PAgent’s Progress

Come and listen to a story about a silly little blog
about bikes and kids and barbecuing hog,
PAgent was busy posting bits of this and that
and he posted a clip about a toilet-flushing cat.

Feline that is, with OCD, and a plumbing fetish.

Well the next thing you know PAgent’s getting tons of hits,
from emails and forums and at least one Phunky Bitch,
and it proved one thing about people on the net:
they sure like clips about toilets and pets.

Video that is. YouTube, Flash media.

This blog has always been just a personal little corner of the web. Even after I switched to my own domain, and hits went up a bit, I was getting maybe 25 pageloads a day. Mostly friends of mine, and people who got here through a google search of some kind.

Back on August 1, someone emailed me this cute clip about a cat compulsively flushing a toilet. I thought it was funny, so I posted it here. No big deal.

Then Omegamom put a link to the post on one of her forums. And I started getting some additional pageloads. Then someone else posted to another forum, and then another. Then people started sending it to their friends in emails.

Before long I was getting 200, 300, even 400 pageloads a day! This was nuts! All this traffic to watch one little clip about a cat with a water fixation. Amazing.

And then the viral propagation scheme crossed some kind of threshold:

Sunday: 140 pageloads
Monday: 979 pageloads
Tuesday: 1,191 pageloads
Today: 1,575 pageloads and counting

This is insanity. But what the hell - I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Well now it’s time to say goodbye to PAgent and his blog.
his stats just keep on climbing, he’s in something of a fog,
he sure would like to thank you folks for dropping by to see
the stuff he posts in this small slice of blog insanity.

Y’all come back now, y’hear?.

I packed my saddlebags, got my riding gear on, and hopped on the bike to ride to work this morning. As I headed up the bike path toward Garden Home, I started hearing something:

plink - plink - plink - plink

Thinking I had a strap dangling in my spokes, I stopped, and checked my saddlebags, looked for weeds and sticks that might be stuck in the rear wheel, then continued on my way.

plink - plink - plink - plink

Okay, the last time I heard something like this, it was because I had a loose spoke. So I pulled over, got my spoke wrench out, and started plucking spokes to find the loose one.

ping! ping! ping! thunk!

Found it! Ah, but it’s not just loose, it’s broken. Snapped off at the head, to be more precise. It’s not flopping around and presenting a danger, but I’m a big guy, and the idea of riding in to work, and home again, in traffic, with a compromised rear wheel did not sound attractive.

So. Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. Took a quick shower, put on clean clothes, and drove in. Now I have to get my rear wheel fixed.

FYI: September is the month of the annual Bike Commute Challenge. As always, my employer will be participating. I must say, I’m in a much better position to take part this year than last.