Statistics bore the hell outta most people. Numbers make poor arguments and remind folks how much they’ve always hated math.
Well, I’m not “most people” — I love statistics. As much as I’m a card-carrying word guy, I enjoy digging into data and uncovering stories behind the numbers.
WordPress, the buggy utility behind Ubi Libertas Blog, records and reports all kinds of stats. It lets me know how each post performs — visitors and views, trends and sources, lots more. I know how many of you read what I post on a given day, and certain patterns have become familiar.
Recently, however, something odd has been showing up in my WordPress statistics. A post from mid-January — “Greetings from the least ‘woke’ state in America” — attracted the typical number of views when it was published. For the next few months it didn’t get many hits, nor did I expect that it would. But then, in mid-May, it started popping up again in my daily numbers.
It stayed there. It’s still there. That post now has amassed three times more views in the last few weeks that it did when it first appeared here, and if the trend continues it’ll become the most-read post since I launched Ubi Libertas Blog in October of 2020.
Why? I have no idea. WordPress doesn’t give me enough information to answer that question. I suspect that someone, somewhere, linked to the post, and that’s what’s produced the hits.
But I really don’t know.
Ubi Libertas Blog isn’t a “monetized” medium, so getting more views doesn’t fatten my wallet. It simply piques my curiosity.
As we drove east on the county road this morning, we had a whitetail setting our pace.
I won’t lie to you — I’m damned cranky this evening. I’ve been in a bad humor all day, despite spending it on The Mountain. That may be a first for me.
Despite my foul mood, I did get a couple of things done. (One-and-a-half things, actually.) The first was setting those 44 pavers for the generator path. I didn’t put down sand for a base or do anything fancy — it’s temporary, after all, and it gets the job done just fine.
I even made good use of one block that broke. Waste not.
The other job I started (but didn’t finish) was putting together a 10×10 soft-sided shed, a low-budget Harbor Freight deal to serve us ’til we move our real shed to the homesite. I got the frame put together, squared and staked in place, leaving the canopy for next time. I didn’t have it in me today.
At one point Deb came down and begged me to stop what I was doing. Apparently she thought that my fussing with a steel framework while thunder and lightning danced around The Mountain was a particularly shitty idea.
Deciding that she was probably right, I covered my work, sat in the driver’s seat of the truck and waited for it to pass. And pass it did, without a drop of rain.
I’m looking forward to closing my eyes this evening and putting this day behind me. I rarely find myself in such a funk, but here I am — grimy, tired, sore and feeling every bit my age.
There’s no guarantee that a new day will change anything, of course. I’ll just show up tomorrow and see what happens.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB