Admin Notes: Rebuilding the Sidebar

See what happens when you try to change some things around the blog when you are out of practice with HTML and have no idea how to use the Blogger software? As you may (or, actually, probably haven't noticed) my blog's sidebar is missing many of the links which were there earlier tonight. That's a result of me experimenting with a new Blogger template (which is three columned, which I like, and may try to implement again at some point in the future) which then wiped out most of my links when I tired to revert back to this current template. Oops. Have no fear, I'll rebuild the links, if not tomorrow, sometime this weekend.

Detroit Red Wings, Detroit Pistons, and Fall Television Upfronts

Running a multifaceted blog is great, most of the time. Sometimes, though, like tonight, when there is all sorts of new content, and not all of it is on the same topic, some things may get lost in the shuffle. So, to try to avoid that, here's a quick summary of the blog entries you may have missed in the last 24-48 hours.

** The Detroit Red Wings defeated the Anaheim Ducks 5-0 to take a 2-1 series lead in the NHL Western Conference Finals.

** The Detroit Pistons lost to the Chicago Bulls 108-92, and suddenly, after going up 3-0 in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the series is 3-2, the Bulls have blown out the Pistons in consecutive games, and Game Six goes back to Chicago. What looked to be a potential sweep, may now be the first time an NBA team blows a 3-0 series lead. Not good for the Pistons.

** NBC announced their new fall schedule and ABC announced their new fall schedule as well and I did a night-by-night anlaysis of each.

** And on Monday morning, I asked Is Matt Drudge Afraid of Barack Obama?

And with that, a full night of blogging and sports watching comes to a close (and, because I haven't mentioned it yet, how about those Detroit Tigers tonight? Put up a ton of runs on Boston, and Justin Verlander was dealing again. Nice way to respond after losing two straight games. Okay, now I'm done).

Analyzing Google Analytics

One of the coolest parts about starting a blog is being able to take a look at traffic patterns. Okay, maybe "cool" is the wrong word. How about interesting? That may work better. In any case, Google has a great traffic analyzing tool, Google Analytics, which breaks down website traffic to its smallest details.

For example, 62.5% of visitors are using Internet Explorer while only 32% are using Firefox. Internet Explorer users, let this blog do you a favor. Go download Firefox (there's a link over on the right sidebar, and if I positioned this right, it should be right next to this text) -- It has an integrated spell check in the browser (the coolest feature I've ever seen in any piece of technology), is great with pop-up ads, and is just an all around better product. There's no reason to use Internet Explorer with Firefox out there. I tried Firefox out around a year ago and I have never looked back.

Other stats are interesting too. In the past seven days, roughly 50% of my traffic has come from two sources: My MLive.com Detroit Tigers Blog and Google searches. Another 12% from Michigan Live sports message boards. Only 4.56 from Digg, mostly from my most recent post on the subject.

Geographic location is also interesting. 87% from the US, but the 5% from Canada are welcome too (mostly from Ontario though, not Calgary, home of the Flames the Wings are currently battling in the NHL Playoffs). And welcome to the 0.26% of you visiting from Turkey.

How users search on Google to find the site was unexpected. Of the people searching on Google, 21% searched for Erin Burnett. The second biggest search item finding its way to my site, all the way down at 2.73% was "Erin Burnett CNBC". All these searches find my earlier post on how CNBC anchor Erin Burnett was underrated. And I continue to watch Street Signs (2:00-3:00 on CNBC) on a regular basis, and apparently, I'm not the only one. My post on the Las Vegas season finale is also very popular on Google searches. Luck of the draw on where you get placed in the rankings I guess.

Okay, enough of that. I'm off to Comerica Park this afternoon for what should be a great day of baseball. Let's hope the Tigers break out of their two-game slide. Then we've got Red Wings playoff hockey and Pistons playoff basketball. What a great time of year for Detroit sports.

