Web servers keep records of every time somebody visits a page on your website. I've become far too interested in reading mine. It's just that it's so fascinating because you can tell where the visitor's from, where they went on your site and how long they spent on each page. And... you can tell where they came from to get to your site. Cooler still is that if they came from a search engine like Google you can tell what words they searched for that brought up your site.

Somebody today wound up here by searching for bicycling around Russia. Never mind that I've never been to Russia, bicycled in it, nor written about it on this website. But Google sent them my way. Pretty strange.

"Lest you end up with pointless crap."
I spent several late nights in the last week or so working on a weather thingy on the homepage. Maybe you've noticed. It's at the top right under the latest location. I tell it where I am and every two hours my web server goes on the internet, finds out the weather there, and updates the homepage. I'm really happy with it, but I'm thinking of getting rid of the time/date stamp underneath. I originally put it there so you'd know it's current... but is it worth cluttering things up?

The weather thing's an example of a web design thing I do that's totally wrong. I discover something, in this case a web server's ability automatically to do things like download weather data, get all excited about it, and look for ways to use it. It outghtta be the opposite, lest you end up with pointless crap that's there just because you're able to do put it there. But I like the weather thing.

"That's a little disheartening."
With 38 days to go, things are becoming very real. Several people have expressed the opinion that I will either change my mind, chicken out, or get maimed or killed. That's a little disheartening, but fortunately nobody I really respect has said that. I do, though, take more seriously the "Dangers" sections of guidebooks these days. It's tougher to laugh that off as things get closer.

If it's Christmas in Cancun with Mom, it may be Thanksgiving in San Diego with my brother. The cross-country drive with Edan is off due to scheduling problems including November TV sweeps, so Matt and I likely will rent a car and drive down Highway 1. Friends of his in San Diego have invited us for Thanksgiving dinner which seems to work out perfectly with my schedule. Sounds like fun.

"A fall Syracuse afternoon..."
This whole thing is starting to remind me of the days leading up to my first week at college. It's something I'd looked forward to for years, but as it actually got close it became a bit scary. I knew it was where I wanted to go and where I needed to go, but the act of leaving behind the familiar for a new environment I knew nothing about was kinda daunting. I suspect walking across the border in Tijuana is gonna feel quite like a fall Syracuse afternoon exactly ten years ago this month.|