Chart Types Used on This Blog

I figured it would be a good time to update this blog to see what sort of chart types I tended to prefer over the history of this blog:

Blog Views per Entry

As my life is likely going to go through significant changes this next year and time no longer allows quite as much time to devote to certain odd passions of mine, I'm going to probably stop updating this blog regularly. It takes a lot of work and relatively few people read it, as seen in the table of relative popularity of my blogs per entry:

Reading by Genre 2013

Here's the breakdown by genre of what I read this year:

Most E-mails Received by Person in 2013

I wanted to see how many e-mails I received in 2013. This doesn't include Facebook messages, which means some people are not here that probably should be. Still, it's been an interesting year insofar as I went from seeking and from dating around to having a girlfriend, and in part I was wondering how that impacted the messages I received and from whom. (A few years ago, I realized, too late, that one woman had been writing me for a long while and was probably interested--I didn't pick up on the hint soon enough and lost out to another guy.) This year, however, the larger numbers come mostly from women penpals overseas, people firmly established as friends, or from the gal who became my girlfriend, with only maybe a couple of other women I might have been able to date had I made such a move (and, in the latter case, mostly only in the first half of the year).

Or to see it in another way:

Music Minutes by Year 2

It's been a couple of years since I last charted the number of minutes I had of music from each year. I've bought a number of albums in the past couple of years, including several jazz albums, which was previously not something in my collection. I like jazz, though I prefer to listen to it live; still, with my parents traveling with me for a bit and with their absolute hatred of contemporary music, I had to find something we could both be satisfied with. No show tunes or big band for me, no alternative rock for my parents, so jazz it was. Let's see how the years fared:

Looks like the 1990s are still where most of my music collection resides, with a fairly heavy drop-off in the 2010s. There's been a small uptick in the 1980s collection, probably because I've been replacing tapes with CDs where possible. I could suspect several reasons for the current drop-off in CDs: digital online music means that used CDs for contemporary music are more rare (I buy most of my music from used CD bins); I'm less familiar with contemporary music (indeed, I listen to college radio less than I used to, as it has been overrun by stupid talk shows; I go out to see bands less frequently than I used to; and I pay less attention to music blogs than I used to); and there are fewer music stores at which to buy music (again, I still tend to buy CDs rather than downloading, which means that a number of artists' new works are still on the to purchase list, since the dearth of local record stores means I can only check one or two venues to see if an album is in stock rather than five or six as I used to be able to).

Amount Saved by Place of Abode

I wanted to see how much each place I've lived has contributed to my savings, as it's likely I'll spend down much of this in the upcoming year. Here's the amount compared by percentage:

The amount I lost in Mississippi isn't surprising, except maybe in the fact that it was so little: I was in graduate school and had to live very cheaply. Texas didn't treat me very well, it appears, as my nearly five years there actually led to a negative cash flow balance.

Amount Saved by Decade

I wanted to see how much each decade has contributed to my total savings, as it's likely I'll spend down much of this in the upcoming year. Here's the amount compared by percentage:

What I hadn't realized? Just how bad the 1990s were for me financially. They actually made a negative contribution to my life savings!

How Far the Team I Was Cheering for Advanced in the Playoffs

So baseball season is nearing the World Series, and this year my home team (well, home when I was a kid) made the playoff hunt. I have my sets of favorites, and I was wondering how, in general, the teams I cheer for have done in the playoffs. Even though there is no direct correlation between my cheering and the team winning or losing, I'm curious to know how my "luck" and the "luck" of my teams has fared:

Looks like if I'm cheering for the team, you have a good chance of winning the division series you're in, but if you're aiming to win the pennant, your chances are less than fifty percent what they should be statistically, and the World Series the same.

More Spam

The spam at work seems to be getting worse. It's not even going into the junk mail folder most of the time anymore, which makes for a lot of wasted time deleting stuff. I read how one company actually did away with e-mail because of how much time it often wasted. Alas, e-mail is probably my favorite way to communicate at work, and possibly anywhere. I don't think I'd like that. Here are the spam totals from a few days in August.

Time Spent with Friends in May 2013

I decided to break down how much time I spend with various friends and acquaintances, so I kept a log during the month of May. What surprised me was how little time I spend one-on-one in person with anyone--or at least, how little time I did so in May. One friend barely shows up here, Al. I imagine he'd at least get a couple of hours one-on-one each month most months, but he was bedridden most of May, so we stuck to short phone conversations.

The chart shows time spent with friends in groups (for example, at parties--in fact, mostly at parties), on the phone, and one-on-one face-to-face. Time spent at organized activities I have to attend--namely work or church--are not counted. 

Interest in and Success with "Ideal" Women

I'm defining "ideal" here in a most basic way: never married, no kids, of my faith, within my preferred age range (eight years younger to four years older). I'm then adding in the degree to which, with those basic concrete variables, I was actually interested. I am doing this because I occasionally spend time with women who don't meet this criteria, and I want to get into my head just how slim the chances of a woman who meets such standards showing return interest is likely to be.

Here, over the past thirteen years, are the number of women who never responded to messages, who responded a few times before dropping correspondence or explicitly rejecting me, who have stayed in correspondence but whom I have never asked out because of my own lack of interest, who rejected me after the first date, and who accepted more than one date. Also denoted are the degree to which I was myself interested in or attracted to these women. I'm basing most this off a singles site devoted to my faith, a site on which I contact every person so that I don't have to feel like I'm trying to pick anyone up, which tends to make me self-conscious, and on a few people/dates I actually recall.

