to suicide, click here.

I know. Life is about tough choices.

I've been gone but now I'm back

I was in Italy over Halloween and will write about it soon but first I want to catch up with you lot... ciao!

In Transit

I'm off to a conference in CA for about 10 days. Actually, only 7 days, because I will spend the first several days at a silent retreat. Where I can't talk. Or blog.

I expect to return completely refreshed and enlightened from this so stay tuned for the new me.

Hawaii or Bust

OK folks this is it - tomorrow we embark on our two week vacation. First we will go to LA to visit my family, then we will attempt to fly standby to Hawaii. W

Please wish us luck because our fallback plan is driving down to, say, Orange County. No offense to OC but Hawaii is better.

Not sure what my Internet availability will be so if I seem to vanish off the face of the Earth for two weeks, that's why.

Be good.

The Answer

Compuserve ad from 1982. Pretty visionary on the technology side, not at all on the fashion side. Or maybe white leisure suits are still to come. . .

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday. As you can see, I'm finally turning 5.

Tonight Ralf is taking me out for dinner and the new Harry Potter movie. AND he got my blog printed as a book! It was over 300 pages so technically speaking, I've written a book over the last year. If only it had a plot.

You too can get your blogs bound here or else do what Ralf did and use their software to extract the blog content into a .pdf file, then print and bind it for free at work. Which means I get a real grown up dinner with my movie instead of El Balazo take out.

This morning K gave me a 20 eurocent coin she mooched from Ralf to buy myself something and with a bit of additional prompting, a rather nice picture of a mermaid in the ocean that she colored. L gave me nothing but her everyday cuteness, although she did comment that it's not much of a birthday without a cake.

Happy birthday to me! I can't wait to celebrate tonight with Ralf, Harry and Voldemort.

Oh, and here's my favorite quote of the week from Debbie: "I'm thinking if we could somehow tie environmental issues to that thorny issue of extramarital flings, our elected officials alone could reduce our country's greenhouse emissions enough to save the polar bears."

Well said.

On Friendship and Facebook

I wrote a new post about Facebook relationships, feel free to check it out: http://ls-workgirl.blogspot.com/

Then purely by coincidence someone sent me this picture, which captures the essense of what I was trying to say.

A good manager is hard to find

Feel free to check it out, unless it's not your thing: http://ls-workgirl.blogspot.com/

A Girl's Gotta Work

Some of you already know that I have two blogs, this one and another one called 'Working Girl', where I blog about things relevant to my chosen profession of Human Capital Management.

Today, although I have several burning topics to get off my chest (including cooking, economy, pediatricians and bedtime stories), I've already used up my alloted time on Working Girl.

Feel free to check it out.

Moonlighting at MOG

I'm still around and have even done some laundry but today I posted at My Other Blog, which I fondly refer to as MOG. Technically I guess it should be 'MOB' but I like the sound of 'MOG' better, don't you?

If you're interested you can see what I wrote here.

Enjoy!

Cup of Joe

What do you suppose these pictures have in common?

Lately I've been getting up an hour early so I have a little time for myself before the kids come. If they don't sense my awakeness and general availability this works well.

It's lovely really if you don't focus on the missing hour of sleep. I make some strong imported Pete's coffee, fire up my computer and check my email. This is also when I read the blogs of people who follow my blog and respond to the thoughtful and/or funny comments people have made on my blog.

The rest of the day is hectic with work, housework, kids and calls. But mornings are nice and quiet and I spend them with you guys.

So I was a little dismayed this morning to hear K creeping downstairs about 5 minutes after I got up. I tried to hide it because yesterday I had work-related calls in the afternoon (as opposed to after the kids go to bed) so I could undertand her needing a little extra attention. But I did explain to her that early mornings are my special time and tomorrow I want her to stay in bed until at least 6:30.

She solemnly agreed to this but here's the problem: she's discovered all of YOU.

