Welcome to 2016 everyone!  It is hard to believe that another year has passed already and even harder to imagine this little offramp on the World Wide Web is now officially 9 years old.  As is tradition around here, the dropping of the ball signals a time to reflect on all the hard work that goes into this labor of love.  I tried to expose you to a variety of topics through the course of the year but I will admit the focus has clearly shifted to more of a photography outlet than a world commentary.  To compensate, I’ve tried to sprinkle various comments and opinions within those posts and every once in a while you’ll get a post devoted to some complaint or observation that strongly intrigued me in one way or another .. usually as of late with this this administration it has not been in a positive direction.  The focus on photography has allowed me dive a little deeper into my art and pushed me to get better in the field knowing that my products will be put on display for all of you to critique.  Your comments throughout the year have been thoroughly appreciated and invaluable when it comes times to selecting the entries for the UB contests.  Last year also brought a new family challenge as my brother Ron fully immerse himself in the birding world cranking out new bird after new bird.  That friendly competition drove a lot of bird posts this year due to my birding rule that requires me to devote a post to a new bird before I can officially count it on my Life List.  I think it would only be fair if Ron also started up a blog to even out this competition a bit don’t you think? hehehe.  I do find it personally satisfying to know he is falling way behind on his processing based on all the grief I get on my backlog – a backlog that drove all the bonus posts in December.  For the fifth year in a row I managed to hit my minimum 6 posts per month self imposed quota.  Oh, and I should point out the new challenge I gave myself of at least TWO images for each non-general post .. well that was shredded like the Constitution under Bumbles.  This required a lot of posting from the road this year thanks to a running schedule that left little time for slacking.   Speaking of the running load this year, you probably noticed there were plenty of new runs last year including several half marathons.  One major running event went unfulfilled this year for a number of reason that might show up in a future post.  Needless to say, missed goals are a solid kick in the nuts around here and there is very little in the way of excuses that takes the sting off when that happens.  With that said, it was not entirely my fault and the journey to prepare resulted in setting a personal record that is likely never to fall.  I owe a lot of that to my two good running friends Sung and Ryan that helped me get through the year in the cold, the wind, the sleet, the snow, the rain, the hills and the injuries – a teaser for the future post.

There were several projects this year – some completed, some progressed like the one you are probably sick of hearing by now – Project Aaarrrnnnuuulld.  That project is nearly finished now – only ONE more phase to go and that multi-year project will be in the books.  Book recollections were woefully undernourished this year but a lot of that time was impacted by the increased running schedule.  If it wasn’t directly eclipsed by late night runs it fell victim as a result of being too tired to crack open a book before crashing on the bed.  The Posey’s made their debut in our Halloween Trail this year along with several new Halloween related projects which rounded out a number of the November posts.

Every year I have to give complete credit to my readers for making the blogging commitment worthwhile.  This year is NO EXCEPTION.  Once again the drive to make my post commitments and the desire to make the images that appear here they best they can be is directly influenced by your commitment to reading my efforts and expressing your thoughts and opinions in the comments. Thank You!

And now, the annual stats for the year’s worth of blogging.

Hit the jump to see the 2015 stats!

• According to the WordPress Stats: 2015 Total Posts 655 and 1,259 comments
• According to the WordPress Stats: 2015 Total Posts 89 (down from my 95 last year thank to Project Chekov) and 256 comments  (only down 6 from last year which had 6 more posts so I take that as even)
• According to the WordPress Stats: Total number of tags – 1.269 tags
• Total blog pages this year (according to MS Word): 587 – surprisingly down 137 pages from last year – likely due to the reduced number of posts, but thought for sure I had a lot more written content this year.
• Total number of words this year (according to MS Word): 90,123 (apparently that was down by 13,373 – I blame all the extra running time ha!)
• Post topics (some posts had multiple categories) 2015 / Total
  • Birds: 53 / 204   (down one from last year – again thanks to Project Chekov crushing the bird stats last year)
  • Fail:  0 / 5   (three years in a row – time to get some of these out there)
  • General:  8 / 41   (up 6 this year – likely running posts)
  • Insects:  0 / 14  (under performed in this area this year)
  • Observation:  117 / 499   (way up from last year, but I added this tag to a lot more this year … since all things are technically observed)
  • Phoadtography:  0 / 15   (yikes, I really punted on this year – I do have one from Yellowstone to get out there)
  • Products:  0 / 20
  • Projects:  18 / 40   (still a healthy number but only half of last year’s – project Auurrrnooolld will be a big feather in my cap this year)
  • Ramblings:  0 / 11
  • Recollection:  9 / 74   (down one from last year – not bad)
  • Service:  1 / 53   (yeah, actually up on a category .. by one)
  • Uncategorized:  0 / 0
  • Wildlife:  127 / 276   (actually crushed it this year – last year was only 64 – thank god for squirrels hehehe)
  • WIT: 0/2
• Blogs this year by month
  • Jan: 8
  • Feb: 8
  • Mar: 10 (Woot!)
  • Apr: 6
  • May: 6
  • Jun: 6
  • Jul: 9
  • Aug: 6
  • Sep: 6
  • Oct: 7
  • Nov: 6
  • Dec: 11  (0h yeah, a late rally)
• Comments this year by month
  • Jan: 18
  • Feb: 19
  • Mar: 20
  • Apr: 14
  • May: 20
  • Jun: 18
  • Jul: 21
  • Aug: 32 (SCORE!)
  • Sep: 10
  • Oct: 15
  • Nov: 18
  • Dec: 26 (obviously due to the increased number of posts)
    