Lessons Learned From Digg.com

I had never heard of the website Digg.com until about a month or so ago. My good-buddy-pal (as Jim Cramer would say) Kurt, over at Clever WoT, wrote a great editorial/blogpost about why the television show LOST was "Lost". It was a great look at the TV show, and some 2,200 people "Digg"'d it. I inquired about what Digg was about. Now, a month later, most of my stories "buried" by Digg users (as in, the opposite of Digging, as in, not good) I've learned some valuable lessons, which hopefully I can pass on to other new bloggers so they don't make the same mistakes I did.

For those unfamiliar, Digg is a social networking site where users submit news, blogposts, videos, ect. and they get voted on by Digg users. The Digg button that was on a bunch of my posts (first near the top, now at the bottom when I use it) displays how many people "Digg" your story. The more the better, and at some point, a critical mass is reached, your post becomes popular, and you reach the Digg.com homepage. Nirvana for bloggers, or something like that.

When I first started this blog a month ago, I figured Digg was a pretty cool site. I signed up, and immediately started posting all my blog posts there. As I learned in hindsight, that was a mistake. Part of it was my fault, I wanted to try to get some exposure to the blog, and my posts, and Digg seemed like a great way to do it. Part of it was I couldn't figure out how to get the Digg button to work with Blogger and the only way I figured how to do so was to submit my story to Digg first, then link to it a link-field in my Blogger post. So if I wanted a story to even have a chance of being submitted, I had to do it myself. Another big mistake.

So, after posting most of my blogposts on Digg for the last month, in the last week, some of my new posts would soon vanish. Apparently, the Digg establishment were none too pleased that I submitted so many stories, and were using the "Bury" feature to make my stories disappear. Just as you can be made "popular" with the "Digg" feature, you can be made to go away by using the "Bury" feature. I'm on the wrong side of that line at the moment. Why? Well, because everyone on Digg likes list, here's 5 reasons why I'm likely being buried, and 5 lessons learned which new bloggers can take to heart if they ever use Digg.

5. Pick a smart Digg user-name: Since learning about Digg and doing some research, I never saw this suggestion, but I think it's an important one. I picked "swarheit" because that's well, my name, and my normal screen name on most things. It also happens to be the address to my blog (swarheit.blogspot.com). I'm thinking now that was a bad idea. It makes all of my posts look like spam (swarheit is submitting a story from swarheit.blogspot) and that isn't good. Even people that do post their own stories, probably do a better job of hiding that it's them doing it through a clever user-name. I was not that smart, and that was a mistake.

4. Be first, and don't be late: While Digg may stop multiple sources from posting the same story from the same address, if you are posting a comment about a story in the news, and the story is from your own blog, it'll go up. And it'll either get passed over because you've missed the "first filing" of the story or because it'll look like spam. I thought posting commentaries on the Don Imus situation, some campaign stuff, would be good and interesting. And I thought they were well written. But by the time I got them posted, there were already lots of Digg stories about them, and I looked very late to a party I wasn't invited to in the first place.

3. Smart Headlines: I was not good at this at the start, and by the time I got good, it was too late. I was being buried. Kurt's Why "Lost" is Lost was a terrific attention grabbing headline. "Latest on the Detroit Tigers and Michigan's Basketball Coaching Search" or "NBC's Las Vegas Turns to Magnum PI, Tom Selleck to Replace James Caan" or "Andrew Miller Time for the Tigers? And More Postponements for the Indians" don't work. Way too long. Complicated. Unfunny. Unclever. They don't work. When I've had success with Digg (and when I say "sucess", I mean, "not being buried") my headlines have been better. "Snow Delays? Major League Baseball Needs a New Schedule", "Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Make Noise on Fox News", and "Detroit Lions Off-Season Scorecard -- So Far". Simpler. To the point. Somewhat clever (well, maybe not that last one). There's a reason why headlines are so important in newspapers.

2 and 1. DO NOT submit every story to Digg (So important it deserves two spots): My biggest mistake. Submitting everything to Digg. Too many unnecessary stories that nobody on Digg was going to care about. Too many posts from "swarheit" plugging stories from "swarheit.blogspot.com". Just too much. The Digg folks don't like people plugging their own blog multiple times a day, it doesn't matter how interesting your stories are, or what the topic is. I think in the past few days, people just saw my posts and buried them without ever looking at the content. I don't blame them. I realize now Digg is not the place to post every Blogpost. I just didn't know that a month ago when I started. You have to pick and choose, not submit too many, and see what happens. It's a lesson hopefully I've learned (though, maybe not since I'm submitting this story to Digg. Likely my last in a while).

