7 June 1998: Hiccups in the Road of Life

Sunday, 7 June 1998:

Hiccups in the Road of Life

A got some feedback from a reader (who I used to be in an APA with, actually) who said I can change my profile on AlexLit to get more recommendations. So I bumped it up to 100 to see what I'd get.

It recommended a bunch more Lois McMaster Bujold and Tim Powers, as well as Iain Banks, Gene Wolfe, Connie Willis, P. C. Hodgell, and a number of mainstream books (relative classics, mainly). Hmm. Well, it's not like I don't already have a bazillion books to read, but it'll be interesting to see how the list changes as I read and rate more. Plus I do have those Tim Powers books to read, which will make some de facto changes...

I went for a bike ride this afternoon, and got halfway into the UW Arboretum, when I realized my bike was steering a little funny. I looked down and saw that my front tire had gone flat! I'd been using my bike for several years without a flat, and now I have two in three weeks. Weird! (Sometime soon I'm hoping to put up maps of my various bike routes and escapades, but I haven't yet had time to get GIFs in a format I like and edit them to my satisfaction. I'll probably put them up on my old entries when I do, and let you know about them on whatever the current entry is at that time. But probably I won't get to this 'til after my vacation.)

It was a half-hour walk out of the arboretum to the bike shop. I was bummed, but it got fixed up soon enough that I went back in and sat and read for a while. (Still working on Jack McDevitt's The Hercules Text, which I'm finding pretty tedious.) Then I went and had lunch and frozen custard for dessert, and biked back home.

Spent some time watching cartoons I had on tape. I realized I'd set the wrong time and instead of getting two episodes of The Superfriends I got two episodes of Sailor Moon instead. Boy, if there's one thing that's worse than old Hanna-Barbera and Filmation cartoons, it's Anime! Have I mentioned how much I loathe the Manga/Anime art style? I find only the very tip-top works of the whole art style to be even somewhat palatable (Akira, for instance). Boy, Sailor Moon was really, really bad. I'll not make that mistake again.

I did a whole bunch of laundry, and tried out my new electric razor, which works quite well, giving me a closer shave than my old razor had given me in a while. And I updated the WisCon Web page, and otherwise bummed around the net for a while. It was a pretty mellow day, even as I got a bunch of things done that needed doing. But it's gonna be a pretty hectic week, I think...

I seem to be getting about 20 hits to each journal entry in the week-or-so following it going up. Most pages over the past month tend to get at least 2 hits in a given week. That's not bad. Way back when, I said I'd be ecstatic about getting 10 hits a day. Am I ecstatic? Hmm.

I know of several regular readers of my journal, some of whom are friends or relatives I knew before I started this project (which has been going for over ten months!). I have a few regular readers whom I can't identify from the site their accesses come from. But probably a third of my hits are people who check out a few recent entries, and don't end up coming back.

Without a doubt, the most popular 'old' entry is 4 October 1997, with 25 August 1997 a distant second. I presume the latter is because it has the word 'erotica' in the title (which has nothing to do with the subject matter; it's a lame pun). The former is presume is due to legitimate interest; maybe I should find some good sites on the subject and put links to them on that page. Anyone have any suggestions?

Michael Rawdon (Contact)