Appeal to lurkers

A little while back I appealed for answers … why were so many people searching for - I daren’t mention them by name again for the flurry of electrical activity it might cause – a cartoon character with wild hair and her dog? I didn't get any answers then. It hasn't abated either and every day I get 8-15 hits from those search words.

I am vacillating between the idea that I am being teased and the prospect of having a nervous breakdown.

Today, apart from alerting potential jesters to my mental state, I am here for another appeal. I get many hits (and reads) from people who don’t leave a comment and I am wondering…

Who are you? Do you come here regularly to read? Please drop in and say hello. I’d love to know who you are so that I can say hello.

(Don’t be scared away if you don’t want to introduce yourselves … I was once a long time lurker myself. You are still welcome.)

Happy Christmas already

I’m off to the BWG Christmas lunch today.

I went to look for pictures of last year’s Christmas lunch to post here. Yeah … you know what? Perhaps I’ll just leave it to your imagination.

This has been getting lots of hits on my stat counter. I don’t quite know what people are hoping to find when they search for how to make a Christmas Grotto… I hope they’re not hoping for 3D constructions. Anyway, I’ve pulled the sign out again for this year; (I think a new one might be in order next year) found the red velvety material and the white snowy fabric; packed a toolbox of equipment which might enable me to cobble together a ‘grotto’ (a festive looking area for Father Christmas to sit to hand out presents…) I’ve brought along some lovely green tinsel too.

THIS YEAR I’m staying sober as a teetotaller. I cannot afford to annihilate my writing brain cells for a week.

LSHTM and Reuters

I was brought kicking and screaming into the computer age by Husband.

My first flirt with a computer was in 1985 at secretarial college between A’Levels and University. We learned to type on electric typewriters, but then we were taken off to a simulated office and shown how to use the computer. Nobody explained to me what it was for … and I didn’t like to ask.

My next proper relationship with a computer (some might argue about applying the word computer here) was with an Amstrad in my final year at University. I purchased it on some kind of interest free credit student scheme in order to type my dissertation. My subject was ‘Jason and Medea: love or expediency?’ Jason is he of the Argonauts and Golden Fleece. Every time I ran the spell check it asked me if I wanted to change Argonauts to Arsonists and every single time it made me chuckle out loud. My Amstrad and custard creams got me through that dissertation.

Now that I’m here in the IT world I do rather love it. I could get obsessed. I am obsessed.

I’ve kind of learned enough to be doing a webmaster job with a charity here (let’s be honest, it’s a good job it’s a voluntary position, they wouldn’t want to pay me for it) but I still get upset at the thought that I can’t work out Facebook. I wonder if I’m going to turn into my mother, who’s just about worked out fax machines.

Anyway, my latest obsession is with the statistics and after KevinK requested info about a couple of his regular readers (one of which was me) I thought I’d do the same. I hope it doesn’t get lost in the Saturday post. There are visitors from two places that I’m intrigued by. One is from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (where my sister used to work) and the other is from Reuters.

If either of you are reading this? Would you think about delurking? Introduce yourselves? Do I know you or is it coincidence?