Looks like the chances of getting a date are about 20 percent, which isn't as bad as I thought. However, only one gal of high interest to me (only two total) who meets this criteria has accepted more than one date in the past thirteen years (and none of mid interest; unfortunately, I only got two dates with that other high-interest girl). When considering that the pool of church women from which I'm drawing is about fifty (and finding women outside that pool is difficult), a 4 to 6 percent total for more than one date doesn't actually bode very well. And that's why I opened myself up to dating a mother, and I'm glad that I did.

No Beard Comments

I received quite a few comments on my beard. By contrast, after I shaved it off, I had quite a bit fewer comments, most of them all within the first week. The comments being mostly in the first week is somewhat understandable, since a beard takes a while to grow, so some people might just think, early on, that I forgot to shave and don't say anything. Still, I'm surprised how many fewer commented on the nonbeard. As with the last--and only other time--I've had a beard, most people who liked the beard said "Cool" when I had it; most people who didn't reserved there statement of dislike regarding the beard until after I'd shaved it off.

Spam E-mail

Gmail does a pretty good job of keeping spam away. I receive only 1 to 4 pieces of spam per day in any one of my accounts, and it's rare that they go to anything other than the spam folder. These accounts include one posted publicly online that anyone could write to and one I give out specifically "for spam" (you know, when the grocery store, etc., insists on an e-mail address).

By contrast, my work e-mail address is inundated with spam each day, to a point where sometimes I feel like the spam interferes with productivity (especially since, if I'm writing an e-mail at a given moment when new mail arrives, I have to click out of the program and then back in it in order to continue writing). In addition the spam filter seems ridiculously ineffective, this despite the fact that I often mark mail as "junk," which is supposed to help the system learn to recognize such mail. I'm not sure why the ineffectiveness is like so, but here's a typical week.

I say typical, but actually Tuesday and Wednesday of the week featured here were not. E-mail was down completely for much of the day both days; strangely, I didn't have as much spam waiting for me once the e-mail system was back up as I likely would have received had I been in my account.

The amount of spam hasn't always been this prolific. I had fewer junk e-mails when I first started. My years of being in my position have likely added to the amount of spam I get (as they have to other long-time employees). In addition, I've noticed rises and falls in the amount I receive. Right now, I'm at a high level; however, I've also seen times when these numbers dropped to half what they are.

Phone Calls for February 2013

I kept track of phone calls made to me and returned in February, which renders possibilities for all kinds of charts, some of them quite different from earlier charts regarding November 2012. 

Phone Calls by Gender

Phone Calls by Person

Phone Calls by Relationship

Beard Comments

I grew a beard about seven or eight years ago. This past winter, I decided to grow one again. There wasn't the same kind of angst as the first time I grew it. I was just being lazy and trying to avoid cold. Still, it's been curious people's reactions, most of whom don't remember the six months I previously had a beard--or maybe they do, since fewer people have commented on it this time around, it seems, as can be seen in the following chart, denoting the first time a given person has made a remark about my beard:

Number of Answers to September Submissions

I generally review what I will send out for the coming year in August and then I start afresh with submissions come the first week of September. I was wondering how many of those early September submissions actually got answers of some sort and how many were simply ignored. I was surprised by several things when I went back to look at the data. One, despite what I feel, most journals have gotten back to me with an answer. Two, September was not always a month to start afresh (many years, I didn't even submit in September). So here are the raw numbers:

And here it is by percent:

Average Length of Books Read

Most books I read, it appears, run to about three hundred pages, and perhaps I'm dumbing down, since the books seem to be getting shorter. (That said, I started this year with a book that was over one thousand pages, and Good Reads, from which I got my statistics ranked it as zero pages, so my page-count numbers may be less than accurate.)

Authors Read by Gender

A recent chart caused me to ponder how many books I read by men versus women (anthologies are not included). Here are the results year by year, by number and then by percent. It was pretty much as I figured--men dominate.

Phonecalls for November 2012

I kept track of phone calls made to me and returned in November, which renders possibilities for all kinds of charts.

Phonecalls by Gender

Phonecalls by Person

Phonecalls by Relationship

Unfortunately, among the potential dates, the incoming calls came from one person, with whom a "just friends" clarity was eventually established. Apparently, in that regard, I'm not great at getting phone numbers to begin with, and I'm even less successful at getting callbacks or through calls.

Local Driving Trips

I was out with some friends just before Thanksgiving, and they brought up an interesting subject--namely, how often I drive outside of trips to church or the grocery store. I used to drive to work twice a week, but now that we're in a new office, I don't drive to work at all. This means that the car typically gets taken out only three times in two weeks: church on Sabbath and then, every other week, a trip to the grocery store. Most other things I can accomplish by walking, given enough time: most of my friends live close by and downtown is just a block away.

I wanted to see how often I drive outside of the two main destinations. As it turns out, not much--just one to two times a month. And here's what I drive to do:

The outer ring represents out-of-town stuff, the inner ring in-town stuff, with the in-town drives outnumbering the out-of-town drives by exactly one. Here's a breakdown month by month: