hello, sweden.

i have discovered google analytics and it is rocking my world.  in a nutshell: you can set it up for your blog or another website you administer, and then it will keep statistics about who visits your blog, where they live, and whether they have ever been to your blog before.  and lots of other things that are more important, i would imagine, to people whose website is associated with their business.  and i set up google analytics ALL BY MYSELF.  it involved copying and pasting code into my blog's HTML blah-de-blah.  and i knew how to do that.  because i am amazing.

i set this up last saturday, and since then i have been stalking you, dear readers.  google analytics can tell me the exact city that each visit comes from.  or, sort of.  my friend mike was around when i was setting up the program, and i made him go to the blog so i could see if it was working.  he works in houston during the week and his work computer's internet is routed through a server there regardless of where in the world he is, and sure enough - when he went to the blog it showed up as a visit from houston, not atlanta (where he was physically sitting).  so the information i am about to present is only sort of accurate.

this is what i have learned.  in the first seven days that i had this set up:

85 unique visitors went to my blog.  hi, 85 people!

1 person has visited from each of these countries: mali, hong kong, sweden, canada, malaysia, the philippines.  2 have visited from russia, 2 from pakistan, and 3 from the uk.

in the us, there have been visits from connecticut, massachusetts, new york, north carolina, DC, virginia, maryland, tennessee, iowa, wisconsin, texas, utah, california.  and of course georgia.

i have clearly been spending all my free time stalking you on google analytics.  i know who many of these readers are - it's clear who is visiting from north wilkesboro, nc or west hartford, ct or nashville, tn, for example, and it's really bizarre to me that google knows the exact city these visits come from.  like, google - you know where my friends live!

but who is coming from wales, wisconsin?  or mcneil, texas?  or moscow?  or mali?  or karachi, pakistan and lahore, pakistan?  (yes, dear readers, two visits from pakistan.  omg.)  the only one of these mysteries i believe i've solved is the mali one: my guess is that my friend anna in lusaka, zambia has her internet routed through mali.  i have made this decision because anna is the only person i know living in the whole continent of africa.  nevermind that mali and zambia are 3,100 miles apart.  now, i know noone in the entire continent of asia, so these must be new friends.  hi, new friends!

this makes me very curious who is reading this blog.  (in addition, i know that some people read this blog through google reader or some rss software [is that the right word?], and i don't think google analytics is picking up on that - it only records people who go to the website.)  so - blog readers one and all, far and near: out yourselves!  it would mean a lot to me if everyone (even those people whose location i know) would post a little comment and tell me who you are and where you're reading from.  inquiring minds want to know.  as a bonus: the person who is reading from the farthest location from atlanta gets a real life postcard in the mail from me (anna: you might be a shoe-in to win this one, but i'll send you a postcard even if you aren't) AND the person who can tell me the most interesting fact about their location gets a postcard in the mail.  i get to determine what is interesting and what isn't.

ready, set, COMMENT.  google analytics will let me know if you don't, and i will be very disappointed.