Technology

Thanks to a friend’s suggestion, I’ve added the option to subscribe to The Little Things via e-mail.  Use the link at the top of the page.  (Facebook readers, click through first.)

Up until now, I’ve had a somewhat loose policy of not friending people on Facebook whom I don’t know personally – meaning that I’ve not met them face-to-face.  I’ve made a few exceptions for bloggers and others that I feel I know pretty well electronically, but I’ve ignored dozens and dozens of friend requests from people whose names I know but I’m not sure why, along with plenty of people who are complete strangers.

Well, I’m changing my policy.  If I know of you electronically, tangentially, if you are a friend of a friend, or if you just read my blog, I will accept your friend request.  If I can’t figure out the connection, I won’t accept, so send me a message if you think I won’t recognize your name.  Hit me up again, ok? 

I’m doing this primarily to promote my blog, but I’ve also found a few friends with similar interests by branching out on Facebook, so I figure it’s worth a try.

I’m also going to change my policy on Facebook “messages.”  I can’t stand the messaging function in Facebook.  I’d rather just have an e-mail.  A friend of mine and I just had a big misunderstanding which was not caused, but was exacerbated by the Facebook messaging function.  That was the final straw.  Unlike Diana Hsieh, I don’t have the balls to turn off the Facebook e-mail notifications completely, but I will simply respond by e-mail and expect you to do the same.  If I don’t have your e-mail address in my contacts, I will reply on Facebook with, “Please contact me via e-mail.”  You can find my e-mail address on my Facebook profile, or here on the blog, for that matter.

WordPress (my blogging software) gives me all kinds of statistics on who is accessing my blog, and besides the obsessive checking of hits per day, I also often check the traffic that arrives via search engine terms.  (That means people who Googled something and ended up finding me.)  Rational Jenn has reported some of the crazy ways that people find her blog, so I thought I’d jump in and share some of mine.

• The search that lands people on my blog the most often is, by far, “Al Sears quack” or some variation thereof.  I mentioned this guy one time (and called him a quack), and I still get a hit or two every day from people who apparently agree with me or are wondering what to think.  I’ve received at least 550 visitors from that one line I wrote a year ago.  I should make a list of obscure controversial issues and blog about them just to get new readers.  Or not.
• Aside from my name, “Short desk” has gotten me the next highest amount of traffic.  I’m not surprised because when I was designing the office space in my living room, the biggest obstacle to comfort was the fact that the standard desk height is way too tall for my 5′3″ self.  I, myself, Googled “short desk” and found lots of good advice before I built the workspace and then wrote about it.
• I love that someone found my blog by searching, “stack of harry potter books,” even though I’ve only mentioned the saga twice.
• Lots of people find my blog by sitting down at a computer and seeking electronic advice for a serious problem: “People call me stupid.”  I don’t think my blog can help them.  At least, I hope not.
• Apparently, I talk about poop often enough to draw people looking for “nervous pooer,” “changing poop diaper,” “morning nappy change,” and even the creatively spelled “diaper poopi.”
• Somebody found me by searching for “Samantha is gross.”  I hope it wasn’t somebody I know.
• “Things spit is used for” must bring up so many interesting results – I can’t imagine why they clicked over to me on that one.
• “Huge pregnant belly journal.”  What do you think was in that person’s head?
• And finally, “man grows long nail.”  Sometimes Google just doesn’t work.

Aside from the search engine hits, someone got to my blog from a Google ad on the IMDB Atlas Shrugged synopsis page - cool!

You may have noticed that I’ve added ads to my web site.  I hope they are not too obtrusive.  I like seeing them here because I think the Google AdSense concept is brilliant.

Feedburner is burning me!  I’m hoping this post makes it to your reader.  Anyone who subscribes has probably missed a couple of posts, so you might want to click over.

I’m about to upgrade my blog software and my theme.  I have to do it during nap time or it will never get done.  I have no idea if I’ve backed up properly, or what this will do to my blog.  I’ve been reading and trying to prepare for this for about 3 weeks and, really, I just can’t figure out how to do it, so I’m just going to try it.  In the middle of the day, no less.  Sometimes you just have to say, WTF.

Update:  Just a half hour later, I think I’m done.  Let me know if you find any buggies.

I just added a nice feature to The Little Things.  When you comment on a post, you’ll now see a check box marked, “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail.”  If you check the box, you’ll be alerted if I, or others, respond to your comment.  Well, you’ll actually get an e-mail for all comments on that post, but trust me, your inbox will not get overloaded from the comments on this site anytime soon!

I’m guilty of leaving comments on other blogs and never checking back, even if I asked a question I really want to know the answer to.  I hope this will help make my blog more interactive.  I really enjoy getting comments, and I try to respond as much as possible.

Is anybody else having trouble with gmail lately?  I keep getting a pop up box titled Error which says:

Oops… a server error occurred and your email was not saved. (#103)

[or not sent, or whatever]

But then the email seems to have been saved, or sent, or whatever.  I found a thread on Google Groups:

http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Message-Delivery-en/browse_thread/thread/dd559ea4f36765db

But it doesn’t say much.