Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Happy Chrismahanakwanzakah.
I look forward to hearing about your gift AAR’s.
Tag Archives: admin
Reviewing your book
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
With the advent of self-publishing through Kindle/Amazon more and more people are taking a stab at writing their own fiction. I think this is awesome and it’s great that folks are exercising their minds, getting out their opinions and ideas, and that they can reap benefits from it. However, having said that, it’s kinda my policy not to review books (or stories) that are sent to me, or that I am directed to, by the author/distributor/publisher.
The reason is really pretty simple. I don’t want the drama. If someone emails me and says “Hey, I read your blog and thought you might like this book I wrote. Here’s a coupon code for a free copy from Amazon! It’d be great if you’d post about it!” and I take them up on it, read their stuff, and don’t like it….what happens? I post that I didn’t like it and then I get into an unwanted email exchange with the person demanding to know why I didnt like it, why am I sabotaging their writing career, I’m obviously of no talent and simply jealous, etc, etc, etc. Like I said, drama. Don’t need it, don’t want it.
So..I highly encourage you to explore your talents as a writer of ..well..whatever you want. And if you want to send me a free copy of your work to read, that’s great. But if you want me to review it, I’m afraid I’ll have to take a pass.
Is this something that happens frequently enough that I felt I needed to post about it? Well, it didn’t used to be but then again it didn’t used to be that people could do the self-publishing thing either. I probably get four or five of these sorts of requests a year and I usually just ignore them hoping the person will take the hint and there won’t be any hard feelings..but I may as well put it out in the open just in case someone was thinking about asking me to review their work for them.
It’s nothing personal guys, but asking me to review your literary masterpieces is like a fat chick asking you “Do you think I look fat?”. There’s no way you can give an honest opinion without someone getting hurt.
SO, please..go create! Give voice to your preparedness muse! Write the next Great American (Preparedness) Novel…and feel free to send me a copy, but please don’t ask me to review it.
Search engine results and other stats
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
For the last couple months, I’ve been tracking a bunch of stats on the website. When I upgraded to the new version of WordPress I went and added Google Analytics as well, which gives me tons of information. One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that there are two search queries that are consistently in the top ten for search results that bring people here. The first is “are guns good investments’ , or some similar phrasing, and the other is “HK flare pistol”.
Both of these posts are from several years back, yet they are always in the top ten of searches that brought people here. (Other search terms on that list are “commander zero”, “notes from the bunker”, and other obvious hits.)
Some other interesting stats – hits from the US account for 94.23% of traffic. Of that, Texas is the largest percentage of hits (10.76%), followed by California, Florida, Washington and Virginia.
Biggest referrers? Prepperwebsite.com with 17.23% of referral traffic coming from them. Followed by Survivalblog.com, offgridsurvival.com, and suburbansurvivalist.
After the main page, the post that gets more traffic than any other is this one, making up 2.6% of all posts read by people. (That doesnt sound like a high percentage, but with over 1300 posts on the website the fact remains that this particular post is seen by more people than anything other than the most recent post at the top of the blog. The next most popular draws less than half that amount of attention.)
And the thing I get asked about most in email? Where I got the new header graphics for the website. We’re steadily decliing into a Third World economy and this is what people ask about..’whered you get those cool pictures?’ (They were turned up in some late night random Google surfing.)
Page hits is about 1000 a day, which is kinda sad considering how long this blog has been running…but thats cool since I really post for myself and not for the fame and notoriety. (Although, to be honest, from time to time I’ve gotten some cool stuff out of it.)
Anyway, I thought I’d share a few of those stats since I find them interesting.
This much closer to adult diapers and long-term care……..
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Ah, ’tis my birthday. And, as a wise man once opined, you’re only as young as the woman youre feeling. If you’re in a quandary because you didn’t shop early and are now left wondering what you could possibly get me on such short notice, fear not! Simply find a suitable .jpg of an amazingly hot chick holding a gun and email it to me. Clothed, lingerie, naked, whatever….hot chicks with guns.
Blegging done, ALICE packs, Gun Show
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Well, I’m officially done blegging. That doesn’t mean you can’t donate if you want to, it just means I’m done mentioning it. About two dozen folks were kind enough to fling some greenbacks at me for operating expenses, including one fella who went old-school and simply stuffed cash into an envelope and sent it in. All told, it’s enough to things humming for about the next three years…assuming prices on hosting don’t suddenly skyrocket. My most sincere thanks to those that donated and I hope to make you glad you did.
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Picked up a couple ALICE packs w/ frames the other day. The ALICE packs are pretty dinosaur-y, but they’re usually cheap and make a good secondary or tertiary level of backup. What I really like most about them is their ability to be used with a cargo shelf for hauling things like fuel cans and ammo boxes…anything large and fairly bulky can get strapped to the frame and carried. Someday when a person needs to manhandle five-gallons of water down a trail to a remote rally point, these babies will be just the ticket. Old Grouch has a decent deal on a frame/straps/shelf combo as well as a frame/straps/large bag combo. And if you’re a surplus junkie like me, you’ll really love the ‘used-n-musty’ ten-dollar medium packs…looks like they come with straps, so thats worth ten bucks on its own.
