Traffic Sucks

June 25th, 2010

I make it a habit of checking traffic stats, page views, and such for the site and I don’t usually see much out of the ordinary. Lately though my traffic has spiked and while I’d normally be excited the traffic looks like it’s just from crawlers such as googlebot.

A less informed person would shrug it off as a fluke. I know better. Someone is spoofing the user agents and driving up traffic on my site and it appears for no good reason. It’s really just obnoxious since I don’t think I’ve had this much traffic in 7 years.

If you’re legitimately interested in what I have to say stop spoofing the search engine crawlers so I can see the traffic for what it is and then I might be motivated to supply new content. If you’re secretly copying my blog and photos for more nefarious purposes, then stop because if I can’t make any money off of my life then nobody will.

If it weren’t for bad luck..

February 26th, 2010

So as if we weren’t under enough stress lately I lost my job on Thursday and Sarah lost hers on Friday morning. I’m not entirely sure what we’re going to do now. I’ll get unemployment benefits but it won’t pay all the bills nor will it be enough to pay for insurance for Sarah. We need some time to decompress, regroup and figure out what to do. One thing is for certain everything else is really just is petty bullshit when you’re faced with losing everything.

Am I in the Twilight Zone?

January 26th, 2010

I swear that I was expecting a monologue by Rod Serling (nevermind he died in 1975) after my trip to the AT&T store.

So we walked in and before we step two feet in the store we were headed off by someone asking us what we needed. Before we could tell him anything he told us that he could “squeeze us in”. Confused we inquired about his curious choice of terminology. Apparently shopping at the AT&T store in Kendallville requires an appointment.

It’s not my doctor’s office, it’s not my hair stylist. I shouldn’t need a bloody appointment to go buy a cellphone accessory. It’s just a freaking case! Granted the case costs $50 but still. It’s not some major life changing decision where I need to consult a specialist or sign legally binding documentation. The process is not irreversible, and it certainly isn’t going to cause some sort of harm if I do it wrong.

You can “squeeze me in”? Are you freaking kidding me?

This is one of the reasons I never went to the VZ store. I would go in, they’d schedule me for an appointment, tell me I had an absurdly long wait time and then make me hand over my phone number so that they could text me when my appointment was next.

Is this what I have to look forward to now when I need to go to the store and purchase an accessory or new phone? Why is it so complicated? Everywhere else has it down to a science. I go in, grab what I want off a shelf, I pay and the store takes my money. Immediately afterward I am allowed to leave. Nothing should interrupt or deviate from that process.

It’s the new year!

January 7th, 2010

Welcome to 2010, much like 2009. We had a killer NYE party. Joe, Lisa and the kids came over to the house for appetizers some big steaks, and baked potatoes that should have had their own gravitational pull.

After fighting of the itis we played the game of things and that was a riot. The premise is that someone reads a topic, everyone else writes down the first thing that comes to mind, and then you go around the table and one person tries to guess who said something. Depending on the group of people you get together things can get pretty far out there.

After having nearly two weeks off of work for the holidays it’s been tough to get back in the groove but I’m back to work and I can honestly say I’m ready for the weekend again. It seems as if having all that time off has made me more tired. I’m honestly feeling sluggish and lazy. I’m not really comfortable feeling that way either but it’s just so hard to get motivated for anything with the cold and the snow and the darkness all the time but that’s winter I guess. I’ll give it a few more weeks, either winter will end and I’ll snap out of it or I’ll just get in such a groove with work that I’ll stop noticing it and then by the time I do summer will be here.

Xmas eve.

December 24th, 2009

First and foremost let’s keep the X in Xmas.

Second, I’m at the in-laws waiting to go to church. I’m not particularly thrilled about it, not that I have anything better to do it’s just that I’d rather be anywhere else.

In an odd twist of events we’re opening presents tonight instead of tomorrow which is fine with me. I don’t care when we do it but if I got something cool then I’m glad to get it early. This year is an extremely low key Xmas so most of our presents are from each other and that’s fine because we buy each other nicer things that way.