Welcome to 2017 everyone!

This month officially puts me in my 10th year of blogging and an anniversary I would have never believed would be reach when I started this little project (you can thank my brother Ron for getting me started on this journey thanks to his blogging over at Dead Reckonings – link here). Keeping with tradition, the turning of the calendar year means it is time to do my yearly assessment of my blogging production.  Over the last 9 years, the blog has gone through a number of transformations (hoping all for the better from a reader perspective).  Today, it is squarely more focused on our photography work at Eddiesoft Photography.  However, I do try to give a variety of other topics ranging from personal events to recollections, which are as much a historical documentation of what goes on during the course of a year in my little world as it his, hopefully, an entertaining read for you.  Kind of nice to have 9 years of writings to go back through whenever I get to a point where I’m wondering how all those gray hairs came to be.  No regular reader should have any question about my political leanings or my views on how our government should be run.  I’m fairly open about it, but usually try to spare you all the gory details but depending on the tone of the news that day it is likely a few barbs make their mark somewhere in the post.  Needless to say, I am optimistic that the change in the guard will bring good things – god knows it could not get any worse than the last 8.  Now we just need to deal with all these snowflakes from the participatory trophy generation.  Losing is character building and if you take that experience away… well you can see what you get – Generation Whine – hope the socialist academics are proud of their handy work.  .  See, there I go again – sorry about that but I feel the biggest drive in my life is competition – to overcome my weakness, to challenge myself to accomplish something more physically challenging than I am capable of now, to produce a better photo than the last.  That is my mantra, a core tenant that defines my existence.  And following that goal, my hope is to be sitting here next year with a better blog summary than this year – although I am pretty happy with this year both in the content of the blog and on the personal side having finally knocked off the full marathon on my life list.  There have been a handful of times in my life when I’ve had to look into the core of my soul and do battle with the demons that try to hold us back.  Those times are memories that are etched in my grey matter never to be forgotten – the last 4 miles of that Marathon are now on that list. I set my goals at the end of this month (gives me time to really thing about what I want to go after) and now that my life list is currently empty it is time to figure out what’s next.  Rest assured, like the rest of my personal challenges, you will get to experience the journey with me (I feed off your comments and encouragements).  Speaking of comments, once again I want to extend my heart felt thank yous for all the comments I have received again this year.  I know it takes time to read my ramblings and taking that extra time to provide feedback is extremely appreciated.  Keep up the good work and let me know about the things you like and definitely anything that could be better.

Special thanks goes to my brother Ron for all the time he has put in on the blog, on my projects and most of all for the enjoyment on those occasion when we get to out in the field and hunt down our feathered friends.  Hoping we can get out there a lot more this year (likely when it warms up for him hehehe).  We also need to give him all the encouragement we can to get his birding blog in full gear (link here) – he has progressed into quite the bird photographer and I’m sure everyone wants to see more of his work on his blog (besides, he needs to build his count up now that he has to abide by the birding rules for the official count).  I did take notice he is now experiencing what it is like to fall behind on the processing queue – he isn’t as bad as I am right now (over 2.5 years in the hole) but he is starting to inch up there.   If it wasn’t for my self imposed post quota, who knows how far I’d be down.  By the way, for the sixth year in a row I managed to hit my minimum 6 posts per month goal (yeah!).

It should be another exciting year around here at Life Intrigued.  The run training season is already in progress, new birding trips are being planned, Halloween projects are in their design phases and most of all… my radar is up and my observations are already being cataloged.  Assume there will be plenty of political fodder to comment on, photos to critique and that all important UB competition is just around the corner.  Hoping you will keep my little corner on the web bookmarked and visit when time permits.  Enjoy the details in my blogging summary below and raise a glass with me – to another year in the blogging books – here’s to wildlife that brings excitement and beauty to our world, to the creativity of others and most of all to the social experiment we call life that gets me up each and every day in anticipation of learning what it is that defines being human.

Thank You!

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

Hit the jump to see the 2016 stats!