Have Digg.com users heard some (or most) of these suggestions before? Probably. But, if you are a new blogger, and hadn't heard of Digg, or just started using it, like I did, hopefully the lessons I've learned will be of some help. Or maybe not. Depends on if anybody sees this story of it is "buried" like the rest of them.

Chad Durbin's Detroit Tiger Debut, Andew Miller's Future, and More Snow in Cleveland

A few items of note this afternoon, as the Tigers lose to Baltimore in Chad Durbin's Detroit Tigers debut, the Cleveland Indians lose another planned double-header due to snow, and external links in the blog now have a "Snap.com" preview when you drag your mouse over the link (like this). So let's get to it.

** Tigers lose; Should they call up Andrew Miller?: Chad Durbin's Detroit Tigers debut was less then stellar today in a 6-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles on the O's Opening Day. Durbin pitched 4 and 2 /3 innings and gave up 6 runs on 9 hits and a walk. Of positive note, Durbin did strike out five, and actually looked pretty good in the early going. But once Baltimore got a look at what he had to offer, especially the second time through the lineup, they seemed to figure him out, and tagged him. The worst part was, it wasn't as if he was getting squeezed by the umpire or had one or two bad pitches which led to long home runs. It was a steady stream of singles and doubles (aside from Kevin Millar's line drive solo home run) which did him in. The five strikeouts were nice, and he did have a few of Baltimore's batters fooled, but overall, the performance was not what the Tigers were looking for.

So the question is, what do the Tigers do now? Kenny Rogers won't be back until July at the earliest. One thing I think is important to keep in mind, and one thing I keep trying to tell myself, is to try not to over react to one game. Yes, Durbin did not look good today, and his history at the major league level is not stellar, but he had a great season at AAA Toledo last year and was very solid in spring training. Perhaps he can turn it around. But, even if Durbin does pitch better than he does today, and he ends up being a .500 pitcher for the Tigers while filling in for Rogers, would that be good enough to justify not calling up rookie phenom Andrew Miller? Durbin is not part of the Tigers longterm Tigers future. Miller is. And while Miller's inexperience (he has started a grand total of 1 game in the minor leagues -- which to his credit he won, throwing five shutout innings and striking out three while walking none) would hurt, with the kind of stuff he has, he should be able to be a .500 pitcher (or better) at the Major League level right now. And think about what a great learning experience this would be for him. While he likely won't be a member of the Detroit Tigers major league rotation until next year at the earliest (or maybe 2009 if Kenny Rogers returns to Detroit after his contract expires at the end of the season) the ability to have three months of major league starting experience this early in his career would put him light years ahead of where he'll be when he does eventually join the big league rotation.

You always worry about a young kid's confidence, especially when he gets hit around pretty well, which is bound to happen when a pitcher is as young and green as Miller. But, he seems like a mentally tough kid, and Justin Verlander and Jeremy Bonderman and certainly Mike Maroth all struggled early in their Tigers careers, and all are much better pitchers today for it. And maybe he won't struggle. Left handers that can throw in the upper 90's tend to do pretty well in the majors.

All of that said, do I think the Tigers will dump Durbin after one poor start? Probably not. But having a pitcher like Andrew Miller available, it is just so tempting, no matter how well Durbin did, to call him up the majors and give him a chance to show he belongs.

** Snow in Cleveland wipes out Mariners series, transfers Angels series to Milwaukee: Over the weekend I posted an entry talking about how backwards Major League Baseball is, forcing teams to play games in the cold and snow (or not, as it turns out, they are instead having games and entire series postponed) when they could make some slight judgments to ensure that early April games are played in domes and southern locals. After kicking around the controversy on MotownSports.com's always lively baseball forums I'm even more convinced baseball needs to make a change. Some of the best suggestions on the board included scheduling division games early in the season to make any potential makeup games easier to schedule. That seems incredibily logical.

