I’ve been re-reading the fifth Harry Potter book. About to start Chapter 36: The Only One He Ever Feared. Coolest illustration ever. :)

Well, it’s been a week since InstaBoost IV — my fourth-ever link from Glenn Reynolds’s InstaPundit. In terms of its immediate impact, his link last Sunday to my blackout coverage was my most lackluster InstaBoost ever: I got only 781 hits in the 48 hours after the link appeared, instead of the usual thousands. (I believe this is because it was an “update” to an old post rather than a new post of its own, and also because it came on a weekend, when Glenn’s traffic is always down.)

But that was just the immediate impact. InstaBoost IV also did something else: its longer-term “domino effect” has produced the most prolonged traffic surge in BrendanLoy.com history — much less dramatic at first than InstaBoost III earlier this month, but much more long-lasting.

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Here is Jen’s cousin Caitlin, who we are hanging out with.

Bill Simon is dropping out. The four people who were planning to vote for him could not be immediately reached for comment on who they will support now.

I’m in Connecticut for the weekend, by the way, as you may have gathered if you listened to me bitching about Greyhound in an audio post yesterday. :) Why am I here? For a friend’s birthday, and a friend’s cousin’s birthday.

Last night Sean (whose birthday was last weekend) and I went out to watch S.W.A.T.. (If the movie title doesn’t ring a bell, the endlessly-repeated-on-TV line, “I will give 100 million dollars to whoever gets me out of here!,” probably will.) It was very fun — lots of shooting, fighting, and stuff blowing up. Heh-heh, fire, heh-heh, heh-heh.

Today and tonight, I’ll be hanging out with Jen and her 8-year-old cousin Caitlin, who loves me because I give her piggyback rides. Caitlin’s birthday was a few weeks ago, and tonight she’s sleeping over at Jen’s, an event for which my presence was requested/required. :) The best part is, we’re going to see Finding Nemo, which I haven’t seen yet! Yay! I bet I’m more excited than the 8-year-old!

Arianna Hufflepuff (as I think I’ll call her from now on) has launched a blog, something more and more politicians are doing these days. Of course, politicians’ blogs don’t really tend to be all that candid, which is sort of the whole point of blogging. Oh well.

By the way, I have no idea what the title of this post means, but it sort of wafted into my head as a line of music, so I thought I’d use it. :)

Fox News has lost its ridiculous lawsuit against Al Franken, with U.S. District Judge Denny Chin declaring, “This is an easy case,” and calling the lawsuit “wholly without merit, both factually and legally.” Heh. Well, yeah.

Political commentator and California gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington’s not doing very well in the polls, so I think drastic measures a called for. She needs to court the crucial Harry Potter delegation by changing her name to Arianna Hufflepuff. :)

The Red Sox win, the Yankees lose, and the A’s lose. Woohoo!

audblog audio post

Sunset on the Hudson, looking west to Newark, NJ.