Sunday Storm Update

 We're watching the twin storms, Laura and Marcos, and the tacks are beginning to firm up.  According to the National Hurricane Center, Marcos is expected to get here first, with landfall on Monday

Just about the time the wind stops blowing, we have to set up for Laura, which is expected here on Thursday.

This is going to be an interesting week.

Grandson Quinton is a member of the 139th Regional Support Group, LANG.  He just got a call from his boss, ordering him to saddle up and report for a possible activation.  He's dropping stuff in the duffel bag right now, and will report about noon.  

Shit's fixing to get real around here.

Rain

Rain tonight.  That's not out o the ordinary, although it is the new normal.  So far, it has rained every day in August, which is decidedly weird for Louisiana.  Normally by now we're i the dry season, but this month has been nothing, if not wet.

Doing laundry on Sunday afternoon, Belle informs me that the dryer is out.  It's not heating, only blowing cool air.  Which ain't good.  The dryer is fourteen (14) years old, so I guess it has served honorably.  A quick search of parts and some research at YouTube tells me that replacing a heating element isn't that big a deal.  I'll stop by Appliance Pats on the way home tomorrow and pick up a replacement element.

Technology makes it easier to do these things.  I have the model and serial number in a photo on my cell phone, and YouTube will teach a fellow just about anything.  I bet you could learn how to do an emergency appendectomy if you searched long enough on YouTube.

There is nothing I can do about it, one way or the other, so I've defaulted to whiskey.  I'll go outside, sip my whiskey and watch it rain.

HTM (What?)

I've been playing with HTML since it got too hot to work outside.  I used to be fairly good at coding web pates, but I've been trying to make columns, using the DIVcommand, and I'm having a bit of a problem with justification.  I'm trying to make an archive page for some of my writings, and I just can't seem to make it do what I want it to do.


Let's just say that my brain is fried.  Coding has always been hard for me, and I don't enjoy it a bit.  Which is why I use blogger instead of some of the other blog engines.

Links and hits

A link from Say Uncle is good for about 800 visits.

He linked on Friday to a blog post on Tuesday and my sitemeter jumped about 800 visits.

I write this blog to amuse myself, to keep in touch with loved ones and to jot down stuff I might want to remember later. It's a journal of what's going on in my life. I check the sitemeter once a month or so from idle curiosity.

This little blog gets about 250 visits a day. When it jumps to over 1000, I start looking at the referral logs.

Interesting.

Old Posts and Comments.

Blogging is a funny pasttime. Everything I've written is available online and people searching for answers (aren't we all?), use Google to find information. Some of them stumble on this little blog. When I check my referral logs, I'm continually amazed at what some folks are searching.

Back in '06 I was building a restroom in the back yard to complement the pool we were planning to install. One post talked about ground rods, and my method for sticking an eight-foot rod in the ground. It's a method my Daddy taught me, and it works well in Louisiana where rocks in the dirt are a bit of an oddity in our soft soil.

I still get comments on that post. I found the most current one this morning, where a commenter asks:

I just started installing a grounding rod. I just used the jab and pull method but was not putting water in the hole. The ground is soft and wet, the rod went down about 3 foot very quick and was pushing some mud up to the top of the hole. When it got down about 3 foot it hit a rock and I have not been able to get past the rock. I put the connecting clamp on the top of the rod then used a small sledge hamer, after about 30 hits it had gone down about another half inch.
What should be done now? Move over and start again?
Thanks for the tips,

I don't know. I'm just a blogger who started talking about the challenges of building a bathroom. I'd imagine you could dig up the rock, or move over a foot and try again. This is one question that keeps coming up, and what works in alluvial soil Louisiana won't work at my brother's place in granite Vermont.

If I were faced with the challenge of installing a ground rod in rocky soil, I'd ask a local electrician what technique works best. Seriously. Local builders know the codes and the conditions that are liable to be found in their local area, and they've found work-arounds for most of the problems they're liable to face.

