Posts by Berck

December Blog Stats


by Berck

The internet is such a weird place. Statistics are always weird.

In December, Our Dumb Blog had twice as many hits on Thursdays as any other day of the week.

The following search terms were typed into search engines and led people to this site. This list keeps getting weirder. (The number is the number of people who used that search term to get our blog.)

dauchands 3 10 %
miniature dauchands 2 6.6 %
scandinavian keyboard 2002 2 6.6 %
nerbun 2 6.6 %
miata engine making noise 1 3.3 %
train timetable paris to marseilles 1 3.3 %
monster uders 1 3.3 %
snow forecast for lake arrowhead 1 3.3 %
i taste ice cream.you got a dart in your head dumb shit. 1 3.3 %
god rest ye jerry mandelbaum 1 3.3 %
okaz keyboard 1 3.3 %
littlemissmatched 1 3.3 %
mazmart 1 3.3 %
recipe for raveoli 1 3.3 %
blog sayre oklahoma 1 3.3 %
frambose raspberry 1 3.3 %
how to replace cv boots on vw beetle 1 3.3 %
alternator and miata and belt noise 1 3.3 %
mattress crazy 1 3.3 %
blog berck 1 3.3 %
alieve 1 3.3 %
red alert completetion 1 3.3 %
joanna beth sallisaw 1 3.3 %
mazda no heat temp gauge pegged 1 3.3 %
sr-71 gun blackbird bullet

So, as far as I can tell one person was clearly looking for Our Dumb Blog. The other dozen folks…. makes you wonder why they clicked onn our blog when it popped up.

More interesting are the search engines used. It seems that Yahoo really likes my blog. I never even submitted my blog to yahoo, so I’m not sure how they got it. Means that someone’s linking to it.

These are the number of hits the blog got from each search engine.

– Yahoo 24
– AltaVista 6
– Google 1

It seems that Google is smart of enough to realize that my blog is not of any interest to the general public. Yahoo is not so smart.

We also got hits from the following non-US countries:

gr Greece gr 11 71 411.75 KB

au Australia au 2 8 85.36 KB

sg Singapore sg 2 2 38.68 KB

mx Mexico mx 1 6 20.84 KB

fr France fr

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense | 1 Comment

Kite!


by Berck

The UPS man brought a long skinny package today. Wondering what the heck could possibly be in such a package, I looked at the return address. A company called “Into The Wind”. And then I put the pieces together: Nathan had told us that a present was on the way, and he knows we love kite flying… A kite!

Since most everything else we got as presents were things we asked for and thus things we needed, this is by far the most fun.

I don’t think I realized how much we needed a kite. We even have a place within walking distance to fly it! Oklahoma is actually a great place for kites, being full of flat windy places.

It’s a great little two string kite. Very lightweight and willing to please. I worry Oklahoma may be a little too windy for it, delta kites being better suited to moderate wind, instead of the 35mph Oklahoma breeze.

There are photos of it in the gallery.

Here’s a little video of it. Posting it will probably kill the server, but oh well.

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense | 2 Comments

Dalhart and Back


by Berck

I finally did it. I hadn’t flown since December 2, but I finally got the long cross-country done today.

The stupidest thing I did was forget my camera. Which is really a loss, because there was lots of stuff to take pictures of. Or more importantly, not much for me to do during the 7.0 hours of flight time today.

I stopped in Borger, TX both ways for fuel. I probably could have just refueled in Dalhart, but there’s really no reason for me to worry about fuel when I’ve got everything else to worry about. Not to mention I really had to pee when I landed in Borger.

There was still snow on the ground in Dalhart. Navigating after I got about 100 miles west of OKC was difficult, but I managed. There really wasn’t much of anything to look at, so I just flew on over endless nondescript farmland until I came upon the occasional town marked on my chart. I counted all 14 buildings that comprised one of the towns.

Borger, TX isn’t much of a city. It’s mostly a refinery.

The Dalhart airport is co-located with a prison. This is a little strange, but since they fence both of them these days, why not.

I spent most of the time staring at the ground, willing it to move. At 8,500 feet and a measly 85 knots indicated airpseed with a 35 knot head-wind, it really doesn’t move. For awhile I was flying along I-40, watching the trucks go the same speed I was. Sometimes they seemed to be going faster.

My headset is fortunately comfortable, but I found it tiring after awhile. There was little to listen to on Albequerque Center. Every 10 mintues or so a plane would check in; another 10 minutes and one would switch frequencies.

Most of all, with nothing much to do but sit and look at the view and trying to identify a cluster of barns as a named town, I decided that if I ever get paid to do it, I think it’ll be a pretty good life.

Posted in Flying | No Comments