September 22, 2009

A Note Of Thanks

Yesterday was a lot of fun for me. I hope for you, too. We did get a little silly trying to run up the comments totals, but I'm not sure there's anything wrong with being a little silly.

On O Dock, it will be perfectly acceptable to be a little silly. You might say I do dress down Friday almost every day of the week.

Thanks to all who stopped by or left a comment. No really, I mean that.

And a special thanks to Mr. Tillerman who got things off to a rousing start with a great shoutout post. That offered me a brief glimpse into the potential a blog has for reaching people. After his post, I watched the sitemeter stats like a kid playing his first pinball machine. The global reach of his audience is truly amazing.

Within minutes, there were visitors from Europe, Scandinavia, Estonia, Australia, the UK, Africa, and even New Jersey - my former homeland. I wonder, would someone from Estonia get my twisted sense of humor?

I have no delusions of ever attracting a readership like Tillerman's. I'd really just like a slightly broader platform than the comments page allows to trade ideas and thoughts with the folks whose blogs I've been following. And hopefully, some new friends will find something to brighten their day here, too.

I'd like to try a few things with this blog that I haven't seen done too much - some of them goofy, others a bit more sober. Tell me what you like and what you don't. I can be a bit dense, so sometimes don't even realize it when I've had a good dressing down. Even on dress down Fridays.

And it probably won't surprise you that I'll try to be responsive in the comments page. Gotta keep those totals up.


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16 comments:

  1. We certainly had no sailing in West Philly. But we did have great Cheese steaks, Hoggies and a lot of gangs. We needed some sailing, I'm glad I made it out to find sailing. Sailing rocks! It is also good to run across a Homie who did not know about sailing as well.

    PS: the answer is infinity

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  2. Oh nooo, the shame of it all. this comment went on the wrong post. Only one day old and already your comments are trashed. My bad!

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  3. Hey O Dock. Love the blog, bookmarked it for future reads. Cant wait for your next.

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  4. Hey, one of John Nelson's revolutionary-war-era sailing stories is mostly based in Philly.

    Zen-sendai: Perhaps there's an artistic symmetry in arranging a comment in a post adjacent to the one it's nominally about, allowing for different concepts to be interpolated between the original post and your comment, and thereby enriching the experience of the dialogue by adding to its context and loosening its proximity to the original post.

    Now what did I just say and did it mean anything when it fell in the blog?

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  5. Zen, I had no idea we were homies.

    I wonder if you shed as few tears as I do about not getting back too often.


    Smilicus, welcome to O Dock!


    Pat, I'd be willing to bet there was a lot more sailing in Philadelphia in 1776 than in 1976, about the time I shipped out. There must be more going on at the river today than there was then. I think I saw something recently about a wooden boat building program there - often a sign that there's other sailing activity going on.

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  6. I went on a sales call once in Philadelphia; I don't feel comfortable saying Philly based on that lone experience.

    For the record, I haven't read the Philadelphia post yet; I like to comment in chronological order for maximum confusion.

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  7. According to "The Definitive Guide to Blog Commenting," to raise the number of comments to your post, put half of them in yourself. I have put this to the test, and damn! it works!

    Thanks, ODOcker! --one satisfied customer

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  8. What I know about Philadelphia, I mostly know from the novel Love Walked In, written by my cousin's wife, Marisa de los Santos, and soon, if all goes well, to become a major motion picture staring Sara Jessica Parker.

    OK, enough of the shameless plug. It's still a great book. I don't know that the movie will work all that well, as the main character is far too short and far too introspective to be played by SJP. If you like old movies and Sinatra, and/or if you like realistic love stories, you'll like this book.

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  9. "I wonder if you shed as few tears as I do about not getting back too often."

    It maybe a close race...

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  10. Ok, here's a puzzle for you O'Docker.

    Yesterday I went on a business trip and had a look at your blog from that foreign country.

    There's also a clue on my blog as to where I went, but is it enough?

    We do leave all sorts of electronic traces as we travel and browse.

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  11. JP, I'll take a stab at your location and say you were in Copenhagen.

    This latest Sitemeter is truly amazing - it also shows the type of establishment the visitor was in and the duration of their massage.

    Thanks for interrupting your, uh, meeting to visit my blog, though.

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  12. Ok, time for another clue: bowsprite went there recently.

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  13. I guess you can breathe easy, JP, as the details of your visit seem to have scrolled off Sitemeter.

    I actually e-mailed them about this and, in their reply, they called me a 'basic' user. They know more about me than I thought.

    Of course, my natural navigator skills tell me you were in Switzerland. Your comment had some chocolate smudges along the bottom.

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  14. Curses - I was sure I'd eaten the evidence in time

    Yup, Geneva it was

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  15. I keep forgetting that some people actually get to live in Europe (or nearby). Must be nice to be able to daytrip to Switzerland.

    Stay tuned to O Dock. Some photos of that region coming soon.

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  16. Yeah, if you want information about more than your most recent 100 visitors (or 30 days' visitors if there are fewer than 100), Sitemeter wants you to pay extra.

    For us bloggers, Sitemeter's a fun toy that we can get free. If we get so big that reporting on a mere 100 visitors isn't useful, Sitemeter can sell us services.

    Yeah, it must be nice to daytrip to the Alps, although last year my brother who lives in Prague broke a finger while snowboarding there for a weekend.

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