The Cleveland-Seattle series, which as earlier discussed was postponed, and led to All Star catcher Victor Martinez landing on the Disabled List with a tweaked quad muscle due to the cold, has since been completely wiped out. After trying to play double-headers on Saturday, Sunday, and today, each of those were canceled because of snow, cold weather, and unplayable field conditions. I don't know what Major League Baseball is going to do now. One solution is, on mutual off-days for both teams, to play two double headers. Since teams never have back-to-back days off, this would have to happen twice, forcing Seattle likely to fly cross country on a day they should have off and play not one, but two games. And do this at two different points during the season. That is going to make life a lot more difficult on both teams, forcing them to be less well rested then the rest of baseball, and will likely play havoc with their pitching rotations around those games. Or, they could just not make the games up at all, or only do so if the results have an impact on the playoff chase. Neither solution is optimal.

Also not optimal was the decision facing Major League Baseball about what to do about Cleveland's next series, a three game home stand with the Anaheim Angels (if Major League Baseball hasn't learned their lesson about scheduling West Coast teams to play in the Midwest in April after this mess they never will). So, instead of risking even more games being postponed (at this rate, the Indians are going to need to head back down to Florida for a second Spring Training) they have decided to play the games in Milwaukee, which is probably the worst of a bunch of bad options. So, Cleveland, instead of getting to play at home, has to travel to another state, play "home" games in a practically empty stadium (while tickets are being sold for $10, I can't imagine a lot of fans will show up to see two teams that aren't even in the National League like the Brewers), losing lots of money for ownership and making life difficult for players. While Major League Baseball said that playing in Wisconsin is "a compromise that does not allow an unfair advantage" it is hard to see how this isn't an unfair advantage for the Indians. It's really a shame this happened, and the worst part was, while weather is unpredictable, something like this happening eventually was entirely predictable, and once again Major League Baseball is reacting instead of acting.

**Admin Note: So you may have noticed by now that when you drag your mouse across an external link on the Blog, a little window pops up giving you a "snapshot" preview of what the linked website looks like. The device comes from the good people over at Snap.com and I think it's a pretty cool little gadget. I first noticed it at two other great Detroit Sports blogs, Mack Avenue Tigers (where Kurt should have his own thoughts on the Tigers game this afternoon later tonight) and Gorilla Crouch (which has had some great numerical comparisons between the Red Wings and Calgary Flames leading up to their playoff matchup) and I figured when you see something cool, steal it. So I have. Pretty cool what kind of tools you can find on the internet these days.

The Masters, The Tigers, West Wing, You Don't Know Jack -- You Know, the Usual Sunday Things

I had this blog entry all planned out this afternoon. The Detroit Tigers were down 2-0 to the Kansas City Royals, and it appeared they were about to waste another great performance by Jeremy Bonderman, fall to 2-3 on the season, and lose 2 out of 3 to the worst team in the American League Central, a team they dominated in last season's run to the World Series. I was going to write about how Tigers fans shouldn't panic, and how Brandon Inge's 0-17 start would turn around, as would the Tigers bats, and there were plenty of positives to focus on. Then Pudge Rodriguez, with one swing of the bat, ended that debate. One game winning three-run home run in the 9th inning later, and suddenly the Tigers are 3-2, and with a another 9th inning victory they showed they still have some of that magic which propelled them to such a great season a year ago. And, by the way, how about Todd Jones this season thus far? For all of the heat Jones gets for being shaky as the Tigers closer, he's had a great start to the season in a Tigers bullpen, which for the most part, has struggled. Let's give Jones some credit. Especially because people will be on him the second he blows his first save. And I know bad closers. I have Jorge Julio on two fantasy baseball teams. So, Jones, at least this week, deserves some credit.

