Who Are You?

You may have noticed, I recently added a "badge" to my blog.  Over to the right hand side are different things you can click on: 

• my profile (which is lacking)
• post archives
• post labels
• other bloggers I am recommending
• my nerd score (Uber Cool Light-Weight, if you never noticed)
• etc.

The newest one I added is "Visitor's Map".  I'll willingly admit, I am ever curious about who may be reading my posts.  My sister (who has her own blog) informed me about Google Analytics, which lets me see how many times my blog is viewed and how many "unique" people are viewing.  It doesn't tell me who you are though.  Of course, I know a few of you: 

• My wife (who has her own blog)
• My mom (but I had to set her up to receive new postings via email so she would read them)
• My sister, Cheryl
• My sister, Laura (who leaves the most comments) (thank you)
• My wife's mom and dad (But I think that was because they found out I wrote about them)
• My best friend (who lives in Wisconsin, Reno, Maui!!) and his wife
• A friend from work (who I asked to log in from a different state they were travelling to)

Other that that, I would like to think I know who a couple of the silent viewers are, but I don't know for sure.  There are, however, 24 unique visitors (at some point).  Although, that is information tracked by a cookie, so if you toss your cookies, you will be registered as a new visitor (again).  And then there is the fact that I, personally, have viewed from a couple different computers, so maybe I am a couple of my own unique visitors.

ANYway, this Visitor's Badge is another way to show where a "unique" visitor is visiting from.  It shows a 2D image of the globe (a 3D option is also available) and puts a little orange dot (or another color of your choosing) from different locations visitors have viewed from.  Now, before you get all "big brother" on me, I assure you I know nothing more than your location.









Obviously, I would expect to see dots in Hawaii (me and my wife) and in Washington (other family), and of course, in Wisconsin (Gabe and Katie).  But Kansas? Or New Jersey? Or Spain?!?!  That's right ... look at the map.  There is a dot in Spain.  That means that somebody viewed my blog that had an internet connection in Spain!  Crazy.  Now, I understand that may not be that big of a deal.  I've clicked Next Blog of few times (I even have made a game or two out of it) and have viewed people's blogs that I don't know and maybe if they had a visitor's map thingie they got a dot from Hawaii.

It still begs the question, "Who are you?"  And was my blog interesting?