"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx
If you haven’t been around here is what has been going on around here:
Let’s Remake The Love Boat
Jericho
Guests and The Medicine Cabinet One Way People Are Passing The Time
Not How I like to Begin My Week
I Hate The Holiday Season Continued
Mumbai- Notes/Links About Terror
Thanksgiving In The Snow
#193 is Live
Because I Need To Smile About Something
Thanksgiving in Mumbai
Most Popular Posts of Q3
Jack & The “Mortgage Broker”
Some of My Favorite Posts
So in the midst of the Thanksgiving rush I decided to share with you what the blog tracker from Ice Rocket says are the most popular posts of the quarter. It should be noted that I don’t necessarily think of these posts as being among my best.
The Duggar Family Revisited
The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants
Going Commando
What Are Your Favorite Song Lyrics?
Morality Without Religion- A Comment to The Self-Righteous
Anger Management
Besheret- The Concept of Meeting the Perfect Mate
Weird Signs
The Electoral College
No! No! No! Eye Tattoos Are Out
How To Hunt Really Big Game
Using The Blog To Build A Community
My BeardWhat Benefits Do You Receive From Being President
Alone In The Dark
Cheap Sunglasses
And just for the heck of it here are a few others I stumbled onto:
The Worst Album Covers- Ethel Merman Disco Mix
Cheeseburger Leads to 911 Call
It has been a long time since I made any major changes to the template so I figured it was time to make a few changes to the joint. I am not sure if I really like this new look, but I learned a long time ago that sometimes it helps to give change a time to sink in.
Of course I am famous for hating change so maybe there is nothing unusual about this. Not that it really matters, this blog is something that I do for the hell of it. So there is really no reason to get too serious.
Who knows, I may still decide to shut the shack down and move permanently into fancier digs. It is definitely under consideration, but it is relatively low on the priority list. Not to mention that this place has been indexed so many times by the search engines that I don’t have to try as hard to generate traffic.
Not that I write solely for the chance to engage with an audience. More on this later.
As is my wont sometimes I like to air out the archives and share some old posts again.
If you are among the daily visitors you may have noticed that during the past few months I have turned on the comment moderation feature several times. The reason has been because the good old Shack is taking a shellacking from spammers who choose to pollute the blog with all sorts of commercial notices.
I have a fairly liberal commenting policy in which I let a lot go. Unlike some other bloggers I don’t always nuke comments that oppose my point-of-view. In a number of cases I have retained comments that were patently offensive.
The reason is simple, one of the reasons that I blog is for the dialogue. I like the interaction. I like to have my views challenged. I don’t like being wrong and I don’t like looking like a fool, but sometimes that is the price for pay for engaging others.
Anyway, during the past few months there have been a number of times in which people have placed comments that are nothing more than an ad for a business. I appreciate their belief that my blog serves as a good platform for promoting these companies, but I don’t appreciate being used.
Or should I say that I don’t appreciate being used for advertising for commercial services unless I am paid for it or have decided that I want to promote a product/service.
So, if you post these blatant ads without consulting me first there is a good chance that I am going to remove them. I’d rather not implement the comment moderation again, but if that is what it takes so be it.
Every now and then I like to take a look at what the old stats say are my most popular posts. One of the things that I find to be of interest is that the trends do not always follow the most recent posts. In other words, it is not unusual to find posts from prior years still generating traffic.
You’ll also notice that Haveil Havalim posts are consistently among the most popular. If you are looking for a way to generate traffic, well you should host the damn thing.
Here is a brief snapshot of some of the most popular posts here.
Weird Signs
What Are Your Favorite Song Lyrics?
The Duggar Family Revisited
The Worst Album Covers- Ethel Merman Disco Mix
Cheeseburger Leads to 911 Call
Haveil Havalim- The Almost Purim Edition
Alone In The Dark
HH #155- The Falling Asleep At My Computer Edition
Haveil Havalim #151- The P.S.D. Edition
The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants
HH #165 Happy 60th Birthday Israel