I'm A Failure

I have officially failed at my attempt at a "post a day, everyday for 100 days." I only made it 63 days. Hey, wait a minute. I'm not a failure! That's a D minus.

A Post A Day for 100 Days

It's been a little slow around here, so that's my goal. That's two in two days.

New Blog Address

Last winter I noticed that the domain stevegall.com hadn't been renewed by its owner and was about to expire. That's the domain I wanted when I started this blog. I was just pretty sure that everyone and their brother was staking a hot domain name like stevegall.com. - so I called in the experts, SnapNames.com. They specialize in grabbing domains when they expire.

The domain did end up expiring and SnapNames secured the domain for me. So, I, Steve Gall, now own stevegall.com. I've been reluctant to go ahead and switch this blog over to the new domain name though. I mean I hate to confuse all 12 of my readers. I also hate to ask the kind souls who have linked to my blog to update the link. I hate to lose any momentum I have gained with various Google searches that land this blog high in the results - I mean how will people know what chapter books to read to children under ten?

I'm throwing caution to the wind though. This will be the last post to iblogdoyou.com. All future posts will upload to stevegall.com. I hope you come along.

This Blog's Reading Level

Steve has a blog.

He gave his blog a test.

Steve does not like the test.

He will use bigger words now.

Where Are The Visitors Linking From?

During the month of September here's where visitors who linked to this blog came from:

Search engines: 123
Rob's blog: 120
Shelley's blog: 96
Paul's blog: 21
Rocki's blog: 9
My Class site: 9

The Most Popular Link Is. . .

Feedburner is cool. Besides allowing visitors to subscribe to blog updates, it also gives me a peek at how many subscribers I have, how people got to the blog, as well as what links people are clicking from my blog.

So, what links are people clicking from this blog? Here's the top 10 from the past 30 days.

49 to Shelley Flickinger's Blog
41 to Rocki Stillson's Blog
26 to Rob Henschen's Blog
25 to Jon Andrews' Blog
17 to The Map of Visitor's Locations
13 to Makenna's Blog
13 to Derry Prenkert's Blog
13 to Kylee's Blog
9 to Tilly's Blog
9 to View My Profile on Blogger

"There's the Blogger"

Let me preface this story with a few stats.

My first Blog post: March 20, 2008
Rocki's first Blog post: April 10, 2008

My Blog: 60 posts
Rocki's Blog: 10 posts

Today at my mom's church, Rocki and I were sitting beside each other in the front pew. It was greet your neighbor time, so we stood to greet. We greeted a little, then Pastor Tom starts heading straight toward us. Rocki and I both turn, anticipating his greeting. With a few final steps, he gets to us and says, "THERE'S THE BLOGGER." And turns toward . . . Rocki.

I was so taken aback I don't remember if Tom actually said anything to me after that or not. I mean if I would have been standing beside Derry, I would have expected it. But no, this was a person who had done 1/6 of the posts I had done.

You know what else. That little thing that happened in the pew was my favorite thing that happened today. I laughed at myself. Literally, almost laughed out loud three times during the sermon. I'm not sure why it tickled me so much. Maybe it was because after I recovered from the initial shock of the comment, I was SO unsurprised by it. If you know Rocki, you're probably not that surprised either.

Thanks God, for teaching me to be a little more humble in such a funny way. I'm still laughing.

A Top 5

I set this Blog up to display the "last 50 posts." This is post 50, so with my next post, the entries will start dropping off the bottom, rarely to be read again.

I love blogging. It is not a chore, but something I can do for fun and relaxation. I do put some work into my posts though, so I hate to see them disappear into the archives. I suppose that is why I set the blog up to display so many posts on the main page (sorry to people with a slow Internet connection.)

In honor of Post 50, I present to you my top five favorite posts so far.

• #5 It's Sort of Like My Economic Stimulus Check Just Got Lost in the Mail
  The repair on the van was a bummer, but I had fun writing this post. I especially like the vehicles photo retrospective, a lot of them remind me of great family times.
  
  
• #4 Book Review: His Little Princess
  I enjoy passing on a good thing to others. I don't think book reviews are the easiest thing to write and I hadn't done one since I-don't-know-when. But I thought it turned out OK.
  
  
• #3 A World Record
  This one was fun. It's also my most commented on post.
  
  
• #2 22 Years Ago Today
  Another fun one. I think I should do more of these. I enjoy reminiscing.
  
  
• #1 Play Cars
  Landen at his cutest!

Anyone else have a favorite or a top 5? I'd love to have the feedback.

Blog Domain Name

The official blog address is iblogdoyou.com. I was a little surprised that it was available. Maybe because it's not as cool as I think? I'll admit, I'm not super in tune to what other people think is cool and what they don't. Regardless, I bought it for five years, so I'm sticking with it. Here's others I considered that were available.

• stevengall.com
• gallblog.com

Also, after I purchased iblogdoyou.com, I checked the availability of stevegallblogs.com. It was available and I kind of like that. A little bit of buyers remorse set in. iblogdoyou.com IS cool though, right?

Too Late

After posting just four times, Blogger locked my blog from updating and viewing. When I logged in Saturday afternoon I received this message:

"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive. You won't be able to publish posts to your blog until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review. We'll take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than two business days."

By Tuesday evening I was tired of waiting, so I bought this domain for my blog. An hour later my original blog was unlocked - too late now.