I maintain several websites and blogs. On several of them, I run Google Analytics to calibrate hit count and to see what pages are popular and how users are finding my site. Recently, I updated my personal website. That's the one that basically has links to virtually all of the other sites. It's about me, as opposed to being about charts I create or things I read. I updated in part because the look of the site had been the same since about 2008 when I created the site. Also, a couple of items in the navigation bar stopped working, and I couldn't figure out why.Looking over the hits per month, however, I am surprised to see that my personal website has actually had a small increase in average hits per months over the years, up to about twenty (you can discount February--the one with the most hits near the end of the line in the chart--it is an anomaly caused by my own multiple viewing of the site in trying to fix it). Where are these people coming from? Apparently, some of them are finding me via my thesis, which is posted on the personal site (hidden near the top of my vita page). It's about the short stories of Jayne Anne Phillips and offers critical commentary on a few more-obscure stories that is probably not available elsewhere; I'm glad if the thesis is of use to anyone.Anyway, here's how the hits have increased through the years:
I'd say I've done fairly well in terms of actually working in fields in which I have an interest, as can probably be surmised by the handy timeline below.
The timeline shows my main dream job at top, my main real jobs at bottom. This isn't exhaustive, though, because I have had part-time second jobs, and there have been other jobs I've dreamed of having. For example, at various times, I've thought how need it would be to be a screenwriter, an amusement park ride designer, a fruit farmer, a comedian, a radio deejay, a publisher, and a designer or compositor. In real life, I've done a little deejaying (for pay--it was not something, in the end, that I enjoyed), and I've done some design and composition and screenwriting just for fun.But I'm blessed that the job I really desired from about my teen years on became the one that I have. I often ponder what I would do instead were I to have to choose another career, and the fact is I don't know.
This is likely the last long-distance chart for a while. I changed phone carriers at the end of December and now have unlimited minutes, meaning I don't get a summary of my long-distance calls and charges.
And if you like the colors in my charts, perhaps you'd like these poems of mine about colors (or rather, lack thereof) that The Legendary was kind enough to include in its latest issue.
I go grocery shopping every two weeks.Here are the number of items on my shelves as they stand three days after grocery shopping:
If regular consumption holds, here are the number of items on my shelves as they stand three days before grocery shopping:
The top shelf apparently stays full--just the milk typically gets depleted. The reason is that water and extras stay on that shelf; by extras, I mean that those items move to other places as I run out of those items in the other places
I have lived most of my adult life in the South. Hence, most of my Interstate driving has been in the South, as this map shows, the West Coast driving being mostly my moves back and forth and back from California. The yellow are the Interstates, the purple those I've driven.
However, if we include driving from when I was a kid, and my parents took me with them on various trips, my West Coast Interstate experience increases exponentially. Most of the Interstates I knew, in fact, back then were western. The few Northeast Interstates I've ridden on are from trips I've taken as an adult, which generally involve flying to an area to visit with others who then drove me to other places. The yellow are the Interstates, the purple are those I've driven, the red those I've ridden.
I thought it might be interesting to look at who I talk to on the cell phone, since I've several times looked at who gets called long distance. Here's the chart for 2011 as of the end of October:
Here's the chart for all time as of the end of October:
If I were to add in November, the numbers would skew even more in favor of the present configuration. Since then, however, I've used my cell phone hardly at all.
