Yes, I’m a traffic expert now because May was the most popular month ever on this blog.

It’s okay. You can LOL now.

Actually, I was on a forum and some people relatively new to blogging were talking about the subject. Mind you, I may not be John Chow, but I do happen to know a few things about blogging, so I offered some suggestions.

And then I got to thinking that I could really expand on my suggestions and turn them into an article.

So I did.

You can read it here: “Tips for Getting Traffic to Your Blog”

I have two more article ideas that I need to write up too. Out of those suggestions I made on the forum, I had enough ideas for three articles, once I expand upon my suggestions, of course.

I was going to make one really big article but then I thought the other two subjects would be better off standing on their own. At any rate, enjoy the current article that’s available.

As a side note, this is really the first blog post I’ve written all week. The posts for Sunday through Wednesday were written in the wee hours Saturday night / Sunday morning. A situation came up and I wasn’t sure what my availability would be, so I wrote and scheduled a bunch of blog posts. I’m actually writing this one Wednesday night.

Anyway, it was fun checking in each day to see what I had written because, honestly, I couldn’t remember half the stuff. So, it was kind of a surprise for me.

Yeah, I know yesterday was Tuesday, but…

You may remember my post from last week, “The One Thing You Cannot Do on a Mac.”

So, I had this brilliant idea.

I have an older Mac that I rarely use anymore. It had a CD/DVD drive, and I’ve burned CDs with it before, so I checked to see if it would also burn DVDs.

Yay! It does.

So, I copy over the files from the one computer over to the older one. A slow process over the network, but I did other things while I waited.

Then I put in a DVD to burn it.

And it started burning the disk! Yay! The progress bar moved and progressed. Yay!

Then I left the room and, when I came back, discovered the DVD had been ejected and the screen had gone blank.

It had gone into power save mode, and the burn failed due to a communication error, which is error number 0×80020022.

Okay, so try again. Turn power save off. Turn sleep settings off. Nothing should interfere this time with the burning of the disk.

Put the DVD in. Start burning. Yay! Phone rings. I leave the room and, when I return, the burning of the disk has failed again. Same 0×80020022 error. Clearly, it wasn’t the power save mode or the sleep settings.

Ugh.

Tried a different brand. The original brand I started with that wouldn’t work on the other computer any more.

Lo and behold, it worked.

But, would it work for a second DVD?

Of course not. It stopped at 96.6% with the same 0×80020022 error.

And so the wasted DVDs continue to pile up…

This should be a post about the chihuahuas.

Surprisingly, it’s not.

Or perhaps I should say it’s unsurprisingly, because you’re used to getting disappointed by reading my posts.

If the sun’s out, would it be sunsurprisingly? Point to ponder there, eh?

So ponder it.

I’ll wait.

Did you ponder it?

So, what did you come up with?

Anything? Anything at all?

Well, well. How now, muddy-colored bovine? How now?

What if you could have a cow the size of a chihuahua?

That’d be cool.

But could you train them to use a puppy pad or to wait until they went outside?

I don’t know if anyone’s trained a full-sized cow to use proper toiletry areas, so I am doubtful a little cow could learn.

But, you never know, right?

Tell you what… I’ll let you try it first. Not sure I want cow patties all over the living room floor.

You know how strange that is? Cow patties? Now, say beef patties and you’re thinking special sauce, lettuce and cheese. But, when I write cow patties, you’re thinking something completely different.

Weird, right?

But it’s probably not.

Say “Hey!” Why? you say? Because, why not say “Hey?”

I don’t know. I got nothing right now.

Tick, tock.
The moose ran up the clock.

The moose was big.
The clock was not.

You will see to leave them be.
‘Cause the clock still goes
Tick, tock.

Yeah. That one didn’t even rhyme well.

Good thing I’m not writing it to sell.

This is going to be another short post today, for reasons I’ll not got into now but I’ll fill you in later.

Hopefully the news will be good but could go either way at this point.

Fingers crossed…

Anyway, so, yeah, rain. It rains down. Sometimes you see sideways rain. That’s a bit strange.

It’s neat when it’s only raining in certain spots. Of course, in order for it to rain, there must be rain clouds above and the condensation has to reach the point where the water vapor forms droplets and becomes heavier than air and falls down.

Or something like that.

At any rate, so if there are no rain clouds here but there, then it could be raining here but not there.

I know that sounds sillier than it is. I’m not talking great distances here. I’m talking like from one house to the next.

Usually, of course, the sky is saturated with rain clouds, so it’s raining all over. But, those rain clouds move.

