Stardate 20021230.0020

(On Screen): I look at my refers pretty often, in part because I'm curious to see when someone links to something I've posted, or even just to my site. (I find some pretty cool stuff that way.) In part because it's the main way I know when I should back-link to someone else's commentary (since most of them don't send me mail letting me know. And, in part, it's vanity. It's also one of the rewards I get for doing all this; a cheap thrill, to be sure, but harmless.

I am constantly amazed by the wide variety of places I've been getting linked from for the last few months. As the site has become moderately well known and built up a regular readership, I get refers from some pretty amazing places. I don't know who visits unless they send me email, because I don't have Apache set up to do a reverse-DNS on IPs of the people who visit. (Basically, I don't want to invade your privacy.) So it's the refers I see.

Today, for instance, I saw a refer from a site and looked at it, and realized it would be perfect for Glenn, so I mailed it to him and was gratified to see him post it. I mean, how could any "linker" resist a blog which alternates articles about cute bunny rabbits which need to be adopted, and articles about high tech weapons?

What's somewhat stranger is to see some of the cases where people post links to my site to various discussion systems. I've gotten used to seeing refers from Motley Fool and Silicon Strategies; that's pretty routine now. Yahoo discussion boards show up nearly as often. But it was weird last year being linked from a discussion system in Thailand, and there's a discussion system in Estonia where someone's linked to me five or six time. And about a week ago I spotted a link from a site in Bulgaria. Given that they were in languages which were decidedly not English (the Bulgarian system displayed in what looked to my inexperienced eye like Cyrillic) I don't have any idea whether they were cursing at me, laughing at me, or praising my god-like wisdom. Or something else entirely.

It's always strange and a bit frustrating to be linked from a site where I can't see the posts because I can't log in. I've seen refers from the Something Awful discussion system several times and have had no idea even why, since I can't get in to see the post (even though it was probably in something resembling English, though with them one can never be sure).

However, I must confess that today set all new records. It's another system which requires a login, so I can't see what they're saying. Nonetheless, the mind boggles: someone linked me from a discussion system on Marilyn Manson's home page. The only thing I know is that they linked this article, but I have no idea why, nor what context it was in. But jeeze-louise; a Marilyn Manson fan linked to something written by a 49-year-old technogeek? What's this world coming to? (Don't those rockers have any standards at all?)