Blogging?

just reflecting.  I miss tracksy.  For those of  you who never used it, Tracksy was a hit counter –plus.   I used to go into Tracksy almost every day just to see how many and who were hitting my blog.  It didn’t give URL’s or addresses, but it identified  the town or area from which the hit came, how many and which pages the reader checked out, if the reader was a repeater, and all sorts of similar information.  A couple of years ago Tracksy just disappeared. (you can still google it, but there is really nothing there.)

This was very frustrating to me because, quite honestly, the darn site influenced my content.  It was easy to see what pages people (even those who never commented) read, which ones were googled, if someone got there from the “next blog” feature of blogger (I use that a lot), and I tended to write things that got hits.

I tried to subscribe to a hit counter from Google, but my ineptitude took over, and I never got any information from it at all.  I subscribed to sitemeter and I get a weekly e-mail full of zeros.  (I think that if it didn’t generate the occasional comment, that I was the only one reading my blog.  This has influenced my content already.  I have decided to write whatever hits my on a given day.  If  it is political, okay.  If it is the weather, fine.  If it is one of my Mormon Missionary in Finland stories, it will have to do.  If is is just B. S. that’s okay too.  I am going to try to post at least once a week (this week I posted three or four times, not counting this one.)  my next post (since I have figured out how to post pictures and albums on Windows Live Writer) I am probably going to post some of the pictures from our cruise to Alaska (including some that i had to scan).  

The whole political thing I gave up on awhile ago, but I have reached the stage where I can’t completely shut up about it.  I remember predicting, way back in the  primaries, that, based on his communication skills, Obama was going to be our new president.  Now I think he has fallen into the Jimmy Carter trap.  When Carter was the inept Governor of Georgia, he used to give the occasion real stem winder of a speech.  Really excellent communication.  He did pretty well as a candidate, but when he became  president, he fell into the hands of speechwriters whose speeches he felt it necessary to read.  As a result, I almost defy anyone who watched a speech at that time to remember anything about a Carter speech than his eyes looking down at the script, then he looked up, said “My fullow Amerkins” and flashed the Carter grin.  From there, it was always down hill.

If I were a speech teacher, as I was for many years, most of Obama’s campaign speeches would have been grade “A”.  The best of his speeches this year would be “B minuses”, with a few C’s and even a D or two.  The whole joke about Obama’s teleprompter is tied up in the fact that he is reading speeches, failing to look at and connect with his audiences (When you are looking at the teleprompters, only those people who are sitting on a liine behind the teleprompters get a sense of direct eye contact.)   All of his speeches have developed a rhythm—Duh de de duh duh duh, Duh de de duh duh duh, and he doesn’t speak in paragraphs but in phrases.  Boy does he need a good speech coach.

AS for the Copenhagen stuff, the only question is whether the U.S. is going to be raped, or simply (excuse the expression, I am usually more dainty) screwed.  The difference, as I see it is whether what happens to us as a result is done to us while we are protesting, or if it is done with our consent.

Oh well.  So much about blogging.  I will be back soon.