So with my "Don't panic Tiger fans" blog entry out the window, I figured I would write my entry on Tiger Woods and his latest victory at Augusta National. I spent all afternoon watching both the Tigers and Tiger (pays to have a TV and a TV card in your computer so you can watch both at the same time), and especially when Tiger eagled the 13th hole after a brilliant second shot, I figured the entry would pretty much write itself, as Tiger was writing his own script out on the golf course. Tiger Woods, Sunday at the Masters, charging to victory. Except, that's never happened before. For as great as Tiger is, he's never won a Major after trailing after 54 holes. Today was no different. Even after eagling the 13th and seemingly having momentum going his way, Tiger couldn't finish. He found the water on the 15th, missed a makable birdie putt on 16, and ended up finishing in second place. And the Tiger slayer? Phil? Vijay? Sergio? How about Zach Johnson? 31-year-old Zach Johnson who a year ago was playing on the Nationwide Tour, your Masters champion.

I had a lot of mixed emotions watching the tournament. Usually, in almost all sporting events where a Detroit team or player or individual is not competing, I'm cheering for the underdog. There's nothing better than to see a 14 seed in the NCAA Tournament or some unheralded longtime golf pro make a run at a US Open. I'll always remember the 2003 British Open when Ben Curtis, ranked 396th in the World won what many consider to be the most prestigious golf tournament in the world. I was interning in Washington DC that summer and I had to wake up early to watch the rounds live on ABC probably, downstairs in the lounge of the Francis Scott Key dorm on the campus of George Washington University. I even wrote about it in The Detroit News the following week. (Wow, I forgot how young I looked in my old News picture).

But, I wasn't cheering for Zach Johnson on Sunday. I was cheering for Tiger Woods. And I don't exactly know why. I'm not a huge Tiger Woods fan. In fact, I'm probably more in the Phil Mickelson camp. But, there's just something about Tiger and watching him on the course. It's like watching a classical pianist (or "listening" to a classic pianist would be a better way of putting it). Or like watching Michael Jordan play basketball. I never appreciated Michael Jordan like a lot of people did. I was a Pistons fan (I still am). I hated Michael Jordan (I still do). I never saw greatness when I saw Michael play. I saw a whiner who could only beat the Pistons when he complained loud enough and got David Stern to change the rules to eliminate the physical play of the "Bad Boys." As you can tell, I'm still bitter. But, watching Tiger Woods, I now understand the appeal of Jordan in a way I never did before. It's greatness in action. To see somebody so great at something, it's really a sight to see. And I wanted to see it on Sunday. I wanted to see Tiger Woods make that charge on the back nine Sunday at Augusta, and make his eagle on 13 and birdie 14 and eagle 15 and take the lead and never look back. But, this is golf. And that's why golf is so great, because on any day, on any course, even Augusta National, Zach Johnson can outplay Tiger Woods. The game can humble anybody in a hurry.

So what else is going on this Sunday night? I'm missing The West Wing. That's not really true, because as I type this entry I'm actually watching DVDs of the shows third season (which is why I'm even bringing up the topic), but with how disappointing 24 has been this year, and with Prison Break's season over and Heroes still on a mini-hiatus and Boston Rob and Amber bounced from The Amazing Race All Star Edition, I'm feeling a bit nostalgic for old classics like West Wing. Sure, Lost is enjoying a renascence since it's ill-conceived mini fall season, and Boston Legal and Shark continue to be worth watching (and Jericho continues to keeep me interested) and, well, okay, maybe television is still pretty good right now. But, I still miss The West Wing. Aside from the shaky fifth season, practically every episode of the show is great (and I should know --I've watched them all, multiple times). And there's still a part of me that wants Josh Lyman's job. Thank goodness though that nightly West Wing marathons aren't on Bravo anymore. I would never get anything done.

And, lastly, on a quick admin note, you may have noticed quite a few new links over on the right hand side of the Blog. I've added links to some of the great Detroit sports blogs around, and they are all great reads. With the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons playoffs starting up, the NFL Draft less than three weeks away, and the Tigers season already started, these blogs will have all of those stories (and more) covered from all angles. Kurt over @ Mack Avenue Tigers gave this post a plug today which was much appreciated. Kurt's got pre-game and post-game thoughts on most every Tigers game, so check out his site.

