Dan Park's Homepage

Scheduled Explosion Threat

For some reason, security to get into our office this morning was higher than normal. Living and working in NYC, especially in Times Square, I didn’t think much of it. It’s not as if we haven’t had bomb scares before with the building being closed while the bomb squad investigated suspicious packages.

But then we received this e-mail message a short while ago:

Sent: Monday, August 21, 2006 11:07 AM
To: FTI (all offices) Allstaff
Subject:
Importance: High

Please be advised that the New York office location will be closed on Tuesday, August 22nd and will re-open on Wednesday, August 23rd.  This closure is due to a threat directed at Reuters and, specifically, that an explosion is scheduled to take place on August 22nd at one of the Reuters building locations.

All employees who had plans to be in the New York office on Tuesday, August 22nd either for work, or client meetings should make alternative arrangements.

An explosion is scheduled for tomorrow?

Why do we live in such a scary world? =(

Xanga Footprints

Towards the end of last month, curious about what information I might glean from the data provided by Xanga Footprints, I decided to compile the records for a short period and get a sense of who was visiting my site and how/why.

Most of you are familiar with the format of the data provided by  Xanga Footprints which looks like this:

This sample shows an assortment of hits from all over the place, including search engine “robot” hits from Google/Yahoo, with many hits referred from http://images.google.com.

After a bit of thought, I wrote a quick module in VBA which sorted, analyzed and spit out some tables and charts which allowed me to make the following observations. =)

During the 15 day period from July 31, 2006 through August 13, 2006, Xanga Footprints registered a total of 2,639 Total Hits.

These hits were distributed as follows:

• 44.7% - US & Canada (1,179 hits)
• 34.1% - International (901 hits)
• 14.9% – Search Engine robots  (393 hits; Google & Yahoo)
• 6.3% - Registered Xanga users (166 hits; 66 users)

Of the 1,179 hits that showed up as U.S. and Canada, 1,107 hits were from the U.S.:

Of the 50 states, 47 are represented (plus DC) totaling 1,069 hits while 38 hits were classified just as “United States”. The three states with no visitors were Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming.

Strangely, Florida (where I’ve never lived) accounted for almost 25% of visitors while the three states in which I’ve lived, California (15.2%) , New York (15.1%) , and Pennsylvania (6.5%) brought up the next three spots.

In terms of global visits, the U.S. and Canada represented more than half of the 2,080 hits that were identified by geography:

A grand total of 68 (of 193) countries, or 35.2%, of the world was represented by those visiting this site.

I didn’t even recognize the names of some of the places from which I received visitors! We truly live in a global era! =)

Finally, I was also curious about what pages my visitors were viewing when they came by:

• 53.6% - Top 15 Posts (1,415 hits)
• 19.3% – Main page (509 hits)
• 13.8% – 16th-50th Top Posts (363 hits)
• 2.7% – RSS (70 hits)

Apparently, I have a few visitors from around the world who’ve set up RSS feeds with 70 hits during the 15 day period. I didn’t know how RSS worked nor that my site was even configured for it! Which prompted me to figure out how an RSS feed works, leading me to set up  my.yahoo.com, and consequently, to configure my Personalized Home on Google to have all my essential tools on one page! =)

Anyway, interestingly, the Top 15 Posts during this period were:

1. 11/29/2005 -  California, The End of the Road, Red-Eye Flights + Full Work Day = Delirium (308 hits; 11.7%)
2. 11/13/2005 -  Abeyance (220 hits; 8.3%)
3. 12/04/2005 -  Seasons II (196 hits; 7.4%)
4. 02/22/2006 -  Horseback Riding, Long Walks on the Beach at Sunset, A Boating Trip (92 hits; 3.5%)
5. 10/04/2005 -  Footprints, The Tip Meter, Free Refills (88 hits; 3.3%)
6. 01/04/2006 -  The Ocean and the Beach, Majestic Sunsets (76 hits; 2.9%)
7. 01/07/2006 -  Then and Now, Castles on the Sand (71 hits; 2.7%)
8. 12/30/2005 -  The Origins of Marine516, MilSim – An Adrenaline Rush, Going to the Range (67 hits; 2.5%)
9. 12/10/2005 -  The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (58 hits; 2.2%)
10. 10/21/2005 -  Hanging Out with an I-Banker Roommate, Sports (58 hits; 2.2%)
11. 08/28/2005 -  GOD IS GOOD!! =) (54 hits; 2.0%)
12. 10/12/2005 -  Indescribable, Age & Appearance (38 hits; 1.4%)
13. 03/12/2006 -  Day Trip to Bear Mountain (32 hits; 1.2%)
14. 08/31/2005 -  Gunfight in the Hall of Gold (29 hits; 1.1%)
15. 12/13/2005 -  5AM – Back to the College lifestyle…, Chicago – The Windy City, Kiss (28 hits; 1.1%)

So most of the top pages were archives from 2005 with only four posts from 2006 making it into the top 15. And even then, the most recent of those posts is from March! But of course, there were 509 hits to the main page which may explain the low hit counts for more recent posts (Or, perhaps, my posts have just become less interesting than they used to be =P).

Finally, to the hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors who somehow stumble onto my site from the world wide web this year…

Hope you enjoy your visit and please say “Hello” if you are able! (And even if you’re not a global visitor but someone I do know, won’t you say “Hi”? =P)