Wednesday, August 6, 2008

I See You North Carolina

In the brief history of this website, I have periodically chronicled the ins-and-outs of a web program called Google Analytics that enables me to track anonymous information about visitors, including what city and state a visitor is in when they visit the site. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of people who are tricked by me into visiting come from the great state of Michigan. Most surprisingly, though, is that the state that sends the second most visitors to me is North Carolina, with almost all of the NC visits coming from Charlotte. As far as I can remember, I don't have any immediate relatives in NC and most of my former college cohorts live in the Midwest or the coasts, so I have no idea who you are. I am not trying to scare you away, but I do want to thank you, anonymous person, for keeping up-to-date on my Michigan thoughts.

All of this raises another key issue that I again want to encourage here. One of the joys of the internet is anonymity (listen, I don't care if you prefer Tinky, Winky, or Dipsy from the Teletubbies), but I would love if some small portion of that veil of anonymity were to drop away on this website. If you are taking a few of your precious minutes to read the site, I hope that you have strong feelings either similar or in opposition to my own, and I would love to hear them in the comments section. With some luck, other people reading the website may also respond to your comments, and we may actually begin some worthwhile dialogue.

And for anyone who may be living in or traveling through North Carolina - it is illegal to use an elephant to plow cotton fields there. Be careful.

4 comments:

brad said...

Ken - Sorry to disappoint, but most likely the NC-er is me. I check your blog as one of my many, many escapes from doing any actual work while at work. Our network goes through a proxy in our NC office. So, moral of the story - don't trust the internet.

-Brad H

Ken said...

Oh well, mystery likely solved. I guess there is some upside in that my Michigan readership should be higher than what is reflected in the statistics. I learned something today, and that fact is that Brad rules.

Anonymous said...

Ken! Watching the blog from over here in Hungary. Gail posted the link on her facebook. Keep up the good work!

-Lynn Dig

Ken said...

Hey Lynn. What the heck is going on in Hungary? I had no idea you were living there, but that sounds pretty exciting! Thank you so much for periodically checking in. Now I can safely claim that this is an international phenomenon.