One hour and ten minutes. That’s how long my twelve mile commute took this morning. The first fifteen of that was spent driving 20 miles per hour down the icy service road, looking for a gas station with power. Rolling power outages. New least favorite thing. It’s not much of stretch to say that yesterday’s snow day – home with the Boy, my laptop, a down comforter, homemade chicken soup and brownies and some uh, afternoon delight – kicked some very serious ass by comparison.
This hot chocolate from a powder mix while sitting at my desk in a wool hat and scarf nonsense is total crap. I’ve seen the glory of a snow day and now I want more.
Totally Off Topic Tangent in the First
Know what’s really fun, you guys? Yesterday I did a quick run through of traffic/site views for the first month of the All! New! Totally re-launched fishblog! and just like a snow day with afternoon nookie, you all kicked some very serious ass. Page views were double what iVillage had said they’d been before I left. Double. One day, when that kick-assness translates into zillions of dollars of ad revenue, I’m going to buy you all a car and even pay all the taxes on it, because that’s how much I like you.
Totally Off Topic Tangent in the Second
Quick survey: how many blog posts do you prefer to see on the first page of a blog? I’ve currently got five up there – but I’m starting to think that’s an awful lot of scrolling. Maybe that’s okay?
Alright, stay warm, friends. Enjoy your snow days, if you’ve got ‘em. And if not, remember, turn in the direction of the skid.
Scrolling > Clicking. My vote is to keep it at 5.
2nd that Olivia!
I agree with Olivia.
I’d say anywhere between five and ten. (Not bothered by the scrolling.)
Having been raised in Florida and currently residing in Southern California, Snow Days are foreign to me. I’ve seen the news! WOW. I really can’t imagine what’s it’s like to live with such conditions. I wish you all well!
Stay safe. Stay warm!
I’m cool with 5-10, too.
it feels like it’s working well as is. I just love that you’re posting so much more
5 is good!
Feels good to me as it is
And a snow day would be great – the closest we get are hurricane days!
Scrolling beats clicking for me, too, although clicking will mean more ad revenue opportunities. Better to get me used to it now than later
Oh, I’m not gonna do that just for ad revenue! I figure, if you don’t effing resent the ads, you’ll be more likely to actually click on the ones you like when you see them.
I just want you to like how the blog works. Then you’ll stick around.
Because of how long I’ve been at this, I have enough archives and comments to dig through that I can get page views the real way – I don’t have to artificially produce them and annoy the heck out of my readers. If I wanted to do that, I’d have stayed at iVillage.
Oh I’ll “stick around”!
In fact, you’ll never get rid of me.
Your whole site would have disappear into the Internet Abyss before I’d want to stop reading what you’ve got to say!
As an Arlington-ite who works in Downtown Dallas, I am pleased to say that I am on Snow Day #2. I did have to venture out last night for dog meds but I am staying put now!
I’m so envious, Wendy. SO envious. Especially since boss is all rampage-y today. Makes staying home sound even more luscious.
We’ve got crazy snow here too in the middle of the desert (El Paso) and since our corporate offices are in Chicago, there is no such thing as a snow day.
I say Booo! Driving in snow sucks.
Klarrisa,
I’m in Chicago and on my 2nd snow day. Your boss is just mean!
Ditto on scrolling > clicking. Might I just say, too, that it is so much easier to type thisfish.com than thisfish.ivillage.com/love or whatever you were at before?? That has easily doubled my visits alone
Ha! Well, I hate to tell you now, but http://www.thisfish.com always redirected to that long, stinky ivillage address.
My workplace had your ivillage site blocked, but not this one. On with the lunchtime reading!
weird, so ivillage was being shitty and totally bs’ing you? What asshats.
Ha! Well that, OR the site was so craptastic that people stopped reading?
Or a little bit of both, which gets my vote!
I actually prefer a lot of posts on one page on a blog and my only reason for it is this:
laziness.
It’s much easier for me to scroll down, scroll down, scroll down, especially if I’m reading through a fantastic blog’s archives.
I prefer scrolling to clicking. Clicking means waiting for a page to load and depending on where I’m accessing the site from that can take awhile.
I like a few on there. That way I know if I missed one right away. : )
I would prefer no LESS than five. If you wanted to add more, I wouldn’t object. I really like the new version of your blog.