I've also added some links to other great websites, like the returning You Don't Know Jack. For those unfamiliar, YDKJ was a classic, hilarious pop culture trivia game from the mid to late 1990s. Funny questions, even funnier hosts, and an overall great setup. For the full history, check out the You Don't Know Jack wikipedia entry. Anyways, You Don't Know Jack has made an online comeback,with short 7-question games (including the famed Jack Attack final round) and daily "Dis or Dat" quizzes. Just as funny and relevant and entertaining as it was a decade ago. And Cookie, one of the original hosts, is back too. Trust me, if you remember the game from years ago, you'll want to check it out.

What I've Learned About Blogging aka Where Did Everyone Go?

I thought I knew it all when it came to starting a Blog. How hard could it be? I've written a blog for MLive.com for over three years now and before that, while in high school, ran my own website which was essentially a blog before blogs existed (and I edited all that HTML by hand -- Blogger is completely automated). If I've learned anything in the past week about blogging, it's that I didn't know anything.

Having a background in HTML, I thought would make things pretty easy on me. And with Blogger's automated templates, I figured it wouldn't take much time to set up. And while Blogger's blog-maker is user-friendly, I kept running into problems. The Digg buttons you see at the front of each post (like this one) wouldn't show up at first, then wouldn't keep track of my Diggs correctly (I finally figured it out thanks to Kurt over @ Clever WoT and a random website I found which explained the differences between the old Blogger system and these new templates Blogger has). Digg is a cool website. Users determine, by "digging" quality stories, the stories placement in the Digg world, and it allows people to focus on stories others (sometimes thousands of others) found useful and/or entertaining. So if you read a story on here you like, Digg it. Technorati is a very similar site. It essentially is a searchable database of Blog postings and keeps track of how popular your blog is based on how many people link to it (so far two do for me -- The previously mentioned Clever WoT and, of course, my MLive.com Tigers blog). It took a while for that site to start indexing my posts.

And why is it important that my Digg and Technorati links work correctly? Well, it doesn't. But, they do bring traffic into the blog, which allows people to read my posts. Did I start the Blog just to check my traffic logs all the time? Not really. But, it is fun, and I won't deny wanting to get more people to read the blog if I can. Plus, analyzing traffic logs, to me, is fascinating because it really gives you an idea of how the internet works in many ways. Take the traffic for this blog since it started last Sunday for example, going through today, around 3:00.

As the post title indicates, the main question is, where did everybody go? Today, at the time of this post, I had 4 visitors today. That was after averaging somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 or 40 a day previously. That's quite the dropoff. The spikes in unique visitors and page views is interesting too. Tuesday, March 8, was a huge day. That reason was two-fold. First, I had plugged my blog in a story on my MLive blog, and 113 folks followed. I also posted a story that night about the Mega Millions Lottery Drawing and posed it on Digg. The response (despite not receiving any Diggs from people) was instantaneous (people were interested in that lottery jackpot) and 41 people in the few hours after the post came over from Digg. That was a good night.

But, then, sometimes the traffic doesn't follow your expectations. For example, on Friday, March 9, I posted an entry going over the Las Vegas season finale and posed it on Digg. Despite the finale happening that night, all was quiet, and nobody appeared interested in my take on the goings on at the Montacito Casino. Saturday was the same. But, then Sunday, people apparently were ready to read about the finale. By Monday, the Las Vegas entry had 28 unique visitors, even more than my homepage, thanks in large part to the Digg page and searches on Google (apparently my Las Vegas entry hit the jackpot (sorry, bad pun) when it came to a great Google placement) and other search engines. 26 people found me from Google on Tuesday, most with search terms like "las vegas season finale" and "Las Vegas Season 4 finale" and the Las Vegas page had 34 unique visitors, twice what my front page received. Obviously the numbers are small, but interesting nevertheless that it took a few days, both on Google and Digg, for my Las Vegas post to at least garner some attention. And, now, if the 4 visitors today aren't an indicator, nobody seems to be searching for Las Vegas season finale information anymore.

