Saturday, August 12, 2006

Wish I could've been there...

...but it was fun to (at first) hear on my way home from work, and then watch the final few innings...

I was watching the late innings, listening to the Mets fans vs. the Nats fans (like the Mets fans had a chance!) and when Rauch got the strikeout, I think my TV's speakers blew out. I hadn't heard an RFK roar like that in a long, long time, and it was good. Really good. I was doing a jig so hard my apartment manager below put the major broomstick to her ceiling. Heh.

Billy T. was amazing, I was psyched (after a healthy dose of "oh well, here we go again" as he gave up the long ball to LoDuca early on...) when he came back, unfazed, throwing the "filthy" stuff (see Harold Reynolds) to throw off and out some somewhat decent Mets hitters (see sarcasm)...

It's great not expecting the unexpected (see NATS WIN!). We all gotta have patience, but it's awesome in those (unfortunately) rare moments when we pull a good, concise game together, FLOP notwithstanding.

Thanksmuch again to Screech's BF for a wonderful recap.

Allrighty then, see some or all of ya'll tomorrow night, I trust.

Respectfully (and ready to cheer his *** off Saturday night) yours,

-Nat del Negro

PS... Tomorrow (Saturday) is Rally Time Richard's B-day. Anyone and everyone should come by 320 and yell RALLY TIME!!!!!! with him as tribute. I will laugh. And probably spill beer.

2 comments:

Farid Rushdi said...

Screech,
Just go to any of the free counter sites (I use bravenet.com) and add a counter to your site. It'll tell you the 1)number of visitors you receive each day, week, 2)tell you if they typed in your domain directly or came from a referrer, and 3)tell you how many your visitors are first-time or repeat. For example, the majority of my "referred" readers comes from Capitol Punishment and Just A Nats Fan.

My site averages 150-250 hits a day, with the two highest days being Livan's trade and Alfonso's "no-trade." They topped 400. I also added a program that tells me which of my links are used the most and in their order (the link to Federal Baseball is #1)

I try not to let how many visitors I get dictate what I write, but it's difficult sometimes not to be swayed by the readers. If I write something very negative, almost nasty about a player or the Nats in general, my readership spikes two or three fold. If I write what I like, if I write in a positive and fun manner, readership drops to right at 100/day. It's like clockwork. So, angry = high readership, nice = low readership.

Now I understand why newspapers and websites are all so negatively oriented. If you're getting money per visit, you "give them what you want." That's why I turned down the two "mega-sites" that asked me to write a Nats blog for them (you know, like Oleanders and Federal Baseball). Basil and Gordon aren't swayed by numbers, but I might have been. The Beltway Boys was created to help me feel part of baseball's return to D.C. (I live in Idaho and am 'out of the loop')and to learn more about the team. I put the counter on the site after about four months and found I was getting 100+ hits every day -- I was stunned.

Good luck with your site. Please let me know how I can help with it. I've spent literally months fixing mine up by "trial and error." I'd be happy to save you that time if you want to do things like add pix to your banner, widen your site, change the look, anything you want (I'm not saying it looks bad, I love it -- just if you want to make a chance at some point)

Take Care,
Farid
Beltway Boys

Farid Rushdi said...

P.S. I forgot to mention something. If you do put a counter on your site, get ready for some "What??" feelings. One Nats blog that "isn't my cup of tea" gets three times the traffic I get (What!??) and the one I like the most gets only a fraction of my traffic (What??!!).

It won't make any sense -- trust me.