Hey, the Todd Pad's been noticed!

Only astute readers will figure out the relevance of the image above!

The following is an email I received when as I checked my email last night while waiting in line to enter the "Hollywood Tower of Terror" at California Adventure:

"Dear Danel,

Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it a 7.3 score out of (10) in the Personal Blogs category of Blogged.com.

This is quite an achievement!

We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.

After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 7.3 score.

We’ve also created Blogged.com score badges with your score prominently displayed.  Simply visit your website’s summary page on Blogged.com:

Click on the "Show this rating on your blog!" link underneath the score and follow the instructions provided.

Please accept my congratulations on a blog well-done!!

Sincerely,

Amy Liu

Marketing Department

amy@blogged.com

http://www.blogged.com

I was quite surprised; how would Amy have run into our blog out of the millions and millions of blogs that are floating out there in cyberspace and what's up with the score? We do this for fun and for our friends and family, not for any kind of achievement based thing. Then I thought about it more. more than likely she, or blogged.com rather, uses sophisticated tracking programs that "crawl" the net in search of certain statistical data. Indeed, it's probably the amount of hits our little blog gets. You see, we average about thirty unique views a day (meaning thirty different IP addresses, or unique users) which isn't that many, but it's more than average. How do I know how many people look at our blog? Well, I am a bit of a geek and I keep track of this data using Google software. So anyway, this must have put us on the radar and then, according to her, the frequency of updates and the content for our audience is at least somewhat compelling. Are we super excited? Not really. But is it kind of cool that we get a little recognition? Sure.

Anyway, if a 7.3 is "very good" then I am a very nice teacher because give out many As and Bs. Don't get me wrong, I hand out a fair number of Cs and there are always a handful of Ds and Fs...you gotta do the work kids!  

This brings up the question: why do we blog? It's not for a 7.3, that's for sure! I think we do it mainly because it taps into our nature; I think most people innately want to share their ideas, thoughts, photos, dreams and aspirations with others. That's why we speak, read, write and so forth! Now, we realize this isn't the case for everyone. A lot depends on one's temperament, personality and phenotype. Some people think blogging is just ridiculous, and from their point-of-view I am sure it is! Furthermore, the technical aspect of blogging bothers many, most of whom are neo-Luddites and think the evil internetz are out to destroy the world or they think blogging is digital bragging. I have to laugh when people say that because why are they looking at blogs then? Voyeurs! Why do we, the Todds, blog? For you, our friends and family!  

Despite the fact that on certain days dozens of people stumble upon this and other blogs via search engines when they key in particular terms as they peruse the net for various forms of content (we use Google Analytics which tracks where people come from AND what terms they typed into the search engine they used to find our site...it's sort of depressing, however, because most of the "dumbest" blogs I have done, such as "Baby Animalz" and "Chuck Norris Facts," draw the most traffic...but I suppose that's to be expected since the vast proliteriat uses the net for pure amusement.

So, what do we learn from all of this? That The Todd Pad is "Very Good," but don't go calling us "Excellent," ya hear?

Fun fact: we once had over one-hundred unique visitors on our site in one 24 hour period and we still can't figure out why!