Wait, you guys get snow in Texas? Color me confused. I feel for you; I’m in central NY, so we’ve got the whole snow/ice thing down too. We had our very first stay-at-home snow day of the year today, and it almost made up for the crappy weather.
I also prefer scrolling to clicking.
My condolences on the snow in Texas. I live in NYC and we have been getting a storm a week. Thank goodness I can work from home when it’s bad. But enough is enough.
I am extra appreciative of California weather at the moment! I definitely agree that scrolling is much preferable to clicking! Perez Hilton tried to do that a couple weeks ago and the response was overwhelmingly pthththth. He even answered my email about it lol.
Hey Fish – Quick question. Do you still get ad revenue if we’re reading this from a Google Reader page viewer versus coming to your site? I always wondered that. Hopefully you do!
The short answer is yes. The long answer is, like page views, the number of people who read via Google Reader affects ad revenue. And just like ads on the site, ads on the feed measure a certain dollar amount per click. Ad clicks in the feed are pretty rare, so I’m not exactly sure how much it affects the bottom line.
Agree on the scrolling & # of blogs. Love the new site though, so whatever you do with it, I’ll still read.
Being from the Northeast, I’m very familiar with snowdays. Except this year. I changed jobs & the retail company I now work for REFUSES to close. Ever. So a bunch of us sit there looking at each other all day because the internet is blocked, at least for me, and there is nothing else to do. Oh yeah, except dream about all the stuff I WOULD be doing if I were home having a snow day….
Enjoy & be safe.
Is there a way to have it tied to time? Like an entry stays on the main page for 7 days after you post it whether you post 20 or 2 after it.
Since I’m not sure I’ve seen any other blog setup like that I may very well be thinking of something that’s not doable. I tend to do that. Great ideas, but almost zero programming skills to know whether it’s actually possible.
Yay for double the traffic!
I’m good with scrolling; I always had five on mine and no one complained. At least I don’t think they did…
We don’t get snow days in Ft. Lauderdale. We get hurricane days, though, but they usually aren’t that much fun. Because of the threat of 75+ mph winds and all, you know.
Your rolling power outages left me with out work e-mail or our Web site today (our server’s in your neck of the woods). I’ll have to find some way to thank you for that.
5-10 seems just right.
After having a snow day yesterday, I debated about making today another one, but I went into the office. My normally 25 minute drive took me an hour both ways today. I don’t think Plano or Richardson even tried to treat the roads if it wasn’t an intersection – the High Five was a breeze compared to the ‘burbs. Then the rolling blackouts hit every hour and a half like clockwork. Tomorrow should be fun too – ha!
4-5 is perfecto.
And to tangent off of your tangent…. this brand-new-all-yours-just-yours blog is aces. The ivillage INYOURFACEPOPUPADVERTISINGHOLYCRAPIJUSTHADASEIZURE thing was soooo beyond frustrating.
And comments are easier here. *content sigh*
I also prefer scrolling to clicking, but it’s just because I don’t like to wait for pages to load. I’d stay in the neighborhood of 5-10 to satisfy both non-clicky types and non-scrolly types
We got so much snow yesterday my city closed all the city offices for yesterday and today. Unfortunately I work for the Police, and they never close…alas, no snow day for me either!
Another vote in favor of scrolling and 5 entries at a page.
Love the new blog! I don’t mind scrolling and I love that you’re one of the few sites left that doesn’t require you to click on every post to see the whole story. Mainly because I’m lazy. 5 to 10 per page sounds good to me.
I’m with you on the snow days. In Boston we’ve had a foot a week since the day after Christmas, and I’m so over having to dig myself out of my parking space at the end of a long work day! Working from home would be bliss right about now.
Blog posts on the first page? Three to five seems best to me.
Congrats on the traffic!
I agree with no less than 5. Sometimes I read every day. Sometimes a week goes by. MY average of posts to catch up on between visits is probably in the 5 range.
What I do most especially like, is that you put the whole post on the front page!! I would MUCH rather scroll than click, back button, click, back button. Also, I sometimes read you on the iPhone – for that consideration, I’d say not much more than 5. Else, I may not even get a page load before my lunch is done being nuked in the community microwave. Maybe my favorite feature of smart phones, to out smart SOME coworkers who you’d rather just skip the chit chat with by staring at your phone!