Vendredi gras! Let’s celebrate.

• A good weekend coming up here. New babies in the future, dinner with friends tonight, grandsons tomorrow night, and watching #1 Son play drums in a band Sunday night. All good stuff. Weather should be fantastic all weekend, too, although I’ll be awfully glad for air conditioning.
• Three weeks till departure for the New England Odyssey. If I’d ever do a “happy dance” (which I wouldn’t), I’d insert it here.
• Y’know…when I wanted LeBron James to win clutch games, it didn’t happen. Now that I want him to lose, he scores 45 points in a single game. Seriously, he needs to retire. I’m sick of being a spoilsport.  That’s OK, though. I’ll still celebrate today.
• After hours and hours of customization, I think I have the new digs here at RtB looking how I want. I hope you like it, fiends — or at least that you’ll get used to it after awhile. I think we’re good like this for a couple more years.

What’s up for you this weekend? I hope the weather’s nice where you are, and that you don’t have to go to work.

What can you do, eh? *shrug*

Tried to scare my lurkers out of the shadows, and they wouldn’t take the bait. But it was great to see the comments from my adored regulars, as well as some Finkites who don’t normally leave comments. Yay! That part worked. Thanks for the comment lurve! You know I thrive on it.

So, how do I know the lurkers lurk? Stats, fiends. Stat reports. I don’t know who each visitor is, but it lists a general location (of the ISP, that is; it could be that a person browsing from Cleveland is listed as being in Akron, so it’s all rather generic). Therefore, you needn’t fear that I’m stalking your clicky behavior.

This week, I got about 160 hits a day. Compare that to the number of comments…lessee here, do the math. I get roughly an average of four different people leaving comments on a daily basis. Four is 2.5 percent of 160, so we’re good on the 1% rule.

At any rate, I’m happy. If people are reading and getting something out of it (even if it’s a sense of slightly confused bemusement), I’m delighted.

Goal for this day? Hunt for a new RtB template. This one’s two years old, almost to the day. Time to remodel.

Have a great Thurgsday — I’m off to walk Rousseau, then get to work. Lurkers: Boo! There. Dyscare ya?

OK, you know who you are. I know you’re out there: the Silent Majority.

According to (admittedly dated) information on Wikipedia, the interactive content of the online world breaks down thusly:

The creators (bloggers) make up one percent, and the contributors (those who comment) comprise ten. The other 89% “lurk” (read, but don’t comment). Now why is that? I mean, I can understand some disparity, as no one is compelled to comment on any forum anywhere, but them’s some janked up numbers.

I have since discovered that the BBC debunked the 1% rule (but in the UK only). Now it’s reportedly 10% who actively participate. Well, that’s better. But still…

If I maintained a user list (which I don’t) where readers were required to register and log in to comment, I’d likely have a lot fewer contributors than I do at present. If I ran a headcount of the individuals who have commented on my site since 2008, the number would probably be around 50 — including David Soul. But wouldn’t it be great to have 50+  people in conversation around these parts on a regular basis? That’s why I got into this racket, fiends. Most of you know that. This is  — and always has been — a labor of love, as evidenced by the lack of ad space, which would drive much more traffic to my little warren. I don’t do it for the notoriety; I do it for the lurve.

And all of this is not to say that if you don’t comment, you’re not doing your job or some such nonsense. I read many blogs each morning, and I only comment on a few. As for the rest: I just skulk about, anonymously. Of course, I understand about moving on. There are several people who used to comment all the time, but don’t anymore. Regardless, I miss them. This post is also a virtual squeeze around the necks of my current contributors — don’t you dare desert me. In fact, if a reader de-lurks today, please help me to welcome him/her. It’s all about that snappy repartee, mes amis.

So — ready, lurkers? I’m sticking out my neck here. Come one, come all. Comment and let us know you’re out there. Let me know what you like or don’t like about this little enterprise (aside from saying that you like the fact that you can lurk undisturbed. )

People don’t like to give away that email address, and I understand that. Thing is, you can post anonymously here; just give a fake name. I promise I won’t blab your email address, and I have absolutely nothing to sell. You’ll never receive a newsletter from me. Cripes, I won’t even know your email address unless I call it up in the admin dashboard. You’ll never hear from me in email, unless it’s necessary to notify everyone of some imminent cataclysm.

Deal? Deal. K go. Tell me something. Even if it’s “You never post anything remotely interesting enough for me to comment on.”

Ouchy. 

BluntCard is a bad place. But sometimes they have funny stuff.

Hahaha

The Thriller is in Columbus all day, and I’m here at home. Bizarre.

I am rarely alone (good for me, since I’m what you’d call a textbook extrovert), so when I have complete solitude, I sometimes wonder what to do with myself. There’s a list a mile long — though I haven’t written it down, of course — of tasks I need to get taken care of before we leave town at the end of the month, but here I sit, free and easy. Go crazy all year, running inside the small hamster wheel, then kablam — summer freedom. I feel like I’ve been shot out of a cannon, and I’m in endless, aimless flight.

I guess I’m so accustomed to having my days pre-populated, it’s difficult for me to deal with unstructured time. Do you ever feel that way? In some ways, I always fear summer vacation from school. Whereas most people (myself included) really look forward to it, it does hold some uncertainty, which bothers me ever so slightly. What to do with an “open” day?

Part of my squirminess comes from living in a self-imposed atmosphere of “idle hands are the devil’s playground.” In other words, nothing good can come of laziness; it doesn’t look good, for one thing, and idle time equals wasted time. Others have told me that my inability to relax and do nothing once in awhile (a pastime which, in many cultures, is viewed as healthy and rejuvenating) is fueled by fear of failure. Failure to produce, failure to succeed professionally. It’s a hamster wheel for sure.

What do you do with an open day? When you are presented with a vacation, how do you approach it? Are you able to just “switch off” the rat race and immediately relax, or do you have to work yourself into it? I’m still working, I fear…

So I guess I’ll go watch my DVR episode of The Borgias, then get to work. Work? On my vacation? Yeah, ‘fraid so. Can’t see myself doing much else today. Hmmph.

Restless Fink