Today marks the one year birthday of Sleepless in Midland. And, it's been a fantastic blogging year.
This blog had been a mere idea for years, hampered by some technical issues, but when Typepad came along there was no excuse for delay. Sleepless in Midland began on September 1, 2003, and it initially dealt with some issues involving a local recreational club. But those issues soon resolved themselves.
And, in the early days the hits to the website were so few that I didn't want to pull up the page myself because my own hits would skew the totals. But, eventually that period passed.
The first entry that got some major attention from search engine searches was one titled Bear killed with .40 caliber handgun - Alaska. There had been an AP article in the local newspaper about an incident in which two people had been killed in Alaska by bears, and upon arriving at the scene park rangers were attacked by the same bears. One of the rangers drew his service pistol and dispatched one of the bears. Well, the article lacked some very crucial information, i.e., the caliber and make of the handgun. So, I phoned the ranger station in Alaska and found out that it was a Glock .40 caliber handgun.
That post accomplished two things. It dispelled the notion that bloggers don't do any original reporting. And it confirmed that blogs can fill in the blanks left by main stream media quite nicely.
Former Midlander, David Smith, was Joe Millionaire 2, and I wrote a few items about that excellent tv show. Unfortunately, David Smith is still riding the rodeo circuit and has not yet made it into big time entertainment. But, "The Next Joe Millionaire, an International Affair," was shown on British tv in August, and it was a huge hit there. Don't believe me? Just take a glance at the comments left at David Smith, Joe Millionaire 2 - Post Show Update. I was preoccupied during the month of August and didn't have an opportunity to do much blogging. But, it seemed that the site was getting a steadily increasing flow of hits due to our British friends checking in to see how the series ended. Lesson learned: stop writing, get more hits.
Then there was filming of "Friday Night Lights" last Spring in Odessa. Hot dang! What a blast! Once again, this blog was doing what no one else was doing at the time and that was to provide first hand reports, with photographs, of the making of the movie. And, what fun it was! In case you missed it, click the "Friday Night Lights" hyperlink. Thanks to Teressa McMahan for a lot of hard work on that.
Don't forget the water wars. Folks in far west Texas were in an uproar over a proposal to lease the water rights under Texas state land. But, there was no news of that locally - odd given that many of the partners of Rio Nuevo, Ltd., were residents of Midland. And, my entry of November 17, 2003, titled Selling West Texas' Water (1) helped to remedy that lack of information.
Well, it's back to the grindstone here at the Sleepless in Midland sweat shop. There's no money in it for me, but that's all right. It might be cute to say "all work and no pay makes for a dull blog," but it sure is nice not to be beholden to anyone but the voices in my head. So, thanks for visiting. And I hope you come back soon.
Oh yeah, one more thing. For you score keepers out there, the Typepad stats for this blog say that as of 2:29 PM CDT today it has received 73,226 total page views since its inception.
Happy Birthday! Keep writing, I'm enjoying it!
Posted by: GruntDoc | September 02, 2004 at 12:14 AM
Congratulations, and here's to many more page views.
Posted by: Redman | September 02, 2004 at 08:50 AM