When she came downstairs I happened to be reading something on Tara's blog. Tara's a California girl like me living in Denmark with her husband and four kids and she posted a slideshow of her kids feeding pigeons. K spotted this immediately, usurped my chair and spent the next 10 minutes watching Tara's kids feed pigeons while I sat grumpily off to the side itching to type.

Then she wanted more: the Maven's avatar, Gracey's pictures of Athen's, Lucy's sleeping cat, Patty's son dressed as a leprichaun, R's American Idol pictures, Lawyer Mom's pictures of Saturn and the mean teacher, Salma Hayek's cartoon boobs, she wanted it ALL, baby.

When she asked me to read Debbie's Moobs post out loud, however, I balked.

So.... any bets on whether she'll keep her promise tomorrow?

It figures

I was planning to write a post called, 'Tax the Bastards!' but once I wrote the title I felt there was nothing more that needed to be said.

OK, I lied. I did actually end up blogging about it on Working Girl, which is my other blog.

And now for something completely different. There was a brief 'thing' going around Facebook and the Blogsphere where you create your own album cover based on threee random inputs from the Web. Here are the rules if you want to try it:

YOUR ALBUM ARTWORK:
1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”or click here. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to "Random quotations"or click here.The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”or click here. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

It never quite took hold because the results weren't that great for most of us. For example, here is mine:


Isn't that totally lame???

But not everyone failed. For example, Kristina got this:


It figures.

Sort of apropos, although different, my favorite new word is 'moobs.'

Interesting statistics

Now, when I say 'interesting', I don't mean like the number of Chinese honor students (soon to be higher than total American students, I'm afraid) or the number of American universities that offer courses on how to use an iPhone (although Debbie might have that information).

Instead I'm talking about my own blog statistics, which is way more interesting.

If you use Google blogger, you should try Google Analytics. It's just chock full of information like:

How many hits I get a day - I average around 40;

What countries people visit my blog from - 26 countries;

What sites people link from - it varies;

And what my most popular posts are - for some reason Eat, Pray, Love is top of the charts right now.

But the most interesting information is the list of search criteria people used to find my blog, if they used a search engine. Looking at this list I realize that I've blogged on a variety of topics, from German husbands to dental surgery.

Here are just a few examples:

'Are German men good husbands?' - I wonder what she decided.

'My feet are the same German funny' - Thank you!

There were also 'Unreasonable fear of dentists' and 'Blood poisoning after gum graft' - It seems there's a viable blog niche for scary dentsts. What do you think, Maven?

'How to sew a witches hat' - Needless to say, this person bounced immediately, presumably to the blog of someone who can actually sew.

'Made to lick my wife’s feet' also didn't stick around long.

And finally, 'Indiscreet quotes "lobster"' - I wonder if this person found what they were looking for.

And you thought I wasn't paying attention.

Going the Distance

R, who I heart because she's very funny, has tagged me for another blogging prize that represents 'Brilliant Content or Design', which I'm not sure is deserved but I'll take it.

Now I'm supposed to tell you 10 things about myself and nominate 7 other blogs for the prize.

I'm going to cheat a bit, however, because I think that between my HS Questionnaire and the 25 Things About Me posts, and all the various rants in between, you probably have a pretty good sense of who I am by now.

And now for the 7 blogs that I think should be recognized for 'going the distance.'

Here are the criteria: The authors of these blogs post frequently and go the extra mile to research their topics, follow and/or comment on other blogs regularly to keep the Blogsphere alive and thriving, present highly unusual pictures or information that you wouldn't normally come across and/or use multi-media such as YouTube.

They also have not received the Honest Scrap Award before. At least as far as I know.

And finally, followers of this blog got somewhat preferential treatment. That may sound self-serving but with so many great blogs out there I needed to narrow it down somehow.

As someone who usually just sits down and types whatever occurs to me (I mean, I put some thought into word choice and I once went out and created an avatar for my post 'Is it just me?' but that's about it), I totally respect this kind of extra effort.

