Happy Birthday to me!  Happy Birthday to me!  Happy Birthday dear Irredeemable Shag… Happy Birthday to me!

In truth, this particular blog entry was written on Sunday because today I’m out of town for work.  It’s one of those grueling trips where you start working before dawn (like 6:00am) and finish working after sunset (like 8:00pm).  I’ll be on my feet pretty much the whole week and doing lots of physical labor.  Yuck.  The worst part is that I won’t be with my family for my birthday.  Thankfully, we celebrated over the weekend with lots of family fun.

Since today is my birthday, I figure its okay to do whatever I want.  Well… it’s my blog, so I guess I can do whatever I want here any day.  🙂  Regardless… Over at SpeedForce.org, Kelson did a cool administrative update on the progress of his blog.  I thought I would steal his idea and do the same here.

By the way, if you have a blog you really should be using Google Analytics.  It’s an application that helps you understand not only how many people visit your site, but also how they interact with it.  It’s free and easy to use.  All you need is a Google Account.

ONCE UPON A GEEK status update

Once Upon a Geek went live to the public on Monday, March 31, 2008.  174 days, 144 posts, and 365 comments later, it’s still going strong.  Early on I realized there were very few readers over the weekend, so I decided to just focus on posting on the weekdays.  Hence the description that it’s a “weekdaily” blog.  Also, that gives me two days “off” each week so I can recharge my geek batteries.

Honestly, I’m surprised that I have managed to keep up the blog this long.  When I started, it was really an experiment to try and understand what blogging was all about.  Now I find posting whatever is in my head to be quite rewarding and almost therapeutic.  It’s like y’all are my geek shrinks, and I don’t even have to pay you for it.  🙂

Here are the most popular ONCE UPON A GEEK posts so far (excluding the main page):

1. Best of DragonCon 2008 Costumes! – 5,934 page views
2. Motivational Posters – 2,576 page views
3. Job Description: Married Geek with Children – 1,788 page views
4. Uncanny X-Men #500 – A Lapsed X-Fan’s Review – 1,301 page views
5. 1980’s Cartoon Goodness – 742 page views

Once Upon a Geek started with only 14 unique visitors on that first day.  In early August I finally started to get some traction.  Since then I’ve been hitting over 100 unique visitors each day. There was one day in particular in which I had 3,475 unique visitors in just one day!  The vast majority of visitors have found my blog through reddit.com, followed by Google searches and StumbleUpon.  Since I joined, I’ve been lucky enough most of the time to rank within the top ten blogs on Comic Blog Elite.

This past month has been particularly good with several really well-received posts.  Over the last month, on average there have been:

• 443 page views a day
• 321 unique visitors per day

THANK YOU

I’m consistently amazed and thrilled that people are interested in reading my ramblings.  I’m greatly appreciative that you take time out of your day to stop by.  I want to thank all the folks who have been supportive throughout this process.  I’m happy to say that blogging has helped me stay in touch with several of my friends, and along the way I’ve made some new friends too.  In no particular order I’d like to thank:

• Anyone reading this
• Michael Bailey over at Views from the Longbox and Fortress of Baileytude
• Stuart Renton over at … well, Stuart Renton.com
• Serv over at The Unique Geek and of the Great White North
• Ed over at Ordinary Man
• rob! over at The Aquaman Shrine and the Rob Kelly Family of Blogs
• Kelson over at SpeedForce.org and Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning
• Terry over at Choco Taco’s LiveJournal
• EDP over at I Don’t Read My Blog Either
• SGhoul over at Oozings From My Head
• Ravenface over at Glimpse Ye The Narwhal
• Jon over at The Unique Geek
• Sterling over at Eighty Years (or so) To The Big Zero and New Bards’ Press
• T.H. Elliott over at Philosophically Broken
• The folks over at Old-Wizard.com
• Widge over at NeedCoffee.com
• The Hardcover Lover over at Hardcover Lover
• Steven Marsh over at Waiting For Go
• Scott C from NeedCoffee.com
• Ned Stacey of Mail Me My Comics
• Patrick of Not A Blogging Dork.com
• and my wonderful wife who gives me the time to do this.

I’m sure I forgot some people to thank, and I sincerely apologize for that.  With so many people viewing the blog, there are obviously lots of lurkers out there.  I’d like to encourage you lurkers to post a comment or drop me an e-mail.  Let me know what you like or don’t like about Once Upon a Geek.  Be part of the family!

Take care everybody!  Keep your fingers crossed and maybe I’ll be able to keep up this blog for a long time to come.