I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that someone found their way to my blog with the Google search “monkey riding weiner dog.” Unfortunately, said person also immediately left the site so apparently what I had to offer wasn’t what they were looking for.
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I love Google’s Analytics program. It essentially analyzes every little thing about your site. How many visitors you have. Where they come from. What pages they click on. Who subscribes to the blog. What keywords they search for and subsequently end up here. Going over the data provided I have learned two very important things about this blog.
I noticed recently that when one does a Google search for “foreign service blogs,” this blog is the second entry that pops up right behind the Associates of the American Foreign Service Worldwide (AAFSW). It makes me feel more than a bit guilty that there were probably people out there coming to this blog for information on the Foreign Service only to find it hadn’t been updated in months. Hopefully, it will be better now.
As you can see, I’ve decided to tinker with the site a bit. I like this new theme and layout quite a bit, but I’m going to continue to customize it over the next few weeks so expect some changes and the occasional hic-up. I also upgraded to the newest version of Wordpress and I think it is much better. This upgrade also went very smoothly, unlike my last one (a major reason I stopped blogging for quite some time.) The only problem I’ve encountered is that all of my categories for my posts were deleted. I’m taking advantage of that to switch to a “tag” style of organization, but it will take a while to tag all the older posts. You’ll see the tag cloud over on the left hand side. For those of you unfamiliar with a cloud organization system, the larger the font, the more posts in that category.
My wife says I don’t have to feel guilty about not blogging. The funny thing is, she’s right. (Not really funny ha ha, I guess, but you know what I mean.) I imagine somewhere at some university there is a grad student writing a thesis about the psychology of the blogosphere and why bloggers feel guilty about not constantly updating a site that few people read and most of that small number of people are strangers. Still, I feel bad about not giving my loyal readers a bit more to read so here is a mini update on life in Kyiv.
I’m trying out some new themes with the blog. I think I like this one, but I need to tweak it a bit and clean up some rough edges. Feel free to provide any input.
I’ve added a few new links under the Foreign Service Friends section. I also had a couple of other pieces of excellent writing that I wanted to point you to. (Don’t worry, I didn’t write them.)
The story today coming out of Athens helps me remember that you never know exactly which are the “dangerous” posts to work at. The U.S. Embassy in Athens was struck today by a rocket-propelled grenade. Fortunately, no one was injured in the attack.
I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that it has taken this long, but I feel that I have finally run head-first into the language training wall. I’d been warned that it would happen and witnessed the unpleasant experience first-hand about a month ago when it happened to my wife. Now it is my turn to feel like a no-progress-making, non-Russian-speaking idiot.
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