• Posts with Most Comments
  • Click Click Click Went the Kit – 13 (cute posts like the kits always draw additional commits)
  • Orange You Glad You Snapped – 8  (a lot of that due to some off topic items like my brother beheading a goose)
• Writing style: no change on the conversational front and a growing angst against the current administration which doesn’t believe it is necessary to actually govern under the constitution .. we can add the Rhinos into this category with the recent sell out by that sorry excuse of a Congressman Ryan.
• Most common grammatical error: Still suffering from doubled up words like last year – I am beginning to think it might be this editor since this does not happen in my other writing arenas.  I do tend to type faster here, but still weird.  Luckily Word catches most of these error for me during my backup process so they do not show up in production.
• Number of WordPress upgrades: 2 Majors and a number of minors.  This is a breeze now with the new version so a lot of these happen automatically now and do not required any effort from me – nice job developers!
• Number of images used: (This includes meeting my new commitment of at least two images per post)
  • Birds – 249 (a huge number as you would expect)
  • Other Wildlife Photos – 86 (almost 3x over last year)
  • Insects – 0 – oops
  • Other Photos – 242 (actually down from last year which is surprising)
  • Custom Graphics – 4
  • TOTAL: 581 – (down from last year’s yeoman’s work of 718 – it’s quality not quantity right!?!)
• Languages used: 1 (unless you count Engrish and Brigrish)
• Completed Life List Items: 7
  • Once again ran the IVS 1/2 Marathon – totally made that race my bitch this year
  • Added a new prediction race held in Springfield (Oak Ridge Cemetery) – our team came in third (I took two legs and Sung and Ryan each took one)
  • Totally smoked the Peoria Half Marathon this year putting up a personal best ever!
  • Ran the Steamboat 15K
  • Ran the BIX7 of course
  • Blogging for an eighth year hitting my self-imposed 6 post/month quota
  • Put up a total number of running miles that is likely never to be beaten
• Maintained convictions: 5
  • Never giving Metallica a penny of my money (still not a dime)
  • Ban of RIAA backed musicians
  • Not giving Sprint a dime of my money
  • Never stepping a foot in Pressleys
  • Never listening to anything associated with Pearl Jam or watching SNL since their bad decision to joke about Benghazi , U2, Chili Peppers and new to this year’s list Liam Neeson and Quentin Tarantino.
• Missed Goals: 3
  • I failed to get through my reading list for another year (sigh) – really tough to get through those with all the running packed into this year.
  • Project Auuuuunooooold is STILL in flight but now in the LAST phase – will be done this year for sure!!!!
  • My marathon plans were derailed this year AGAIN but not due to injury – already signed up for it 2016 so this should be the year
• Suck List: 2 (those firsts I never wanted to experience)
  • We received some bad news on the medical front on both Linda’s and my family – major suckage but so far things are turning out okay.
  • We lost Kerby this year – a deep felt loss – miss ya buddy
• Recollections: (note, my tags must be off since I know there were more)
  • Books: 1 – ugh
  • Games: 0 – all work and no play makes Brian’s projects go quicker
  • Movies: 0 – did see a lot of movies at home, but not a lot at the theater – can’t afford the popcorn hehehe
  • Concerts: 1 – loved the AC/DC concert so much we are going back in February in St. Louis!!
  • Running: 3 – a lot of races this year and this only covered about half of them
  • Halloween: 2 – my passion
• My brother actually made a post on his blog over at Dead Reckonings this year giving me only 88 more posts for the year.  He did start up a birding blog (don’t deny it) where he has been posting some humorous birding cartoons – of course, that is at the cost of having to post on birds now to get his +1’s)
• Was able to check off 21  new birds on the bird list in 2015 – not enough to match Ron’s numbers but I still have some reserves in the tin for this year.
• Personal Revelations:
  • I think my streak of UB victories may be in jeopardy this year – Linda is putting up some impressive shots as of late (but don’t tell her that hehehe).
  • Ron is putting a hurt on my birding numbers as of late – this year I need to get out there more and minimally get all the +1’s in the tin processed

That pretty much sums it up. Although it is work at times, I still enjoy taking the time to blog and using this forum to show off my products (both projects and photography).   I noticed last year I stated I was 1.5 years behind and felt bad about it – this year, well, that number goes to 2.5 years behind – the horror, the horror.  Looking forward to what 2016 has in store for me and to all my loyal readers, thanks again and looking forward to getting overwhelmed with all the fodder that has been building up in the queue as of late.

Now time to relax for a brief moment and enjoy the fruits of my labor.  Here’s a toast to what 2016 has to offer and to another  year of blogging at LifeIntrigued … number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9 …

Have a great New Year everyone!… 2015 is officially in the booksaw