Humpday Mania in the year 1701

What’s up with Wednesdays? It’s driving me nuts, my knees are weak, palms are sweaty, (this is starting to sound like an Eminem song) I’m wracking my brain trying to think of something to write about but it’s gotta be quick, I’ve got to post something before…The Surge.

Now you’re probably thinking, “this guy must have had a little crack with his microwaved Jimmy Dean Sausage Egg and Cheese Breakfast Croissant this morning, What is he talking about?” Well I’ll tell you…The Surge is a disturbing trend I’ve noticed in the blogosphere which occurs every Wednesday. Like a tsunami wave nearing the shore, the number of visitors traversing blogland starts as a slow trickle on Saturday but quickly builds as the week progresses only to come surging in mid-week before receding for the weekend. Apparently, for all you bloggers out there, every Wednesday you’d better have some new material because that’s when everyone decides to get online and check blogs. And no, I’m not just out there making wild accusations, I’ve got cold hard data to back me up on this.

It first came to my attention whilst I was perusing my Extreme Tracker account, which keeps track of my site traffic. The data showed that many more people visited my site on Wednesdays, when I’d get my highest numbers, as opposed to Saturdays, when I’d get my lowest numbers. But then I noted that the numbers proceeding Wednesday gradually increased while the numbers for the days after mid-week incrementally decreased. So that in graph form these numbers create a perfect wave pattern, and not just once in awhile but consistently week after week.

"Putting the Hump in Humpday"

Over the last three weeks 68 people have visited

my blog on a Wednesday.

Thinking that maybe my site was just an anomaly I quickly surfed to a few other blogs which include the Extreme Tracker only to find the exact same trend, though granted with much larger numbers than my measly crumbs. Therefore, one could truly call Wednesday “hump day” and have some concrete data to back them up.

When I queried a friend as to why they thought this should be so, they said that of course most people are out and about on the weekends. To which I replied “oh, um, yes of course, I’d heard a rumor about people with lives who actually do leave the house on Saturdays”…of course I’d assumed that this was just an old wives tale…I mean who’d want to leave the house when you could sit all day at a computer with the world at your fingertips.

Anno 1701

And when I say that I have the world at my fingertips I mean that quite literally. You see to escape the realities of rolling blackouts, invading feds and possible payless paydays I dive back into a time when the world was a simpler place, namely the year 1701.

Through the wonders of modern technology, and a PC game called Anno 1701, I’m able to be named governor of my own island, given 50,000 gold pieces and a charter from the queen admonishing me to go forth in her name and conquer. You’d be surprised at how addicting this can become not to mention how many hours of your life you can fritter away in the pursuit of glory for queen and country.

In a desperate attempt to rationalize the acres of time I’ve spent on this I will say that not only is this game just downright fun but it’s also quite educational. Through struggling to keep your population happy you learn quite a bit about important concepts like economics and politics. Things like building efficient trade routes, the right amount of supply to meet demand, the basic human needs of faith, education and power all must be considered in order for your civilization to be successful.

And while I’m becoming pasty white from lack of sun, I am apparently quite an auspicious ruler, having taken my people from mere peasants and pioneers to a conglomerate of wealthy merchants and aristocrats. And with a few more deft political maneuvers I hope to succeed in achieving independence from the crown without so much as a shot being fired…now if I could just figure out how to impress the wife with that…

She seems to think there's no validity to this type of experience but I assured her that indeed there was. What if, for example, I found myself on an island, thousands of miles from a mainland, which had been colonized and over time had decided that they too wanted to become independent of the meddling federal gov...er I mean...monarcy, and they needed somone to guide them to a bloodless revolution...well then I'd be their man...in theory, of course.

Geez, I just realized my past two posts have been about video games…I’m such a dork. But be sure and tune in next hump day, since we know that’s when you all do your blog checking, when I’ll compare and contrast the intriguing elements of Dungeons and Dragons versus those of Magic: The Gathering.

Definition of the Week:

hump day (huhmp daye)

n.

1. An English language idiom for Wednesday, a reference to making it through half of the week as getting "over the hump".

2. The middle of the work week, Wednesday, or the beginning of the weekend, depending on your level of addiction to alcohol.