While walking to work this morning, I saw my first ducklings of the year. A mother was leading a train of twelve little waddlers along the grass next to a busy street. Nowhere near water, I might add. I don't think I've ever seen that large a brood before. And they were very fresh; any younger and they still would have been eggs. Needless to say, it was very cute. Maybe I should go see if there are baby bunnies in the park yet.

In case you haven't read Eric's post about questions he's been asked via Google, you really should.

I was inspired by Eric to re-activate my script that tracks views of this page and checks for referrals. Here are some observations.

• Thingo is up to 60-70 page views a day. I'm only responsible for about 40 of those (I never tire of the witty yet poignant writing I find there), so I must ask: who the hell is reading this page? Don't you people have better things to do with your time? Given the number of blogs I read on a regular basis for no good reason, I shouldn't really be asking that question.
• Most of the hits don't come from referrals. When there are referrals, they come almost entirely from Eric's page. I know for a fact that at least one former student of mine discovered this site by reading the aggregator for all the MSDN blogs. Why were they reading the aggregator? I don't know. It must be an obsession with Microsoft scripting languages or the sexy, sexy men behind them.
• A small fraction of my page views come from web searches. Most of the searches are boring (actually, some people are searching on "Thingo"; I guess I should be flattered). None of them are questions like Eric's. I was going to say that no interesting queries have led people to my site recently, but I'm pleased to declare that scarcely fifteen minutes ago, someone arrived here via an MSN query on the phrase "photos of urinals with girls". Well, I would hate for you to leave empty handed. Enjoy:
  

Okay, I'm a fairly big guy. Not overweight, but over 6'2" in height and between 190 and 200 pounds in weight.

Nevertheless, I'm not sure how I managed to cause this to happen:

That's right, while sitting on the toilet I managed to crack the seat clean through. (At this point I should mention that I tried to come up with an appropriate pun on "crack" but eventually dropped the idea.) I must have shifted my weight or something, and next thing I knew my annulus (that's a reference to the shape of the toilet seat, folks) had become a topological sphere.

So barring the unlikely application of duct tape, we'll just have to ride this one out, so to speak. In the meantime, I guess I'll have to re-evaluate my style. Too aggressive, perhaps?

I finally got around to visiting the clinic today. I went for a physical a couple of months ago, and the doctor ordered some standard blood tests and an ECG. But the term was so busy that I never seemed to find the time to head over to the lab to get stuck. So after a surpirisingly difficult fast, I rolled out of bed early this morning and went there before coming to work.

I don't have a problem with needles. I'd prefer not to look at the needle going into my vein, but apart from that it's a piece of cake. The ECG is even easier; after all, they just tape some electrodes to you and record your heart for a couple of minutes. In fact, it's getting easier still, since the ECG itself is now just a peripheral that sits next to the PC the doctors already have in their offices. Does ThinkGeek sell USB ECGs?

No, the hardest part came after the ECG was finished. I had a small number of electrodes affixed to my arm and leg, and six on my chest. The technician removed the arm and leg ones, and said, "I'll leave the other six for you". I should have listened more closely for the malicious little cackle as she said that. The electrodes are very sticky. My chest is very hairy. Let's just say it's the closest I'll ever come to a bikini wax.