The ALICE packs arent my first choice for running out the door (first choice is my Kifaru bags), but for stashing a loaded pack somewhere ‘just in case’, having packs to hand out to unequipped guests, or hauling jerry cans ….a good choice.
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Gun show at the UM Field House tomorrow. I will be there all three days looking for bargains, catching up with acquaintances, doing a lot of ‘damn I wish I had the money for that’, and possibly..if Crom smiles upon me…buying some small odds-n-ends. Militia of Montana honcho Johnny Trochmann will be there and he always has useful stuff. Since it’s the largest show (and one of the oldest) in Montana it draws in vendors that normally don’t do other Montana shows. I need to keep an eye open for more Uzi mags and parts. Should be interesting to see how the markets are since the Colorado shootings…even without that event in the background, the fact that its an election year is enough to put the buying/selling markets into a state of heightened activity. Nonetheless, it shall be fun and I am greatly looking forward to attending. If youre in the region it’s Friday-Sunday at the University of Montana in Missoula.
Admin – Blegging
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Well, it’s been about 2 1/2 years since I last made a post about operating expenses. At that time folks were generous and ponied up enough to keep the lights on for a couple years.
Well, it’s that time again…time to pass the helmet around and give the speech about how it’s all voluntary, give what you can, every little bit helps, yadda, yadda, yadda.
If you can’t or don’t wanna throw in a buck or two, I’m not going to give you the slightest bit of grief about it. It’s a tough economy, and I’m not exactly Woodward and Bernstein over here. But, if you’ve got a few bucks laying around and you get a good chuckle from time to time, or even some useful information (hey, it happens!), I’d be grateful for whatever you can do. It all really does go to paying for hosting and domain registration and that sort of thing. There’s a ‘Donate’ button at the top of the right sidebar or you can use this one:
From an admin standpoint, here’s some points of interest:
This blog has been running for over nine years, which puts it a little over two years older than ,Rawles’ Survivlablog, and makes it one of the oldest preparedness blogs still active. There’s about 1360 posts which averages out to about one post every 2.5 days. There are almost 5900 comments which comes out to an average of each post generating about 4.3 comments. Approximately 50% (+/- 5%) of all visits are return visits…meaning half of you reading this have been here before. Metrics are a bit fuzzy, but on average it’s about a thousand hits a day…unless ,Rawles or Tam links to me, in which case those numbers usually double or triple.
On a personal note, as long as I’m standing here with my hat in my hand, my birthday is coming up August 7th and my wish list can be found here.
Outta town this week
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Just a quick note. I’m up in glacier park, from Monday until Friday….so no posts, I’m afraid. Back to our regularly scheduled brain droppings on Friday.
Admin – Some changes
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
There’s going to be more admin stuff going on over the next couple days. Biggest thing is that I’m going to try and develop a custom theme for the blog, move some stuff around, throw in a feature or two…that sort of thing.
A few obvious changes…:
Calendar page on right menu bar. Personally, I find these to be a nice way to quickly check and see how active a blog has been. It may seem like I hardly ever post but, according to the little bolded numbers on the calendar, I spew brain droppings at a fairly consistent pace.
Yeah, there’s a Donate button at the top of the menu bar. You may not like it, but then again, you dont have to click it either. Honestly, I don’t care if you read, comment, engage in a few discussions and never kick in a buck or two for bandwidth….that’s not why I do this. But, if you want to kick in a couple bucks, or want to help me get a cool piece of gear to beat the crap out of and report on….it’s there.
There’s a subscription page. (Its the rightmost link just under the graphic at the top of the page.) I guess if you want the latest posts emailed as they occur, you can subscribe. Not sure why you would, but it’s there. At least, I think it’s there…I haven’t really tried it yet.
Admin – On the move
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Crom, I thought I was done with this crap….
Ok, I’ve given up on Yahoo getting their poop in a group regarding blog hosting. I’ve signed up elsewhere and will be trying to migrate the blog there over the next few days. Already there are some hiccups, but hopefully it’s nothing that a fistful of twenties can’t fix. There may(!) be some up-n-down issues with the blog. Please be patient. If I can’t get the database moved over, I’m going to have to do a semi-scorched earth import of previous posts…which means while 95% of the posts will be here, the comments will be off in data heaven somewhere. We shall see. So, be patient, and hopefully by this time next week things will have shaken out.
Admin – Shoot me now
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Man, I am just shooting in the dark here.
Plan A, which was pretty extreme, was to just burn the place to the ground and start over. But there’s a lot of years of postings I really don’t want to lose.
Plan B, which is what youre looking at, was to press the big red button on the Wayback Machine and teleport the blog back to a week or two ago. And undo the database upgrade and revert back to an earlier version of it. And undo the WordPress upgrade and revert back to an earlier version of it.
Lost a couple days of posts, but I can live with that for the moment. I think commenting might be back up. Feel free to take a swing at it.
Still getting some database access errors, though. I’m going to do a repair and see if that helps.