WHAT CHANGED?

Many times over the past two years (in fact, tomorrow will be the two year anniversary of this blog) I have reminded what few readers this blog has, that that real reason that I do this every day is because I personally enjoy going back and reading some of these daily entries as time passes. I admit that I try to make this blog somewhat interesting for the few people who have the spare two minutes each day to see what I am pontificating about. For many months, the average number of visitors each day has been somewhere near fifty. Beginning on December 7th, for a reason that completely eludes me, the daily visitors to this blog has 'skyrocketed' to nearly 300. I have no idea why. I always thought that I might be 'discovered' if not for my successful weight loss, then at least for my 'razor sharp' and/or  my twisted political viewpoints. However, before I get too jazzed about my increased readership, here are the stats from 'drudgereport.com' which is a website that I visit numerous times each day. For comparison, my blog has accumulated just over 50,000 hits in two years. 

VISITS DRUDGEREPORT.COM 12/25/2016

020,179,375 PAST 24 HOURS
853,034,180 PAST 31 DAYS
10,675,624,505 PAST YEAR.

It's time for me to do my 'Rain Man' thing.  If the Drudge Report had 20,179,375 visits in the past 24 hours, then it was visited approximately 840,807 times per hour, which translates to 14,013 visits per minute.  In the last four minutes, the Drudge Report has had more visitors to its website than my blog has had in the past 2 years. But we should compare apples to apples, right?  How many minutes has my blog been active?  Two years, is 730 days, which is 17, 520 hours, which further is translated to 1,051,200 minutes.

Now I have a good comparison... My blog needed to be active for over ONE MILLION MINUTES for it to be visited as many times as the DRUDGE REPORT is visited in just 4 minutes.  OK, on second thought, perhaps I should have not reported that my visits to the blog 'skyrocketed' beginning on December 7th. But they did increase. What changed? I do not know. 

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Your Food Diary For:

Saturday, December 24, 2016

BREAKFAST	Calories kcal	Carbs g	Fat g	Protein g	Sodium mg	Sugar g
Quaker - Instant Oatmeal- Maple	800	160	10	20	1,300	60
Kirkland - Pre-Cooked Bacon	240	0	18	18	1,050	0
	1,040	160	28	38	2,350	60
L U N C H
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich, 2	760	60	34	18	310	34
	760	60	34	18	310	34
D I N N E R
Home Made - Potato Latkes	852	186	28	34	4,524	15
Black Angus Sirloin Steak	360	0	24	33	0	0
	1,212	186	52	67	4,524	15
S N A C K S
Klondike Vanilla Ice Cream Bar	500	70	34	6	170	56
	500	70	34	6	170	56
Totals	3,512	476	148	129	7,354	165
Your Daily Goal	3,495	437	116	175	2,300	131
Remaining	-17	-39	-32	46	-5,054	-34
	Calories kcal	Carbs g	Fat g	Protein g	Sodium mg	Sugar g
	*You've earned 1,565 extra calories from exercise today

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       Your Exercise Diary for:

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Cardiovascular	Minutes	Calories Burned
ELEVEN MILE URBAN HIKE	166	1,879
Daily Total / Goal	166 / 30	1,879 / 590
Weekly Total / Goal	929 / 210	9,885 / 4,130

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During my eleven mile urban hike yesterday, I tried my new headlamp. I know that it looks a bit goofy. I also know that there have been a few times in recent weeks when this would have come in very handy when my hiking extended into darkness, especially where there was very little light to mark the way forward. These days, I always carry a flashlight with me. I also think that this headlamp will be permanently stowed in my backpack for the times that it is necessary. 

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from wikipedia...

Rain Man is a 1988 American road comedy-drama film directed by Barry Levinson and written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass. It tells the story of an abrasive and selfish young wheeler-dealer, Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed all of his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), an autistic savant, of whose existence Charlie was unaware. 

Charlie learns more about Raymond, including that he is a mental calculator with the ability to instantly count hundreds of objects at once, far beyond the normal range of human subitizing abilities. 

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subitize

[soo-bi-tahyz]

• Word Origin

verb (used without object), subitized,subitizing. Psychology.

1.

to perceive at a glance the number of items presented, the limit for humans being about seven.

I personally, do not have any subitizing abilities, nor do I have a mental calculator. The reason that I identify with the character of Rain Man is that sometimes I just need to carry out mathematical problems to somewhat absurd exactitude.

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