Learning Curve

After spending over an hour staring at my keyboard trying to figure out what to write today, I started perusing the archives of my blog. I lost track of the fact that I was supposed to be writing and started playing with all the settings and tools in Blogger. I've looked at all these before, but I learned a few new things.

I figured out how to back up my blog. I've always heard this was a good idea in case crazed zombie hordes attack the Blogger servers, but had never done it. So I downloaded the entire content of my blog. I didn't want to just have it on my hard drive, so I uploaded another copy to my online storage at Google Drive. I don't really know if that was a good idea since both Drive and Blogger are powered by Google, but I figure if Google ever goes down, the world is probably seconds away from implosion anyway…so, it's not really going to matter.

Once I felt that Blogger wasn't entertaining me anymore, I moved on and stumbled upon how to embed individual tweets into a blog post.

What if all the people who danced with signs to advertise stores went on strike? That would be the best picket line ever?
— Brett Minor (@brettminor) September 24, 2012

"Get off your high horse!" - Veterinarian who prescribed medical marijuana.
— Brett Minor (@brettminor) September 18, 2012

I had to throw these in simply because I learned how to do it. Apparently, this is a pretty simple process, but I never knew about it because no one told me and I missed the press release. Also, Twitter never sends me letters to introduce their new features. Consider this your warning that my next several posts will probably have tweets interspersed in them. And if you're not already a Twitter follower, now's a good time to do it.

After playing with my new Twitter toy for a while, I wandered over to Google Analytics to see what search terms are leading people to my site. Here are some of the stranger ones.

jackass whisperer

All of the guys on Jackass are pretty loud except when they are whispering to the camera about how they are about to strip someone naked, throw him onto a bus of nuns and then hold the doors shut while they throw snakes in the windows. To my knowledge, I have never discussed these things on my blog, so I don't understand how it brings them to my site, but I welcome the traffic. Although, I am curious to try an experiment. Here is the cast list for the most common Jackass characters: Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Ryan Dunn, Chris Pontius, Steve-O, Preston Lacy, Brandon DiCamillo. Let's see if that influences my search results.

angry turkey
I briefly mentioned my Angry Birds addiction several months ago and turkeys are birds, so I guess this works. Plus, most turkeys I have seen appear to be angry, but I would be angry too if I was a bird who couldn't fly and is basically only good for being eaten.

when i miss you i re-read our old conversations and smile like an idiot
This one actually popped up several times with just slight variations. I do often re-read my old posts because I think I'm brilliant and it does make me smile like an idiot, but I had no idea Google knew that. These search engines are getting spookily powerful. I am getting the red squiggly lines under the word 'spookily', but I know what I am trying to say and I believe that's the best word - even if spell check says it's not a word.

karate vs taekwondo
I hope the person searching this found his answer when he got here. I don't remember writing about either one.

no outside food
This one I have no problem with. People shouldn't be eating while reading my posts. It's just rude.

butcher clown

Click picture for
clown butcher post

This one is kind of creepy. Not only because someone would be searching for this one to begin with, but also the fact that I actually have a picture of a butcher clown on my site.

naked redheads   
I don't know what I wrote that caused this search to lead people to my blog, but I could get behind this one.
 
amputee cheerleader
I have written about my buddy Adam several times. He is an amputee, but I believe the person coming to my blog hoping to satisfy their strange fetish is greatly disappointed when they find his picture. Although, if there's a market for it, maybe I should put Adam in a short skirt and we could start a website.