I remember one time when I was a kid and we were playing outside. It began to rain, but at one end of the street and not the other. Then it started moving up. It was kind of neat and bizarre because it’s not often you experience that sort of thing. Normally, you’ll be walking then suddenly it’s raining. You usually don’t get the advanced warning. It’ll start to sprinkle then it will pour. It doesn’t usually work out where there is a downpour moving towards you while you were in a dry area.

Make sense? I hope so.

At any rate, I think some of us had to run into the rain to get home while others had a better chance of staying ahead of the rain.

Interesting times.

So…

There you go.

A Blog post title that is longer than the post itself.

Fascinating.

Anyway, I am working on a project for a client today so I need to finish that up. Plus, I have to do some other work on a website for a client plus my own sites. On top of that, a thunderstorm is brewing, so I have limited time before lightning precludes me from working on the computer.

So, enjoy the lengthy title. It amuses me anyway.

Oh, and still looking for beta testers for my scifi site. If interested, just leave a comment here, and I’ll eMail you at the eMail address you include in the form–the bit that’s not shown to the public but just me. That is, you don’t need to leave your eMail in the comment itself. You don’t want spammers harvesting it.

But you knew that already, so I’ll just shut up now. And now the post probably is longer than the title.

No, it’s not! Yay!

Well, so much for the high wave of traffic. Looks like the traffic tide is starting to go back out now.

So, let’s see what could have brought in the traffic for May.

Early in the month, I covered the Bacon Wars. Almost everybody loves bacon, so that probably brought in some traffic.

Then I mentioned cheese, though I didn’t talk about it. That probably lured in some unsuspecting readers who then stuck around for more, hoping their cheese would come in. But it never did.

I talked about mind control. That’s a hot topic, no?

Then, blah, blah, blah.

And then I did a post on movies as seen by percentage of the population. That turned out to be far less popular than I thought it might be. Well, I thought it was an interesting chart.

Then I talked about lazy scammers and UFO spammers.

And then I closed the month with a post on “How to Make $100 in a Day“.

Okay, so what brought in the traffic?

Pure chance, it would appear. I guess if 1,000 monkeys were sitting at 1,000 computers, eventually they’d all end up on my blog during the month of May. Maybe that’s it.

After all, I do have posts on bananas…

Yeah, that’s a parody of John Chow’s blog title.

Anyway, as I mentioned just days ago (here’s the link if you’ve already forgotten), this past May was the best month ever in recorded history!*

So far, June shows no sign of abating. Don’t know why. It’s not like I’ve posted anything useful lately.

Except, of course, for the post on “How to Make $100 in a Day“. Maybe that’s got some legs on it.

Though, for the month so far, it’s got less than half of the view of “Weird Keywords People Used to End Up Here“. And is tied with a two-headed groundhog.

So, go figure.

How to make money? Good.

Weird stuff? Better.

Sometimes, it’s not worth the effort trying to figure people out…

*That is in the record history of stats that are available for this blog.

I have used and had Macintosh computers for ages.

Never really have much problems with them. There was one machine that was kind of flaky (G3), but most have been virtually flawless.

Everything I’ve needed to do I’ve been able to do just fine on a Mac.

However, I’ve discovered there is one thing you cannot do on a Mac, at least not reliably.

And that is to burn DVDs.

I burned my first DVD shortly after getting my MacBook Pro a couple years ago. Worked fine.

I’ve burned CDs on a regular basis. Continue to do so. No problems there!

But, then I start trying to archive my data to DVDs. No such luck. I don’t remember how many DVDs I wasted before throwing in the towel.

They all fail with the dreaded 0×8002006E error—a problem for which, judging by the support forums I have read, has no solution.

Changing burn speeds has no effect. Some recommend deleting the com.apple.finder.plist file to solve the problem. No such luck there either. Some have long lists of things to do, which are so ridiculously long and non-sensible, they might as well be considered computer voodoo.

Another recommendation was to try a different brand of DVD. Ironically, the recommended brand, Verbatim, is the one which I was using. (Which is also the brand of CDs I use, which burn without any problems.) So, I tried a house brand from a computer company I’ve purchased from and trust. They guarantee the DVDs will work.

I bought a ten-pack to try them out.

They burned fine. No problems.

Thinking my problems were solved, I bought a fifty-pack of the same brand.

So far, I’ve wasted 6 DVDs trying to burn the things. Each gets the 0×8002006E error.

Might as well have taken my money and burned it.

Yet another suggestion to resolve the problem is to free up hard drive space. Well, what the heck do you think I was trying to do by archiving files to DVD?

So, um, yeah. Macs are wonderful. Macs are great. Macs are largely trouble-free.

Just as long as you don’t need to burn a DVD.

Maybe I should look at getting an external Blu-ray drive.