Friday, April 07, 2006

Links

At the bottom of the page you may notice a counter. That lets me know how many people have visited the blog since I set up the counter last year. I also have access to information such as the city, state and country of a visitor, as well as the link that brought them to my site and what they read while here. It's interesting to see how people find me.

The most common referral link has been the Google search. When someone is looking for information on Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale, they will inevitably come upon my blog in the results. But other searches will drag me into their list as well. Just today I've seen people looking for "vineyard cult church", "abundant life christian center elyria", and the most intriguing one to me, someone out there searching for the name of my aunt, Evelyn MacNair, who died five years ago this month.

I've also had people post links to something I've written from their own blog site. After I wrote about the largest churches in America Slice of Laodicea posted a link, and I've probably had 150 visitors from that site alone. I'm on several blogrolls, and I've been taken off several as well, depending on what my current topic of conversation is. I was the darling of Traditionalist Catholics for a short time, I made it onto a couple of evangelical lists, I think I was even on an Orthodox one. Only one time has someone given me a critical review of an essay of mine, and that was after Hurricane Katrina when I wrote What Would Jesus Flood? (Read his commentary here)

And then there are the unknowns, who don't connect from a specific link. My regulars come from this list. I would love to know who is checking in from Belmont, New Hampshire, because they visit every day. Whenever I post a comment on Randy Bohlender's blog he stops by. Doesn't mean he ever posts my comments, but I at least get a hit. Lansing, Michigan is my parents, even though they are several hours up the road in Mancelona. I even had one ISP in my list from Washington, DC, from a government office. My voting record from the last election must have made it to the big house :)

Blogging has been fun. I've read the good (Greg Burnett), the bad (any one of a number of Christian political blogs), and the geeky (anyone who whines about "Windoze" and how a Macintosh is SO MUCH BETTER- see an example of such at this blog here). I've gotten attention from my local paper, and I feel like I've sharpened my writing skills from doing it so much.

So what does the future hold for The Pardoner's Tale? You know, I can't really say. I don't have a plan, I just have an inspiration and then ramble on. You'll see more about my wife and kids, more about marriage, and more about autism. I would like to get some book reviews in. Apart from that... I guess you'll just have to tune in and see.

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