Status Update!

To be honest, I had nothing else to blog about. I'm [temporarily] tired of posting my life on Facebook and Twitter. Although, this post is bound to go as another update in both places. Ironic? So, what have I been upto? Nothing much really. I've been trying to, what is that..ah juggle too many balls at once. (Watching movies, reading novels inclusive). And if that wasn't enough, I had to add another object to balance - as a favour. Of course, am not going to divulge any of that here.

But there is some news for you. Sad for me. My IndiBlogger rank has come down around 30 points in 4 months. Around November last, it was 76 - my highest till date. Even my academics weren't as good. And now its just fail - 43! What with IndiBlogger Chennai meet coming up this weekend that really worries me. Imagine:
"Hi!"
"Nice to meet you"
"let me take your blog address"
"sure its...what's yours?"
"misplaced-soul.blogspot.com"
"am ranked 86 btw, what about you?"
"er..i gotta go"

Hope IndiBlogger is reading this and temporarily tweak their settings and raise my rank (Just for this weekend, please!). But while I type this, I realized I can really chatter away. I'm come thus far without really having had an idea on what to write. Oh yes, my posts are usually intentional, directed at a particular topic. Do have a look around, won't you? Yes, so..as I was saying..I realized I can start typing all the random stuff that runs in my mind, in order of appearance. Its almost like writing an examination. Only am not worried about the "rank" anymore. Hope I can post something every now and then to up my rank.

I also found my laptop [Dell Vostro 1510, more than a year old] is quite a work horse. I let it run for a few hours virtualizing two different OSes both running something heavy AND using my system myself at the same time. Good good.

A friend though recently bought a Sony Vaio at a staggering price, but loads more a workhorse than mine - a workaholic workhorse if you will. Ha! I've always wanted to use that phrase in my blog sometime - 'if you will' and I think it fits in quite well here. I digress. (that's another I've been wanting to use since long) But then he's got Windows 7 and flicked a copy of PC Quest from his work to read 'everything you needed to know about Windows 7'. Think about paying for something you didn't want and trying to learn about it. That again sounds like school. Hmmmm.

I don't know why but I really feel like I should fit a PJ in here. My colleague and I have 'discovered' a new tea shop where we like to take our evening breaks. I say tea shop because coffee shop somehow sounds hi-fi. And the tea (or coffee for me) acts like some kind of PJ inducer to us. You should hear us babble after we've had a sip. Of course, they're all time-bound jokes and would make no sense here making you go "poor joke indeed".

Of the movies I'd planned to watch, Die Hard 4.0 was the most recent. I must say I really liked the movie - cool with hackers and stuff and of course, Bruce Willis with all that action! What I find mildly surprising was that I got stuck in an elevator at work the very next day of watching the movie. How're they related? Well, there's a scene in the movie where John McClain's daughter is stuck in one. But she was alone. I, however, was with another girl...and two other guys. It was all dark and no one's cell phone screen was bright enough so I closed my eyes and started day dreaming. You know. Rescuing them and stuff..So while I was dreaming and smirking to myself, another guy called up his friend and got help. Smart. I thought to myself "doodh nahi peyega tho aisa hi hoga". But I swear, I drink atleast 2 glasses of milk - with some chocolate flavoured malt!

And after about 20 minutes of typing, I hit the wall. Nothing more to say. To share. I hope to see more updates from my 'sidebar friends' too. They're almost worse than me!

Ciao!

BTW, in other news, I am becoming an 'uncle' pretty soon...\m/ \o/ And yet, my sis-in-law manages to update her blog SO very often. Check it out. And while you're at it, you can check my cousin's too. Who's kind of competing with her. 'Healthy' competition though..

PS: Please turn off all unwanted lights. That includes your screen too. Read more…

For the love of surveys

The other day I was filling up a survey for employee satisfaction in IT companies. Its really nice to know someone out there cares what IT professionals feel about their working environment and how its influences their lives. Though for unaltruistic reasons, am sure people would love a(nother) channel where they can express what they really feel about their bosses and/or subordinates. Agreed, the survey ain't going to change their lives overnight. But it gives the satisfaction of being true to oneself, once in a while. Don't we all love reading stuff on magazines and newspapers (they aren't just news anymore, anyway) which talk about the sad state of IT employees? Especially statements which go "a recent survey suggested that IT employees are...blah blah..". It is something even non-IT people can relate to, because its what everyone talks about!

Personally, am glad that the survey was anonymous. Not that I had complained too much, am pretty happy with my job, so there. Anyway, what makes me glad is that several of my answers are just random. I couldn't help it. The questions seemed so redundant to me but thinking it ought to have a different meaning than the previous but being unable to comprehend it I settle for a random answer. Take a look at some of the questions and you'll know what I mean. (all of the below are yes/no questions)

• my life has a clear sense of purpose
• I have discovered a satisfying life purpose
• I have a good sense of what makes my life purposeful

Another set,

• I feel I can chose the way I live my life
  
• I have the freedom to chose my lifestyle
• I feel I is my right to pick my lifestyle

You get the idea? I didn't. That's why I was scared to answer them. What if the questions were there to check my sincerity in taking the survey? Not that I care. Randomness helps. Just be wary next time you take a survey!

Bored,
~LVS

PS: Still not made a decision on the move.
PPS: Kunal will never buy a PC in 2009. He's just putting vetti scene! :P
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Where are my readers?

Long long ago, I had enabled a beautiful tool, called Google Analytics for my blog. And I had forgotten about it. Today, I thought I'd use GA to track visitors, page clicks etc etc and realised what I already quoted in the first line. This being my second attempt (first here) at statistics for my blog, wasn't as cheerful to look at.
Here are a few things GA measured for me (and I pick the ones which were relatively the best)

• Visitor loyalty - how many times an individual user returned to read my blog
• Visitor recency - how soon did the returning user come back
• Bounce rate - how many just came to the home page and then went away without looking at other pages
• Length of each visit
• Number of unique users
• Page views
  
• and more...

And I scored abysmally on all of the above! 70% of the people visiting my blog, turn away after reading(?) the stuff on the first page, and playing with the fish too perhaps. Unique visitors is about 200. Average time on site is 2 mins. Average number of visits per day is around 4 :-( :-( :-(

So I thought it was time for some action. I guess you now realise that I have enabled summaries (which is not an _available_ feature in blogger). Number of posts per page have been increased. GA also tells me, 64% of the visitors are new and more than 50% come from referring sites. I've decided to make the biggest draw even bigger. Backlinks everywhere! My IM status will almost always say "Blog update" henceforth and things like that...More ideas for blog promotion are welcome. Yes, am on directories like IndiBlogger and Technorati.

Also, I need to make sure the visits spike on the day of a post is not too much higher than on other days. Any ideas for that?

OK, I made this post just to tell you people that some changes on this blog (visible/otherwise). A change of template didn't work. Someone suggest one?

Thanks and keep coming back for more! :D

Update: 'ravukalam' and 'i am an idiot latin translation' are keywords that show my blog as the first result on google search! :P yay!
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