Originally, this post was going to be a rant about how SQL Server Reporting Services is useless, and how Excel was so much easier for creating graphs & doing useful analysis of data. Then I spent an hour and a half messing around writing queries, executing queries, exporting & importing result sets, and then manipulating the data. So all the "oomph" has kind of gone out of that rant.

Besides, I shouldn't even be messing around with this data; there are a bunch of very nice programs/scripts sitting around on the Internet to do the analysis & reporting for me. But doing things the easy way would be cheating. So instead I keep mucking around with my own custom tools & processes.

In any case, here's a bunch of pretty graphs showing the human-like page views per week broken out by country of origin. Data for other views is a bit...messy...right now. The per-country stuff is fairly clean because I'm just using a geoip database to map requesting IP address to source country.

(yes, one would have probably been sufficient to show what I was doing, but hey, if one is good, five is even better?)

(also, in all honesty, I'm guessing I don't have enough consistent traffic to make looking at a week-by-week view meaningful; better would probably be to focus on longer time spans, like a month or so)

Now playing: Matthew Barber – Ghost Notes – 06 One Little Piece of My Love

• Funny: Preordering the Apple Tablet (okay, so more funny before the official announcement)
• Also funny...I suspect it applies to other airlines too: Still Living Like a Runaway - Working with your customer support is like hiring...
• For some reason I couldn't help but think this tied into the iPad at first glance... : The J-Walk Blog: Apple Calendar
• Fun wastes of time (computer geeks only; everyone else will probably just be puzzled?): It looks a little like CMD except there is white on the background
• Techy article (although Windows Internals goes into more depth, this still provides a nice detailed but concise summary): What is IRQL?
• Must...resist...impluse...to...buy...device... (honestly, I've got no idea what I'd do with it, but whoa does it look geeky & cool!): Realtime Brainwave Data with WPF
• & finally, oooo...pretty: APOD: 2010 February 6 - Hong Kong Sky

Now playing: Rose Cousins – The Send Off – 01 I Were The Bird

So it looks like I'm going to be down in the Bay Area February 25-28...not 100% definite yet, since I haven't booked the flights yet or anything, but that's the current thoughts. It'll be fun to see Emil & things when I'm not horribly sick & unable to talk (unlike Christmas back in Indiana...), plus I've never actually been to California (yes! really!), so being all touristy should be cool.

Of course, I first have to get there.

Which might be a bigger issue than originally thought. At least if I fly certain airlines.

Here's how one un-named (although you might figure it out if you look closely at the picture...) airline wants to route me:

Yes, 13 hours. Portland to Oakland.

Soooo, why is that a potential issue? Why is it so utterly insane? Here, maybe a map will help the less geographically inclined:

Black line is the first leg, blue one is the second leg, and burgundy one is the third (final) leg.

Thanks, but I think I'd rather save the time & just hop off the plane in San Francisco and swim across the bay. Or, I don't know...maybe drive down that nice orange live labeled "5"...

Now playing: Jeremy Fisher – Goodbye Blue Monday – 01 Scar That Never Heals
(sorry for the lyrics link...it's the best I could find while being lazy)

So I used to religiously backup my data...well, at least up until the last major hardware failure I had back in '06, at which point I discovered that it didn't really matter because the "important" data that I was backing up wasn't enough to fully recover. So I just switched to buying reliable equipment, which has worked out much better. Unfortunately it means that in 10 years I wont be able to come back and spend a week distracting myself by popping CD's in & out, reminiscing...

ANYWAY, while digging through those backups (& slating them for destruction), I came across a bunch of photos from high school Spring Break (2001), when my family went down to Clearwater, Florida for the week. So here's the album (sorry for the low resolutions!):

• 2001-03 Spring Break (Kennedy Space Center, Florida)

Heh…okay, so I was already a geek back then, and only took pictures of the day we spent at Kennedy Space Center, and didn't take any of the beach...or Busch Gardens...or...well, Florida itself...

Now playing: Julie Fader – Outside In – 08 Goodbye Before Hello

Clearing out a couple months accumulation of things...my excuse for so few is "the holidays"...

• Birthday gift to self? : Bruce Schneier doll
• Kind of reassuring (at the time...not so much now...) : Everyon is just an email away
• Neat visualization : Link (via The rise of nations)
• And so the robot revolution begins! (I mean it this time!) : Roomba saves child from deadly viper
• awww... : Cute overload
• There were 6 cats at home this Christmas. *6*. : Tracking a cat
• (For Emil) : fine, your desktop isn't that bad : unused icons
• Interesting idea? : outsourcing art
• While it's a very lovely peacock...ouch...just ouch on the choice of medium : british ink

Now playing: Brandi Carlile – Give Up The Ghost – 08 I Will

Waaaay back, right after graduating from high school, I went to Europe with my French class from high school. Unfortunately, I didn't have a digital camera yet at that point, so all the pictures had to be scanned. While digging around, I found the scans of those pictures, so after a bit of cleaning up, here they are!

• 2003-06 French Trip

Now playing: The Awkward Stage – Slimming Mirrors, Flattering Lights – 07 Only Good Days Caught on Camera
(okay, so that's not actually the song I'm listening too...actually, it's 11 I Hurt the Ones That Love Me, but the title of track 7 seemed more appropriate for a picture post)
(i.e., putting in all (2) the links took longer than I was planning...)

I wish there was a way in Windows Live Photos to let me get an RSS feed of the albums, not just the photos within an album...

• Crabbing at Rockaway Beach
• Motorcycle riding at Bend, Oregon (& the return trip)
• Miscellaneous from November
• Emptied Reservoir #3 in Washington Park, Portland, Oregon
• Christmas in Indiana

(they're in order of date taken, not necessarily date posted...yeah, I need to be better about posting things on time...)

Now playing: You Say Party! We Say Die! – XXXX – 10 Heart of Gold

Happy New Year to everyone! Here's to next year!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

(pictures of food to come later...)

Now playing: Pick a Piper - Rooms