Halfway there?
My hit-rate on Halfway There has gradually drifted up from last year's fairly steady 200 per day to this year's approximately 300. I'm not certain why the numbers creep upward, but it's fun to see that they do. It intrigues me to think that each day I have readers from around the world. They come from such places as Canberra, Singapore, Cork, Seville, Sydney, Wellington, Stockholm, London, and Fresno, to cite just a few of the exotic locations listed on Sitemeter's roster of recent visitors.
And now I'm approaching 500,000 in total visits to my blog since it was launched in 2005. (If only I had a nickel for each visit!) Given the rate of visits, the milestone will be achieved in the next day or two.
Half a million visits in six years? How long will it take to hit one million?
Addendum
What a let-down! I was looking at the Sitemeter report on visit 499,998 (which was someone from Auckland) and anticipating the arrival of the half-millionth visitor when a sudden surge of hits caused me to miss the tick of the counter to 500,000. It hit 500,002 before I could blink. Damn!
But not to worry, I could check the details to see who it was. And ... drum roll ... bleah. It was just an invasion of googlebots. Visits 499,999, 500,000, 500,001, and 500,002 were all from googlebots in Mountain View. They were visiting the posts titled “Chains of gold,” “Universal Experts,” “The Obama-Heinz Incident,” and “Ten Percent of One Million.” Why? Beats me! I suppose it was all part of Google's “Don't be evil” campaign.
A real person finally showed up as visitor 500,003. Hello there, Lubbock, Texas! What kept you?
