Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Sunday, January 1. 2006

Maggie's Farm Data, And Thanks

Our gracious webmeister and good pal Chris informs us that Maggie's Farm had about 200,000 "hits" in November and between 500-2000 "unique visitors" daily. It varies quite a bit, with a long-term upward trend.

That's not very impressive, given the world's population and the size of the blogosphere, but we have only existed since late February. We had plenty of "hits" on the blog's address last month, but I don't know what that really means. Do they read us? Are they just quickly checking to see if we have something new? Are they very quick scanners like me? Are are they lost in cyberspace? Or looking for Dylan lyrics? We have no idea. 

"Visitors" is just an index of how much time is spent on the blog, and where you decide to set the threshold for the measuring software. We set it at a "very long" 5 minutes, which is a lifetime for our high IQ quick readers (except for Rick - haha - gotcha back, buddy).

We have no other information about you, our dear gentle readers, other than how you got here - eg, Yahoo, links, searches, bookmark (please bookmark us - it's easier access for you), etc. We know nothing about who you are, unless you tell us.

Being greedy, ambitious, vain, human, and lots of other unpleasant things, we'd like that visitor number to be 10,000, 100,000, or preferably 1,000,000. An exclusive boutique with a secret Walmart hidden deep inside. But markets rule in this blog game, as they must, and we do our best to please ourselves and find good stuff, in the hope that others will value what we do. If they don't, it's their loss. We enjoy doing this for the time being, and it makes us think things through, learn stuff, and polish (?) our casual writing too.

But today, I just want to focus on that word "unique." Definitely. If you are a Maggie's reader, you are a member of a unique club, and we deeply appreciate your interest in our unusual and eccentric eclectic publication. Please send us around to your friends, relatives, and enemies, if you enjoy us.

Happy New Year, and Holiday Thanks for being part of The Farm. Y'all come back real soon.

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 07:36 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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Wondering who we are that visit your site? I can only take responsibility for only a few of the 200 hits, but I'll tell you what drives me to access your site 2-3 times a day over the last 2-3 months. It's hunger for information.

I've been living in the Czech Republic for 16 years; I'm originally from Michigan. For the last 11 years my wife and I have been living in a little village right on the former Iron Curtain border with Austria, where I work out of my home office as a translator. 'Way back when we waited several years for a mere phone line, but with the march of progress and all, earlier this year we finally got our fast internet connection. This has made it possible to recieve information from the outside world, and discover the bloggosphere. No longer do I have to rely on CNN, the Czech newspapers, and the Economist, to try and piece together what's going on back home in America and in the world.

Plus I used to be a Democrat, now I'm a neo-con. So there. What do you expect? I look out my window here at the edge of the Czech Republic and the snow is falling beautifully on the opposite hill along the border with Austria where there used to be a kilometer-wide band of barbed wire, guard towers, and guns, to keep people from fleeing the worker's paradise.

So Reagan was right. God bless 'im. Back in the 80's I went as far as to canvass for SANE, but today I must be George W. Bush's biggest fan in Europe. Hang in there, Dubaya.

I could go on. And on. I have half a mind (make what you want out of that) to do like neo-neocon and add a series of chapters to the "how I was mugged by reality" genre. I've got a blog (Iron Curtain Blog), but I don't write for it much - got things to do, and it's a big emotional investment to write.

But it brings a warm feeling to my keyboard as, with the klick of a mouse, I sneak away from my translations long enough to peek through your portal into the outside world, into the world of like-minded and unlike-minded people. In that sense as well, I suppose I'm something just about like your typical reader.

See ya.

Todd Hammond
Valtice, Czech Republic
#1 Todd Hammond (Link) on 2006-01-01 10:26 (Reply)
Todd:
Many thanks for that very nice New Year's missive.
It makes it all worth it.
#2 Bird Dog on 2006-01-01 11:28 (Reply)

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