Sigh…
Daylight Savings Time started yesterday. My body clock is still on Standard Time. It’ll take me a few days to sync the two.
On the local front, Harbor Freight is coming to Cass County! Specifically, it’s moving into a spot in Belton, Missouri, that formerly housed a hardware store. Why my exaltation? Harbor Freight is like a toy store for men. Harbor Freight has a number of hard-to-find items not normally found in hardware or tool stores. There was a small flyer in yesterday’s Sunday paper. On it was a digital multi-meter, a drill press, solar-powered lights, and a solar-panel to power or recharge 12VDC devices. I have ordered some items from them on-line in the past. Now I can just drive a couple of miles and browse with my Mk1 Eyeball.
The local store is still being fitted out. I drove past it late last week and the staff was assembling shelving inside. I didn’t see an opening date but I’d hazard a guess that it won’t be too long until that day. A ham buddy and I are waiting when we can visit and drool.
The next big political crisis looming in Washington is the upcoming debt limit review. Mitch McConnell vows no fight. He’s shown no backbone to date, why should he change now? He caved on the DHS funding. Holding the debt limit is a much, much, much bigger budget issue.
The daily FOX Newsletter had this to say.
MCCONNELL VOWS NO SHUTDOWN AS DEBT LIMIT FIGHT NEARS
Fox News: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that the Republican-controlled Congress won’t allow the government to default as the Treasury Department quickly approaches its so-called ‘debt ceiling.’ ‘I made it clear after November that we won’t shut down the government or default on debt,” the Kentucky Republican told CBS’ ‘Face the Nation.’ McConnell’s promise came two days after Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Capitol Hill that the government loses its authority after March 15 to borrow money to cover approved congressional spending and that his agency would have to resort to ‘extraordinary measures’ as a short-term solution.” — FOX Newsletter, March 9, 2015.
Something strange is happening with my blog. Starting late last week, my hit count sky-rocked. At first my ego told me it was due to the quality of my topics and writing skills. Then reality set in and I started looking for the source.
I do collect the usual statistics as do all blogs, how many visitors come, what they looked at, how long did they stay. All that info didn’t indicate who were the visitors. The standard software said Google News was the source. I activated some additional tracking software and found something interesting.
The visitors were coming from Facebook! Now I do have a plug-in that echoes by blog to my Facebook page. Most bloggers do. But that link has been in place since I moved from Google’s Blogspot service to WordPress a few years ago. Why the sudden increase?
I don’t know. If I had advertisers, they’d be pleased at the sudden increase in my hit-count. But, I don’t have advertisers; I’ve turned down all offers. I thought it might be robots, I do see some every day. It’s how the search engines know what I’ve posted. No, the pattern isn’t that of a robot. Whomever, or whatever it is that is looking via Facebook is looking at individual posts via tag lines, one such tag is my posts concerning Right-to-Work.
Is it unions, the NLRB, or other RTW organizations? I don’t know. I do not, however, expect the trend to last. In a day or two (yesterday, on Sunday, was the highest visitor count this year,) the hits will drop back down to their former levels. My ego may suffer a minor twinge but I will understand it was an unusual occurrence. At least it has given me a blog topic today.