Couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Bren Olswanger, aka Bren from The Apprentice, who ran for judge in the August 3 election. Well, today he found my blog and sent me an e-mail… turns out I know him not only from The Apprentice, but from class – he was one of my computer science students at the U of M in the mid ’90s. I always thought that name sounded a bit familiar but I never could figure out why… he was in one of those big auditorium classes that seated 90 and ended up seating 105 because I’d give people permission to add over the limit. Kinda cool, I taught a celebrity.
After work, I gave a Romanian a ride to the mall. “I had planned to go there at 1, but my ride never showed up,” she told me. Now I only have 4 hours to shop instead of 8.” No kidding. She was going to spend EIGHT hours shopping. I dropped her off at TJ Maxx across from the mall and went in myself to look for shirts (didn’t buy any though – the selection reminded me what a ghettofabulous town Memphis is). By the time I was done, about 10 minutes later, she already had a cart full of purses. Man… I feel sorry for her future husband, whoever he turns out to be. Actually, I don’t feel sorry for him at all, because she’s totally hot.
She had someone else coming to pick her up at 9, so after making a quick visit to OfficeMax to pick up a wireless router, I got out of East Bumblefuck as quickly as possible and headed to Young Avenue Deli for the Blogger Bash.
Finally met Philip in person after reading his blog for the better part of a year. He told me that his readership, which has been averaging about 100 a day recently, jumped to 350 after he posted a sorority pic where the girls all had bare breasts with stickers over their nipples. Wow.
Hey Philip, I wonder how many extra hits you’ll get from people clicking over from my blog in the next 24 hours?
Reminds me… I need to upgrade my tracker, which means I’ll have to reset it and lose all the data I’ve collected over the past 5 years. Kind of makes me sad… it’s recorded over 30,000 visits to my blog, including 81 from Romania. But, I guess it’s time for a fresh start. Actually, it’s probably a good thing because it figures years of time when no one was looking at my blog into the average and reports it as something like 82 visits per day, when in fact I’ve really been averaging 220-250 visits to my blog on weekdays and about 135 on weekends. I’ll reset it sometime this weekend. If you’ve never seen my tracker, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the planet icon – you can get one for your site for free.
Having such a well-read blog is fun sometimes… people send me e-mails all the time saying, “Did you know (person I’ve mentioned in my blog) was at (location) with (other person) last night?” I wind up finding out a lot of things I’m not “supposed” to know. Heh.
It looks like my post advertising the Emma Sunday Brunch Extravaganza this Sunday at Sleep Out’s from 11 to 3 is working. Looks like fellow bloggers Philip and Semi-Charmed Kat will both be there. Boobs have been something of a theme up there recently, and for that reason I have a feeling Kat will feel right at home.
Kat is also somewhat peeved because when she does a Google search for herself, her blog doesn’t come up as the number-one hit – MY blog does. Kat is starting to learn who really matters on the Internet.
Serrabee tells me that Papa Top’s West Coast Turnaround is a good option for Saturday night. They play classic country and are a lot of fun. They’ll be playing at Automatic Slim’s. Might be something fun and different to do – Slim’s isn’t on my normal rotation of downtown bars.
Tomorrow at lunch I’ll be giving a talk at a convention organized by MLGW to teach community members how to blog. My portion of the program (about 10 minutes I think) will be blogger activism, and how blogging was used to successfully address a community issue (crime – I’ll be talking about the formative days of Residents for a Safer Downtown Memphis).
Random fact of the day: In Canada, the Buick LaCrosse is sold as the Buick Allure, because “lacrosse” is Quebecois slang for masturbation.
And with that, you’re smarter than you were 30 seconds ago. Maybe Pete will ask that question on trivia night on Tuesday. I’m still wide awake, so I guess I have time to set up my wireless router before I go to bed.