Oh, and although you're tagged, you don't have to do anything. Only if you want to.

Here are the Finalists - I hope that if you visit these excellent blogs you won't stop reading my blog, which is a risk because they're all way better, but I'm going to take that chance in the interest of artistic honesty:

Kristina: You're probably all sick and tired of visiting my blog and seeing yet another mention of Kristina but I can't help it. I have no idea where she comes up with her hilarious ideas or finds the totally outrageous pictures she posts, let alone where she finds time to read and comment on so many blogs every day, but there it is. I particularly enjoyed her Lifetime Movies post. And I also think that Chacon should hold a special place in blogging history.

Bernthis: Jessica not only posts highly comedic stuff on a regular basis, she also has her own YouTube series. Be sure to check out her Hitler Wax Job video.

Naturelady: I wasn't sure which of Naturelady's two excellent blogs to link to and ended up opting for her new cooking blog Borealkitchen, which features beautiful pictures, vegetarian recipes and a refereshing attention to 'sustainable food.'

The Dental Maven: TDM is a niche blogger - all things related to teeth. You would think this topic would be somewhat limited, but as you will see from her latest post about flossing monkeys, our choppers present a wide field of untapped literary possibilities.

Lucy: In addition to keeping up with her regular blog, Lucy transcribed the diary of her great grandfather Charles Harper, who actually went west with Brigham Young. How cool is that?

So, that's five. Now two Honorable Mentions for great recent posts that were well-researched and made me laugh out loud:

Debbie: A hard-hitting look into the crazy coursework offered in America's colleges and universities.

Lawyer Mom: A very funny account of her son's science project on Saturn's rings.

And one Special Mention for 'always reading the fine print':

Bebe - Read all about what she discovered about Snuggles.

Enjoy!

This blog's got lemonade

Is lemonade like cowbell?

But seriously, I was just sitting around feeling sorry for myself because instead of flying home to my boobies tonight I have to do a crazy planes, trains and automobiles journey for my grandma's 90th birthday. I love my grandma and enjoy hanging out with my family but I'm also very ready to be home and I have a LOT of STUFF to carry.

I also have lots of presents which the airlines will probably lose.

And then Naturelady awarded me the lemonade award for great attitude.

This is my very first blog award. I'm sure there will be many more but this one will always be special.

So I guess I'll skip the bitchfest and focus on the positive, which is:

I fly home Friday.

My boobies are fine.

Ralf has been wonderful this week.

I've had a good week.

I had a chance to spend time with most of my favorite people.

I have fantastic colleagues.

I got carded at Target.

What's a little schlepping two enormous heavy suitcases all by myself through 3 different airports compared with all that goodness?

Now the rules of engagement for the lemonade award dictate that I pass along the lemonade award to 5 other bloggers who also have great attitude.

This is very difficult because all the blogs I follow have great attitude so I may have to flip a coin or something.

And some of you have already been nominated so you're out of the running.

Anyway, here goes:

1. Charlotte: No contest. Charlotte has a great attitude about everything and it shines through in everything she writes.

2. Kristina: I love Kristina's blog and look forward to each posting. And I've finally decided after much reflection that she's not evil, just really, really funny.

3. Debbie: Debbie is also very funny and her insights about just about everything are well worth reading.

4. Emily: Emily is a role model for all of us the way she copes with three kids and various daily challenges with great humor and even greater humanity.

5. Ralf: Ralf is not a blogger but I think he deserves an award for his masterful single parenting this week. I hope the rest of my bloggie peeps don't mind making way for him just this once.

What are the odds?

Charlotte writes the first blog I ever 'followed'. I found her back in September when we moved to Germany and was struck by her generous, funny style.

Since then there have been more - you know who you are - but Charlotte was the first.

So, my meeting Thursday? With Charlotte's husband.

Weird, huh?