Happy birthday blog!

Yesterday, my blog turned one year old.  The blogger.com system keeps statistics about blog use and views, some of which I will share for this post.

First, though, I wanted to share an image I put together tonight.  It shows (approximately) where I have gone within the USA in the last year.  The last map I shared on this blog generated some heated debate on Facebook, far more discussion than all my previous posts combined had led to.  As a result, I'll likely do more with maps this next year, but for now, I'll stick to a bit of retrospective on the last 12 months.

In the above map, there is no line-type/color for November.  I was in the UK and Europe for the entire month of November 2010.  The lines coming and going from Atlanta, Georgia represent my outbound and return trips from the US to Manchester, England.

Here are a few statistics from the blogger.com dashboard and my own comments about them:

3665 page views - My first thought was about 3400 of those are me, but I set a browser cookie so visits from my computer are not counted.  Otherwise, Linux probably would not be sitting in 5th place in the operating system of viewers category.

Top 3 posts, by numbers of page views:
A bit of recap - 9-Feb-2011 - The title pretty much says it all.
First Post! - 29-Aug-2010 - Evidently, I create descriptive titles.
Germany and Monday racing - 9-Nov-2010 - This post covered my trip to Ilmenau, Germany and some Monday night track league racing at the Manchester velodrome.

Top referring site:
www.facebook.com - No other site even comes close.

Top search keywords:
"11 pack" of beer - This is interesting, but also makes me wonder, who are the people out there searching google for 11-packs of beer?  Then again, who wouldn't?

Other amusing search terms:
track karl - This one seems kind of obvious.
trackkarl - This one is pretty obvious too.
"how many engineers" chocolate - This one is less obvious.
"queue for the toilet" - The joke about a guy in Berlin catching his belt in the bathroom door evidently made its way somewhere.
4 runner crankshaft bolt - I guess I have helped someone, somewhere, (beyond my teammate) better understand how to deal with a 4-Runner crankshaft bolt.
 af on my ups tracking - I have no idea.
innovation beer pack - Sounds like somebody is up to something... good.
air compressor quick release hose - Maybe I am contributing something worthwhile here.

Top 10 countries by page views:
#10 - France - Interesting.  I'm not sure if I really know any French.
#9 - Singapore - Odd, maybe they lost their toilet?
#8 - Russia - I don't think I know any Russians, but evidently some of them like reading my blog.
#7 - South Korea - A friend from Boulder was in South Korea for some of this past year.
#6 - Canada - My aunt and uncle live in Canada, and I met some cool Canadians on my trip to the UK last year.
#5 - Iran - I'm quite sure I don't know anyone living in Iran.  Maybe they needed help fixing Toyota 4-Runners?
#4 - Netherlands - I think I'll visit the Netherlands on my next trip to Europe.
#3 - Germany - I met a handful of Germans last year, and had a wonderful time both in Ilmenau and Berlin.  If I can swing it, I'll try to make it back for a Christmas market again this year.
#2 - United Kingdom - I met lots of Brits during my fall track racing and travel adventure last year.  I'll visit again this fall for some wrenching and cheering at the masters world championships in Manchester, and then I'll be off to visit a few of the places I missed out on last year.
#1 - United States - Given my country of origin, this one makes sense...

That is all I have to say about the first year.  This morning I bought tickets for another trip to the UK and Europe, so I'm setting myself up for another round of adventures.  Until next time, keep your heads up and the rubber side down.

Where the money goes, geographically

In light of recent news about federal spending, revenue, deficits, debt, and various political candidates' ideas about how to best handle these issues, I thought it would be interesting to create another blog post.

The map shown below depicts the 50 states in the US, colored to indicate the relationship between federal taxes paid by the populations of those states and the federal spending in each state.

If one considers federal taxes an investment, each color represents, in essence, a different level of return on investment.

When television pundits or political candidates refer to "redistribution of wealth" like some Boogey-man, this map shows (for the 2005 fiscal year) where the wealth is coming from (states colored in blue and green) and where it is going (states colored in orange and red).

Hopefully this provides some food for thought for anybody contemplating or debating the US government's finances.

A bit of down time

I've been a bit slow posting updates this summer; lots of traveling, riding, racing, and a bit of work here and there has kept me plenty busy.  On the way home from work on Friday, I realized it had been a while since the last time I had a whole weekend in Boulder, with no specific plans.

How long ago was it?  I couldn't recall.  Upon returning home, I went digging through my training log and determined my last "free" weekend was March 19th and 20th.  Yikes!

This weekend I spent some time downloading pictures and video from my camera to my laptop.  Some of the media was from way back in June.  Here are a few of them:

Black Dog Road is an exit from I-35 in southern Minnesota.

Can you tell an engineer uses this table?

In July the local grocery store had a special on California-grown artichokes, so I picked up a few.  I was pleased with the arrangement of artichoke leaves in the discard bowl after eating, so took a few pictures.

This doggy looks tired.

On the way back to Colorado from a late-July and early-August trip to California, I stopped off for a night to visit my sister at UC Davis.  She was looking after a dog for the weekend.

I spent a few days in southern California, training at the Home Depot Center velodrome, preparing for US elite track cycling nationals (to be held there at the end of September).  The same weekend I was there, the 2011 CrossFit Games were held right across the street, so I checked that out too.

In the vendor area, Reebok set up some CrossFit challenges, one of which was a 250-meter rowing race.  I tried it out to see how I stack up against other CrossFit rowing enthusiasts.  I was a long way from posting the best time of the weekend, but was satisfied with a sub-41 second 250-meter effort.  The video documentation is below.

Until next time!