Ah, computers.

Last week, I was hauling mammoth logs from a chill stream and heaving them into rickety “cabin” piles so they could sprout shiitake mushrooms. Now, I’m staring at a screen, sitting in a chair that, while comfy, can’t quite take the edge off eight hours’ worth of back immobility. But the connection is DSL (translation: less than five minutes per web page) so I hardly notice my griping vertabrae. Hardly.

Tomorrow I will walk twenty minutes, just like I promised, otherwise it’ll take about a week to lose the benefits of five months of hiking. Do I miss the farm yet? I still can’t decide.

But then, I’m not home yet. I’m in Michigan with an old friend, using his computer while he works. Now that the connection could outrun the Pony Express, new vistas have opened.

Thanks to the missionary zeal of Dane Weber, I’ve visted The Web Standards Project (yeah, that’ll open in the same window Weber’s did) and am now groaning under the weight of my design sins. Fortunately, their style sheet is as easy to steal as it is bewildering, so stay tuned for a major, completely original overhaul.

Yet even more tantalizing than the prospect of another eighty hours of obligatory design education is my belated discovery of web logs. (Purists please note, I just used ’strong’ instead of ‘b’ for the first time in my life. Hmm. Strange. No ecstasy.) Up to now, I thought this site was rather an invitation-only affair. Invitation-and-me-type-it-in-while-you’re-in-the-room. (Not counting, of course, the throngs of editors who see the URL on my submissions, leap to their computers, and while away many a happy corporate hour.) I never dreamed the public would drop by.

It occurs to me that I am jamming an ice pick into the airy, unspoken fiction floating all about this site that my name is on the verge of being a household word. Two household words. (”Bill” and “Powell”). Fortunately, I am too tired to care.

Anyhow, thanks to the magic of web logs, I can now see just who drops in, and what they read. Or at least what they get to by mistake and swear at. It’s like (I presume) being at a library and seeing strangers walks past a shelf, halt, and claw out your book. Every downloaded page and picture is listed, lovingly labeled by visitor. Granted, the visitors have cryptic names like ‘66.196.90.78′, but my imagination is active. I can almost see dear old 207.46.98.33 chuckling over my story puzzle. Oops, never mind, that was a bot. Ugh.

Most wondrous of all, however, are visitors who came from real, live, search engines. I can’t believe my site is on the first page of hits for any search less specific than “bill powell is alive” “farm” “tripping over chickens” “1003 Genesee Pk Blvd” “www.billpowellisalive.com”. But lo and behold…

• pregnancy cramps verses contractions roped in Mr. or Ms. 67.8.215.232 at a ranking of #16 on a Yahoo search.
• franciscan monk “beards” ranked #8 on Google. (Aren’t there more sites on Franciscan hairdos?)
• A quest for cute honda civics by 64.12.116.41 came in at #4 (after a page of commercial links) on Ask Jeeves.
• And, finally, someone looking for the Knights of the Holy Queen found my reference to them in our Apprentice Lore, which ranked at #3 on Google…out of 22.

All that just yesterday. How cool is that, total strangers skimming search lists and getting nabbed by a snippet totally unrelated to what they’re looking for and yet too intriguing to miss?

Man. I am now wasting the time of people I’ve never even met! Makes me feel like such a writer.

Seriously, though, you’re reading this and the honor’s mine, be you stranger or friend. Drop me a line and I’ll repay the courtesy.