10:34 PM
It's fun to look at this site's tracking data, and I do it regularly+. Mainly I do it because my ego requires me to find out whether or not my words are actually being read. I know it's sad, but we all have our weaknesses. (Now if only they'd come up with a counter to keep track of how many people read the page and say "Stupid ass." I'd pay for that service.)

But it has some weird side effects--like when I discovered tonight that, via their own Site Counter data, hits through the link on this page a couple days ago were tracked back to OD by Plus P Technology, the Twin Cities-based gun training service and site.

It wouldn't be all that hard to track me down--starting with this site and its bio page and ending with simple Web tools (and, of course, this post makes that even easier)--and that flares up my usually-dormant sense of paranoia just a bit.

But you know--I stand by what I said: I respect that they are and train responsible gun owners. I really do. But that doesn't stop me from being a bit creeped out by some of their behaviors. Heck, I feel that way about my friends who own guns. And I've fired guns myself on more than a couple occasions*, so it's not just a kneejerk ignorant reaction; I just don't want to own a gun, and have a hard time getting into the mindset of those who do.

Hopefully we can agree to disagree. Because they're, like, armed and stuff.

* Plus, I note, I fire what's probably thousands upon thousands of virtual rounds every week.

+ Later addition: I just checked OD's blogdex stats for the first time (another thing to routinely check now, see?), and was surprised to see that OD actually had links to it. The best is from this entry on the blog /dev/null; I don't know how he found my page in the first place--glad he stopped by, still have no idea--but I think he actually meant tolink to Alterslash rather than to me. Hopefully he found it again, or that the link to his blog in the previous sentence, bumping up his own blogdex stats, soothes the pain.