• According to the WordPress Stats: Total Posts 738 and 1,456 comments
• According to the WordPress Stats: 2016 Total Posts 83 (down from my 89 last year) and only 197 comments (down from 256 comments last year but 8 of my posts didn’t generate any comments which dropped it likely about 16 right there – need to work on my comments but thinking about opening up the blog to more of the public which would hopefully have an impact on that stat)
• Total blog pages this year (according to MS Word): 658 (up from my output of 587 last year – so less pages, but more thorough content!)
• Total number of words this year (according to MS Word): 83,035  (apparently that was down from last year’s 90,123 – okay, apparently more pictures and not more words hehehe)
• Post topics (some posts had multiple categories) 2016 / Total
• • Birds: 48 / 252 (down 5 from last year which is a tad shocking seeing as how many bird posts I did make this year)
  • Fail: 0 / 5 (four years in a row – time to get some of these out there)
  • General: 6 / 47 (down 2 this year)
  • Insects: 3 / 17 (up from ZERO last year)
  • Observation: 71 / 570 (way down from last year, but this is really just a catch all since everything I post is really something I’ve seen in one way or another)
  • Phoadtography: 1 / 16 (I least I beat last year’s total hehehe)
  • Products: 0 / 20
  • Projects: 8 / 48 (down by 10, but a lot of my projects were hindered by all the running I had to do this year to get my life list check)
  • Ramblings: 0 / 11
  • Recollection: 10 / 84 (still reading a lot but not up to the once a month goal yet)
  • Service: 0 / 53 (must of had great service this year .. yeah right)
  • Wildlife: 63 / 339 (Only half as much as last year – again surprising since that is basically what this blog has morphed into – hoping I just forgot to put this tag on a bunch of posts)
  • WIT: 0 / 2
• Blogs this year by month
  • Jan: 7
  • Feb: 7
  • Mar: 10 (Woot!)
  • Apr: 7
  • May: 6
  • Jun: 6
  • Jul: 6
  • Aug: 6
  • Sep: 6
  • Oct: 7
  • Nov: 9
  • Dec: 6
• Comments this year by month
  • Jan: 22
  • Feb: 16
  • Mar: 23
  • Apr: 29 (that’s what we like to see)
  • May: 13
  • Jun: 23
  • Jul: 19
  • Aug: 6 (ouch)
  • Sep: 2 (triple ouch)
  • Oct: 14
  • Nov: 18
  • Dec: 12
    
• Posts with Most Comments
  • Denver Lillies – 11 (included a nice discussion on rigs)
  • To the Depths of Hell and Back – 9 (a lot of congratulations!)
• Writing style: no change on the conversational front and a peak anger towards or current administration – thank god there’s a change in the winds – I couldn’t take the rampant dishonesty and deception much more – fingers crossed the establishment keeps their bloodied noses out of the way of righting the ship
• Most common grammatical error: Pretty sure my brain tells my hands to type “their” but the fingers rebel and type “there” – bad fingers, very baaaad fingers – the double check system using the built in spell checking and the MS Word semantics validation process is catching most of my bumbles.
• Number of WordPress upgrades: Well, there was a MAJOR one this year thanks to upgrading my entire WordPress site to a new platform which resulted in having to completely re-skin the blog.  Pretty happy with how it turned out – looks more polished and people seem to like the new look.
• Number of images used:
  • Birds – 306 (60 more than last year WOOT!)
  • Other Wildlife Photos -102 (up over 20 from last year)
  • Other Photos – 272 (up about 30 from last year)
  • Custom Graphics – 1
  • TOTAL: 681 – (up 100 over last year – told you the pictures were up this year)
• Languages used: 1 (unless you count Engrish and Brigrish)
• Completed Life List Items:
• Topping the list was the completion of my first FULL MARATHON – finally got that sucker checked off the list after 6 years of trying)
  • Once again ran the IVS 1/2 Marathon
  • Made it through the Springfield Midnight Half Marathon although that race about killed me – took second in my age group
  • Recovered to complete the Peoria Half Marathon (third Half in about 5 weeks)
  • Ran the Steamboat 15K
  • Ran the BIX7 of course
  • Blogging for the ninth year successfully hitting my self-imposed 6 post/month quota
  • Dropped a bit in my overall miles by about 30 coming in at a very respectable 1350 for the year – a lot of that during training for the full marathon.
• Maintained my convictions:
  • 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, Liam Neeson, Quentin Tarantino and new this year Adele (and I liked her music – oh well) and Streep
• Recollections: (note, my tags must be off since I know there were more)
  • Books: 6 – did well this year
  • 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: 0 – had some in the hopper but didn’t get them published yet
  • 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 mini post on his blog over at Dead Reckonings but did put up a new birding blog this year which had 3 posts giving me only 79 more posts for the year. Note, that birding blog officially puts him under the sanctioned birding rules resulting in his bird count plummeting to THREE)
• Was able to check off 22 new birds on the bird list in 2016 – giving me an official count of 171 not enough to match Ron’s numbers but I still have a ton of birds in the tin that still need to be processed – 2017 is going to be a great year for my bird count
• Personal Revelations:
  • Once again the UB honors went to Linda – figured someone would have asked where the contest results were this year – we lost some of the results pictures, but as soon as I find them I’ll put a post out – jumping the gun I can say I WON again this year!
  • Ron gave a mighty challenge to my bird count this year – but now that he has a birding blog it puts him back down to three so I have plenty of room now hehehe.

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 2 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 2017 has in store for me and to all my loyal readers, thanks again and looking forward to getting overwhelmed with all the content in my work queue.

Have a great New Year everyone!… 2016 is officially in the books

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