My Biggest Fan

For any of you familiar with the blogging world, Google Analytics is a pretty cool tool. I check my Analytics account every morning to see how many people visited my blog and where they come from.

I've had Analytics set up on my blog for over a month now and most cities that show up are familiar to me in one way or another... at least the ones with higher traffic. I expect visitors from Idaho and Utah cities because that's where most of my family and friends live. But there are always a lot of visits from Palo Alto, California and I couldn't for the life of me figure out who that visitor could be. How could I not know who was visiting me from Palo Alto when it was so often the #1 traffic producer for my blog?

Call it an early morning brain peak or months of subconscious deep thinking, but this morning as I was checking my Analytics account when I first got to work, I had a revelation. Palo Alto was ME. The company I work for has a major site in Palo Alto and their Internet connection must be routed through there. All along this top visitor to my blog was ME. Not some random adoring fan. Not some stranger who stumbled across my blog and now visited on a daily basis because of my wonderful wit and charm. It was ME. ME and my addiction to my own blog.

Of course instead of keeping this information to myself I chose to post it for all my readers to see. What do you expect? My ego has just been crushed.... I've got to do something to build it up again. And what better way to boost an ego than to write a new post to suck in more readers? I feel better already.

Nicknames

I was almost shocked at myself the other day when I realized I'd never done a post about nicknames. More specifically the nicknames my sisters and I had as kids. Which isn't to say that those nicknames aren't in use today, because they are.

Dad was the nickname giver in our house. I think that's the case in a lot of families. Maybe it's because the moms are the ones that usually pick out the real names, so the dads feel like they need to put in their two cents. In any case, it seems ironic that a child is rarely called by his real name... the one that was agonized over and had great thought put into it... he's usually called some silly endearing name that gets picked up on a whim or circumstance. Unless he's in big trouble.

We all had nicknames growing up, but for some reason, Corinne's nickname didn't stick as well. Her name was 'Oobie-Doo' (pronounced like Scoobie Doo). Don't ask where any of these names came from. I'm not sure anyone really knows other than they jumped out of the mind of my dad somehow. I think Corinne stopped being called Oobie-Doo early on, maybe around the time she was 8 years old.

Annie and I are still called by our nicknames to this day, at least by my dad. And he's pretty much the only one who can get away with it. It's just creepy and/or weird if anyone else does it. Our nicknames have progressed a little through the years as is often the case. Annie started out as 'Budsly'. You may notice she uses this as her blogger moniker and as part of her email address. She was most often called 'Buds' for short. I've heard my dad call her Budsly P. Muldoonskie. It's the long version of her name. But that's nothing compared to my name...

Mrs. B.T. Boofus McDoodle III. That's it. That's my full nickname. I went by Boofus for a little while. My dad tells a story of a time he was in the grocery store with me and said "Hey Boofus, get over here!" and some lady looked at him with a horrified expression on her face. It could be worse. Look at all those celebrities and the dumb names they give their kids. At least Boofus is relatively easy to spell.

After Boofus, I was usually called 'Boof' or 'Boofy'. Today I mainly get Boof. 'Boofy' is a little too childish. Don't you think? 'Boof' is definitely more sophisticated and practically screams 'success' and 'power.' But only when my dad says it. So don't get any ideas.

Stupid Blogger

Can I just say that I hate this damn Blogger software?! It's so incredibly frustrating to use. I swear it takes me ten times longer to create a post than it should because this thing just makes up its own rules about formatting from one day to the next! Every time you insert a picture it goes to the top of the post and then for some stupid reason it adds in like fifty extra spaces between paragraphs so you have to keep deleting all the spaces. Then it looks good when it's on the edit screen but it looks different in the preview so you try to adjust the spacing and it won't reflect your changes.. or it exaggerates them . Lately I've tried to go back and adjust/edit posts and it won't let me! I enter the changes and then it won't update them in my posts! ARGHH!! I'm about to smash this computer against the wall!

So, as a final comment... no I'm not an idiot that purposefully tries to make her posts hard to read or makes links that don't work (there's one I tried to fix unsuccessfully on this week's menu)... this stupid blogger is a piece of junk. When are these people going to fix it? It's not like this is rocket science! {hair tearing out followed by gnashing of teeth and cursing}