{"id":16686,"date":"2016-03-16T18:34:54","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T23:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=16686"},"modified":"2021-11-09T07:50:40","modified_gmt":"2021-11-09T12:50:40","slug":"million-thanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/million-thanks\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks a Million"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Longtime readers know that I check user statistics for Twelve Mile Circle daily. However, I don’t often examine figures that go all the way back to the earliest days of the blog. I did that recently, and to my surprise discovered that visitors had arrived from more than one million distinct sources since its inception. Google Analytics reported 1,012,891 users as of a few days ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I adjusted some parameters and discovered that the site passed a million sometime early in the morning of Wednesday, February 10 — Ash Wednesday. Sure, there might have been a little double-counting, say when regular readers checked the site from home and then from work. However, repeat customers were pretty small as a percentage when compared to all the one-and-done hits. I’m sure with the 12k buffer that at least a million different people have now stopped by. Frankly, it completely astounds and humbles me that I created something that reached so many people. If only I had a dollar for every visitor…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"One<\/a>
One Million Dollars<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Obviously my haul was considerably less than that although it did pay for a nice geo-oddity holiday<\/a> to Saint Martin<\/a> once. I suppose I should focus on more realistic celebrations such as finding places named a million. Unfortunately there weren’t anywhere near a million such places. The US Geographic Names Information System listed only 47 and there were far fewer occurrences outside of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Million Acre Swamp<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Winnie<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Million Acre Swamp sure beat a Hundred Acre Wood although Winnipeg’s famous namesake<\/a> warranted its own article. No, there wasn’t much noteworthy to say about the Million Acre Swamp in Wisconsin’s Pierce County (map<\/a>) except perhaps to recognize its hyperbole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found a reference to counting bears<\/a> there — presumably other than Winnie — and the Intertubes offered little else of substance about this swamp of an alleged million acres. I didn’t have anything further either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Million Dollar Bridge<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n