Goddamned Technological Whatsits

This site was down — not working; busted; broken; non-functional; stymied — from about 9 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. ADT. ADT stands for Atlantic Daylight Time. It is not a very common time zone and as such the acronym is hardly ever used. It is a time zone that does not exist in the United States. I am further East than all of my American readers. Except for the ones in Puerto Rico, maybe. I am not sure what time zone Puerto Rico is in, nor am I sure where Puerto Rico is, exactly. I am also unclear on whether Puerto Rico is considered part of the United States or if it is just, like, a friend of the United States that does not really contribute much to the day-to-day goings-on of the United States but is kept around because it (Puerto Rico) does not cause much of a ruckus and seems nice enough and is always willing to lend their support. I am also not sure if this relationship model is a virtuous one — a case of a more powerful and well-adapted entity providing protection for a less-apt one — or one of insensitivity and pretension. Is the United States’ attitude towards Puerto Rico, a nation (maybe) that exists in some time zone that might be East of the Atlantic Time zone (I’m not sure), the hallmark of a conceited superpower, drunk on its own successes over the past century? I am unsure.

I am unsure of a lot of things. Except for the time zone part. I am in the Atlantic Time zone. We are currently under Daylight Savings Time. Those things I know.

In any case, as the site was down for so long and it is now quite late, putting together a suitable update would be a rather difficult feat. As such, I am not going to put together a suitable update. I am just going to write a bunch of words, group them into sentences, group those sentences into paragraphs, and then sprinkle some punctuation about. I call this process ‘writing’ and if you stick with me one day I’ll teach it to you.

Here are the Top 10 Search Terms for this site for April 2006:

1. 370 ((I think this is some spambot-related thing. I don’t think people actually search for numbers. “Get me all the info you can on 370!” is a pretty ridiculous thing for someone to say, no matter what the context.))
2. savage garden
3. 283
4. relient k
5. last christmas
6. be your own windkeeper ((This appears every month, often at a higher position. That Friends episode must air a lot in syndication.))
7. creepy shit ((There is lots of lots of this here.))
8. emo layouts
9. slade
10. freeloveplus
11. blue eyes
12. vandal savage
13. venom girl ((The month before this ‘venom sex’ was in the top 20, and yet Marvel Comics continues to doubt the enduring popularity of the Venom character.))
14. billy mack
15. christmas is all around
16. dark emo
17. emo layout ((I must use the word ‘emo’ way too much. This is disconcerting.))
18. the slade
19. assignment school smile
20. cary brothers

Isn’t that fascinating. While I am looking at these ridiculous statistics, I should mention that April 2006 saw this site receive more traffic than ever before, with some 17, 160 visits over 30 days. (68,709 hits) That’s 572 visits (2290 hits) a day! This colourful bar graph shows significant increases in traffic every month since December! How much of this is from spam robots and pre-teen girls looking to download songs from the Rent soundtrack? I’d wager a lot of it! But, still, you know, thanks for the big numbers. I love charts. ((And footnotes. Don’t worry. The novelty will wear off very quickly.))

Matt