When it comes to air travel, it seems my wife and I have the worst luck. After ridiculous delays with America West around Christmas and Spring Training, it's now United who has let us down. Two hours into our excursion, we haven't even gotten out of the Bay Area.

We had a simple three day weekend trip to Denver planned, returning to my first and second grade home. Our journey was supposed to start at 10:10 this morning from San Jose, but a missing part, likely useless, has thrown things to disarray.

An indicator light on the blink had to be replaced, leaving two options... Wait to have it delivered from San Francisco, or fly there ourselves. After more delays, the latter was selected. We piled on the flight, waited even longer to defuel, and finally set off to San Francisco, where we are now. After noon, we are back on the tarmac, and they are now replacing the fuel they took out in San Jose.

So we are all trapped and delayed.

The only upside? Figuring out if I can blog, using my BlackBerry, from the plane, while we wait. Sitting in an exit row isn't all bad either. But to be honest, that novelty is going to wear off pretty darn quick if we are delayed any more.

Let's go! United, this is pretty weak, guys.

Just a few years ago, it would have been hard to believe Microsoft would be on the run from a Silicon Valley innovator like Google, but that's what's happened. As Microsoft and Google have played the #2 and #3 roles in search and portals, it's clear neither company has enjoyed their challenger position in recent years. Now, the industry scuttlebutt has it that Microsoft is looking to buy up Yahoo! and that the companies' combined forces could challenge Google's throne.

I for one don't think they would beat Google even if they did merge, and truth be told, I would move the heck away from My Yahoo! in favor of iGoogle if this did happen. Not much good comes from services typically when they fall under the Redmond fold.

However, there has already been one positive from the rumors. That Yahoo! stock I purchased a few weeks ago on a dip is up nearly 20% today. Wow - that trade looks good in hindsight now, doesn't it! (See: Buying on the Dips Can Kill Your Finances)

Yahoo/Microsoft news from My Link Blog:

* Internet Outsider: Microsoft To Buy (Swallow) Yahoo...Again? Please, God, No.
* Jeremy Zadowny: Microsoft and Yahoo (again)... I couldn't tell you if I knew.

Thanks to some experimenting with a new Web log analysis tool, called Summary, I've downloaded all my Web log files and can run all sorts of reports to see where Web traffic is coming from, what pages are being read, and how that compares to last week, last month or last year. While SiteMeter does a great job covering cumulative data and most specifically for the last 4,000 visitors, there's something to be said for taking a walk back in time.

While this site isn't really intended to be a world beater in terms of traffic, as evidenced by the fact I barely make a blip on Alexa's statistics, growth is good as far as I'm concerned.

For me, the most important metric isn't total number of users or hits, but instead the page view - for now. I tend to get a lot of traffic from Google Images and Athletics Nation to download the ANtics comics, so I have to filter out those who have siphoned off the graphics without reading the context. You'd be surprised how many places I've found the ANtics all over MySpace and other forums...

Looking at page views, April 2007 reportedly had more than 99,000 in the 30 day period. In April of 2006, that number was less than 9,000. March 2007 comes in second place, with 82,000 page views. March of 2006 clocked in at less than 8,000. Both months show growth of about 1000% year over year.

Summary also offers a metric called "Total View Time", which I can only assume tries to add visitor time spent on the site in aggregate. I guess in this case I'd be given more credit if I had slow readers, but regardless, April checked in with "72 days" worth of Total View Time. That number is trailed by March's 63 days, February's 30 days and January's 24 1/3 days. April of 2006 had less than 5 days worth of traffic, meaning total view time was up nearly 1500% in this metric.

As I've continued to post on the blog with solid frequency day in and day out, the total number of pages available for visitors and search engines alike is growing. As any SEO specialist will tell you, the more content available, the better Google, Yahoo! and the rest like your site. As a result, the numbers there are startling.

Visitors coming from search engines to louisgray.com numbered nearly 10,000 in April, up from 5,500 in March and 2,700 in February. In April of last year, I had even less than 300 visits from search engines, less than 3% of today's activity. To be honest, a significant amount of that traffic has come looking for R-rated material, but they're most likely disappointed when they find out how boring I am.

Summary, despite being a robot, also tries to offer up analytic detail.



For instance:

On 04/23/07. There was a spike in visits, about 4,906 extra visits or 266% above average. Bytes (+733.36M/+458%), hits (+60,198/+1,200%), pages (+9,349/+936%), downloads (+200/+2,857%), errors (+589/+316%), unique hosts (+4,315/+388%), 1 page visits (+4,547/+1,040%), robot visits (+1,254/+269%), and total view time (+279,152/+402%) also spiked. Possibly related to referring domains 'digg.com' (+2,511/+251,100%), 'techmeme.com' (+374/+18,700%), and 'doggdot.us' (+160/+16,000%) based on visits. Possibly related to request '/live/2007/04/googles-earth-day-logo-makes-splash.html' (+153.08M/+4,880%) based on bytes. Possibly related to request '/live/2007/04/googles-earth-day-logo-makes-splash.html' (+3,904/+4,880%) based on pages. Possibly related to requests '/files/lgraycom_widget.zip' (+140/+1,272%) and '/files/antics07_bg.pdf' (+51/+1,700%) based on downloads.

It's not quite the Queen's English, but it's close. I was particularly amused by the fact it said it was possibly due to the jump from Digg, TechMeme and DoggDot, who checked in above 15,000% of normal. Yeah, that's a spike.



It's just fun with numbers. For a stat geek like me, I like diving into the reports and seeing what, if any sense I can make of things. If you run Mac OS X, and want to take a run at your own stats, give Summary a spin. As for me, I'll be seeing what other tricks I can pull off to push us up another 1000% by April of 2008.

At times, I feel guilty that I simply don't have enough time to devote to additional blogging activities outside of louisgray.com. For The Apple Blog, Athletics Nation and Sactown Royalty, I play a supoprting role on each - happy to help whenever possible, but without the full devotion the site owners need. Yet over the last few days, I've found some time to contribute.

At Sactown Royalty, the season's over, but the off-season, which could be just as busy, is just getting started. The Kings have fired their coach and the fans aren't happy with the players who are left. Yesterday I asked, if you could run the team for a day, who should stay and who should go? So far, after 42 comments, the consensus is that Kevin Martin is a must and some of the youngest players are probable. Everyone else can be kicked to the curb as far as the fans are concerned.

On Athletics Nation, baseballgirl called me up this evening and asked me to step in to run the recap. Of course, it would be my luck that the A's DH and big name free agent acquisition in the off-season, Mike Piazza, was injured, and looks to be out as much as 4-6 weeks. Ouch. Meanwhile, the team made three errors which gave the Red Sox the margin of victory. This is noted in the game summary: "DE-FENSE! (Clap! Clap!) DE-FEN... Uhoh"

Meanwhile, off of sports and back to tech, Apple's Steve Jobs looks like he's getting the hang of this blogging phenomenon. Following his "Thoughts on Music", which reset the labels' expectations on DRM, he posts a note on "A Greener Apple", stating Apple's efforts to promote a clean environment, including increased recycling and fewer chemicals. I wrapped his note up for The Apple Blog in "Apple Gets the Lead Out".