But, the main thrust of this particular posting is not my amazement that people are still asking questions. My amazement is that I've become the number one Google search for the string "Chug Ground Rod". I'm no expert. I'm not even a dedicated hobbyist in residential electrical wiring. I'm just some guy who listened to his Daddy, who had long experience in alluvial Louisiana.

If I had a serious question about voltage, I'd ask Mostly Cajun, who seems to have some expertise.

New Blog

My youngest son has a blog, The Displaced Louisiana Guy. He's living in Florida, working as an interpreter at a state park, specializing in 18th century Spanish colonial times.

I've added him to my blogroll. The rest of you go over and say Hi!

Went to the dance, but didn't get kissed.

When I wrote the Law School post this morning, it was based on an Instapundit post that I linked. I decided to write Glenn Reynolds and he quoted my entire email in Instapundit, but I didn't get a link.

Damn! I wonder how many hits that would have generated?

Reading back through my email to him, I'm amazed at how many typos I made. If I were grading that paper I'd give it a C-. I really need to learn to proofread more thoroughly.

But, no Insta-lanche. Damn!

Referrals

I check my referral logs fairly regularly, a couple of times a week. You can do the same thing by clicking on the Sitemeter logo on the bottom of the right sidebar.

It helps me to see what people are reading and what search engines are finding my little blog. Not that it matters to anyone but me. I work this blog for my amusement and only for my amusement; I don't make any money from it and don't intend to.

Back in October 2006, I made a blog entry about chugging in a ground rod for the pool house project. People are still referring to that post. That simply amazes me.

This little blog gets about 225 hits per day, not a lot by any standard. The most requested searches have to do with gunpowder, specifically surplus IMR 4895. Let me tell you guys something. It's gone. There won't be any more surplus 4895, not in the forseeable future.

The next two most requested pages talk about the Remington 870 (there's still lots of those out there) and Lee Liquid Alox. There's lots of Liquid Alox, too. I like the stuff and use it almost exclusively for cast bullet applications.

It's fun to see what people are looking for when they come to my blog. I hope my scribblings serve some small purpose. Regardless, I'll keep writing. Y'all keep coming.

Driving Traffic

Not that I much care, but I'm getting about 200 hits a day here at this blog, according to Sitemeter. The stats for this blog are found at the little icon in the right sidebar, and anyone can look at them.

Over at the other site, the sitemeter there told me that I was getting 1600 hits per day. Maybe so. But I'm convinced now that most of those hits, as opposed to the 200 or so I get here every day, were spam. I was getting a lot of spam comments, sometimes three or four hundred a day. It was a real pain to keep the spam out of the blog.

One thing I've learned, is that if you link to CNN, they'll link back. That drives traffic. This article is about something Dennis Kucinich said today, something about McCain and Bush and ... well, no one gives a shit. No one with any sense gives a shit. But, the simple link will draw traffic. Again, not that I care, but I like playing with CNN. That one link is worth a couple of hundred hits. Maybe some of them will look around and become regular readers. Although, I can't imagine that anyone who cares about Dennis Kucinich would read a blog by a gun-loving grandfather in Louisiana.

I'd rather have the gun lovers reading the blog, but those guys aren't good about linking, and they aren't good about commenting. I get 21 comments from CNN readers about Joe Biden, but I can't get two comments about a .45-70. Sheesh!

Well, heck!

I've been blogging over on my private account, the PawPaw's House hosted by Verio. Over the last several days I've been having trouble accessing my accounts over there and I've learned that my site traffic is in excess of what is allowed on my little piddly account. I'm getting 1600 hits per day, so I've decided to come back to Blogger. I'll take a few days for things to calm down, but as soon as I can get online over there, I'll move the traffic to this site and decide what I'm going to do with the verio account.

Who knew when I started this blog that I'd be getting so much traffic on a little blog that I started for my own amusement?

Just damn.