My worldwide popularity

As you probably know, I have a hit counter on my blog so that I can watch where random hits on my blog come from.

When a user navigates through the web and links to a site, the user connects to that site's server, thus letting the server know his IP (simply, a unique internet identification for each computer). The user also transfers something called a "referral", which is the URL of the website from which the user linked from.

Since my blog is not linked from any static websites or from any blogs other than the families, the only outside hits that I generally get are those from search engines. Being diverse and having the wide spectrum topic coverage that it does, I get a number of interesting hits on a day to day basis. The kind of hits where I really wonder what on earth the person was thinking at the time.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the hits are dominated by Ramen Noodle searches. Of the most recent searches is this one from yahoo, this google. These are two among many variations.

Since the word "C++" is in my title, but the blog has nothing to do with it, I get lots of hits pertaining to C++. Primarily, I get a number of hits related to something about a wait function. I don't know what or why, but lots of people seem to think that it is important.

I also periodically get hits pertaining to Half-Life 2, usually linking to either one of the pictures in this ancient post.

Of the more interesting recent hits, I have one directly to my work on Pile Theory. A hit from someone in the local area (based on their IP) that was searching for a certain music director, of whom I have referenced here before. Hits from people in search of information on musicals that I have performed in and reflected upon here.

The strangest hit must be this one: I was browsing IPs when I found one that I wasn't familiar with. Running a search, I found out that it was from
IP: 155.178.***.***;
ISP: Federal Aviation Administration.

Hmm, maybe I have some critical opinions on here that they are just itching to get a hold of. Maybe they are in search of elite computer simulator pilots. Maybe they need an expert's opinion on manatee face-kicking. I looked up the URL referral.

It turns out that it was a google search using the terms, "paluza power". Hurray FAA! Way for the government to work for us, keeping us safe from midair aircraft collisions! What's even worse is that the link to my site is on the bottom of the second page, implying that this user was looking pretty hard for whatever he wanted to know.