Since I know lots of people probably skip over the comments, I just want to note that the posts below this one have a number of interesting comments from readers, some of which I have responded to. I invite other readers to contribute, also, lest it become the Jeff/Tim/Marco show—and that invitation goes double to those of you from other countries around the world, who might have different views to offer. We’d like to hear from you.
Happy Thanksgiving, Globally Speaking
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Here in the United States, we have a holiday called Thanksgiving, a day on which we pause to reflect with gratitude on all of the blessings that we have received over the past year. Also, we generally have a big meal with family and/or friends, during which we stuff ourselves with roast turkey*, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry relish, yams, and other good things from the kitchen. Then we roll away from the table, and the football fans watch football (no, not soccer—football, the game where oversized lunks knock each other down to get control of an oval inflated ball), and everyone else waits until they’re hungry enough to go for leftovers.
(*Vegetarians sometimes try eating a product called “Tofurkey,” which is an attempt to make tofu taste like turkey. We tried it one year, because we all like tofu. I have never tasted anything so vile in my life. Unless—no wait, there was something worse—it was “Tofuti,” a substitute for ice cream. Oh God, the memory. I do not recommend it.)
All of this is a long introduction to my saying Happy Thanksgiving! to everyone, whether or not you happen to celebrate it as a holiday in your country. We all have things to be grateful for, and one of the things I’m grateful for is that I’ve had visitors to this blog (and to my writing web sites) from so many places around the world. A while ago, I ran a list of countries I’d noted from a casual scan of the web logs. Here it is again:
Canada, England, Singapore, Iran, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Slovenia, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, England, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Poland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Lithuania, and Mauritius.
Since then, I’ve had visitors from:
Argentina
Austria
Belarus
Belgium
Bolivia
Chile
China
Costa Rica
Croatia
Cyprus
Denmark
Ecuador
Egypt
Estonia
Finland
Georgia
Greece
Indonesia
Kenya
Mexico
Morocco
Republic of Korea
Romania
Russian Federation
South Africa
Sri Lanka
Sweden
Switzerland
Thailand
Turkey
Uganda
Vietnam
There may be others I’ve missed, since my log-checking is anything but rigorous.
To all of you, best wishes and Happy Thanksgiving!
World Wide Blogosphere
I have a little web meter thingy attached to this blog, and also to my regular web site and my online SF writing guide, which counts visitors. It can do other things, as well. One of the coolest things it does is show me a world map with little dots on it, telling me where people have come to visit from. I absolutely love this feature, and I check it nearly every night. (Don’t worry—it doesn’t identify you, or lead me back to your computer, or anything like that. But it does show me the city and country that someone connected from.)
Of course, the largest proportion of visitors are from the U.S. and Canada—no surprise. But outside America, I see I’m having conversations (okay, mostly one-sided conversations) with people from Singapore, Iran, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Slovenia, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, England, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Poland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Lithuania, and Mauritius. Probably some others I missed. I can even click to see a map of the country, and read a little about it.
I love this connection with people from around the world. I know that some of you are from countries that are not on particularly good terms with my own—and that almost makes it more gratifying, to be able to reach across boundaries in a small way like that.
You know what would be cool? If more of you left messages to say hello. Then we could a multi-sided conversation. What do you think?
Problem Fixed
Everything seems to be displaying correctly now. Turned out the problem was a combination of some of the images being slightly too large, and the ads being slightly too large.
Sometimes my life feels like one continuous IT troubleshooting session. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to get the computers in the house to talk to various printers on the network–especially the printer on our SMC router/print server. Ay caramba. Plus my PDA went dead last night and had to have everything reloaded. Plus the laptop that lost its video display and is now a desktop plugged into a monitor. So much for portability.
Oh well, I guess we’re better off with these things than without them. Just wish they didn’t rule our lives quite so much.
Now I must get back to work on my new project. More on that in a forthcoming post.
Display problem in IE
I don’t know why, but something’s gone wrong with the way this blog displays in Internet Explorer (the righthand bar is pushed way to the bottom). It looks fine in Firefox, which is what I usually browse with. Until I can figure out the problem and correct it, I’ll just have to ask you IE users to excuse our appearance. Thanks.