Maybe my visits are down because I'm trying out Google ads, otherwise known as "Google AdSense" and it scared people away. I didn't start this blog to make money (hard to make money with 4 visitors or even 40 a day anyway) but I've never tried out Google's ad system before, and I had read a lot about it in the Google biography (can a company have a biography?), The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time

I'm not sure I like it, or any advertising, but it's interesting from a technological standpoint anyway. Sometimes it gets the ads right (like displaying CNBC business ads on the permanent link page to my Erin Burnett story or Las Vegas links on that page) and sometimes its way off. I may not keep it around. Just testing things, like I am with the Amazon.com links you see around. But, those I like because I love Amazon.com and order from them all the time, and would recommend their service to anyone. They ship fast (even their free "Super Saver" shipping), their prices are cheaper than any bookstore, and I've never had a problem in years of ordering from them. So why not link to relevant DVDs or books I talk about? Plus, I have a unique perspective on advertising on websites because when I ran a site back in high school, I killed it (in some ways) by going over-board on advertising. I've learned better than to do that again.

What really gets interesting is the geographic location of visitors. In just my little, random Blog, which hasn't had more than 700 visitors total in 10 days, I've had 54 visits from Canada (they love me in London, Ontario for some reason), 9 from the UK, 3 from China and even a guy from Turkey. And two separate people from Finland. To me, that's just incredible because my blog isn't anything right now, but yet, somehow, people from all over the world (literally) find it.

So, what was the point of this post? I'm not sure I had one other than to say, blogging is interesting, and I'm learning a lot about how Blogs work and attract visitors and use HTML. The internet has come a long way since 1998 when I was coding HTML by hand using Notepad (actually, a freeware program called NotePad Plus). I can say, though, that starting the blog has been just as fun and entertaining as I thought it was going to be when I started, so I'm not going anywhere for a while. Even if 4 visitors a day is all I have. Because, it's the loyalty of those four visitors (well, I think I was one of the 4, so, loyalty of those three visitors) that matters.

Welcome and an answer to: "So what the does Quo Vadimus mean anyway?"

I've given in to the Blog-o-sphere. And I blame my good friend and fellow law student blogger Kurt, who authors the ever-topical and entertaining Blog Clever WoT. After reading some of his posts about LOST and other topics, writing a Blog just seems like fun. Plus, while killing time on The Facebook is always entertaining, I really needed to find another, more productive way to waste time and not do, you know, actual school work. In fact, I am posting this note and creating this blog as a way to avoid studying for the MPRE (that's the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam for you non-lawyers out there) which I'm taking a week from Saturday in the wonderful state of Ohio (don't ask -- Or is that the kind of story you want to hear? Probably not).

And I'm not really all that new to blogging either as I lead on. I've written a daily Detroit Tigers blog for the great MLive.com for the past three Tigers seasons and you can check out the headlines from The Cutoff Man column on the table to your right. But, ever since I stopped writing for The Detroit News more than a year ago, I've lacked an outlet for my thoughts on all the happenings in the Detroit sports scene. And I never really had a place to vent on the latest happenings on any of my numerous favorite television shows or what's going on in the world of politics, which I follow almost as closely as the Lions and Tigers. So, hence the starting of this blog. And we'll see where it goes (if anywhere). If nothing else, it will be a nice distraction for me (like I needed another one).

Plus, if you have read down this far, you have probably seen my post on MSNBC's Mike Barnicle's review of the 2008 Presidential Campaign in baseball spring training terminology. It was a great story, and wasn't a great fit for my MLive.com column (as it had little to do with the Tigers) but I wanted to post it somewhere because it was funny and insightful. So I figured, why not start my own personal blog so I can post it there? So, here we are.

Okay, onto the name of the Blog, Quo Vadimus. While I did take four semesters of Latin while an undergrad at Michigan, that's not where I got the name. Predictably (for those that know me) it comes from television. Before Aaron Sorkin wrote and created The West Wing, he had a little-watched but well-received dramedy on ABC called Sports Night. Sports Night was similar to Sorkin's latest effort (the similarly low-rated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) in that it was a behind the scenes look at the making of a television show (in Sports Night's case, a SportsCenter-esque sports highlight show). In its last episodes, a company purchased the fledgling show and the network it was broadcast on, and that company was named Quo Vadimus, which translates to Where Are We Going? And anything good enough for an Aaron Sorkin written show is good enough for me.