I frankly haven’t been paying attention, but I just discovered that all this week, my website has been getting heavier traffic than ever before!

From Sunday through Wednesday of this week, My world has received more than 100 hits every single day! And it may reach triple-digits today as well — as of 8:50 PM Pacific time, the total is 84 and counting. To put that in perspective, there had only been two days prior to this week when My world had ever received over 100 hits: Dec. 5 (108 hits) and Dec. 17 (135).

The daily record, 135, remains intact for now. But the weekly Sunday-through-Saturday record is about to fall, and it’s not even Friday yet. The site received 561 hits from Dec. 15 through Dec. 21; this week, it’s received 518 and counting. The totals: 106 on Sunday, 110 on Monday, 109 on Tuesday, and 109 again on Wednesday.

One new record has already been set this week. On Monday, the site received 1,379 “page impressions,” a total that counts visits to individual pages instead of visits to the site as a whole. (The “unique hits” total counts each visitor as one “hit” regardless of how many pages he or she views.) The previous page-impression record was 1,065, set on Dec. 5.

The sudden uptick in traffic follows a distinct holiday lull between Dec. 21 and Jan. 1, during which there was only one day with more than 60 unique hits, and the average daily total was just 44. I have yet to discover any single, easily identifiable reason for the surge.

NOTE: The official count from estats4all.com indicates that My world received 123 hits on Sunday, 118 on Monday, 115 on Tuesday, and 117 on Wednesday. In reality, the numbers are a bit lower, as stated above. This discrepancy is due to an America Online quirk that sometimes causes the estats4all counter to record multiple unique hits in a single visit from an AOL user. The same discrepancy caused the record-setting Dec. 17 total to be adjusted downward from its original reported total, 139, to 135.

Men’s college basketball: USC 85, UCLA 80!

USC’s football team finished the season ranked #1 in two computer ratings. Hurrah!

The Sagarin ratings have the Trojans ranked #1, with Miami #2, Ohio State #3, and Oklahoma #4. Sagarin produces one of the seven computer ratings used in the Bowl Championship Series standings — but the BCS actually uses a modified version of Sagarin, called “ELO-BCS,” which has the Trojans ranked #4.

USC is also ranked #1 in the final Matthews/Scripps Howard ratings. Matthews/Scripps Howard is not used in the BCS at all.

Why does USC fare better in the non-BCS computer ratings? Because the BCS does not allow margin of victory to be factored into the equation, but other computer ratings do consider it. Because most of the Trojans’ wins were blowouts, and both of our losses were very close games, ratings that include margin of victory favor us.

So where did the Trojans finish in the other BCS computer ratings?
New York Times: #2
Kenneth Massey: #2 (but #4 in the BCS version)
Anderson & Hester: #4
Colley Matrix: #4
Peter Wolfe: #4
Richard Billingsley: #5

As reported earlier, we finished #4 in both the AP and coaches’ polls, just barely behind #3 Georgia.

My world received its 10,000th hit Wednesday at 2:28 PM Eastern time when a Mac user searched on Google Canada for cute kitten pictures and found an image of Toby.

Just barely missing a chance to be the site’s 10,000th visitor was Rich from Connecticut, who produced hit number 10,001 at 2:36 PM Eastern time — just eight minutes after the milestone hit — and left a comment on my recent blog post about possible Democratic presidential candidates.

My world’s hit count dates back to Feb. 23, 2002.

At the time of the historic hit, I was at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, watching the re-inauguration of Governor John Rowland, who was elected in November to a third term. The inauguration occurred roughly two hours after an anti-Rowland rally at the State Capitol drew approximately 2,000 people protesting the governor’s recent state-employee layoffs. I’ll post pictures of the rally and the inauguration shortly.

UPDATE, 4:12 PM Eastern time: Here is the text of Rowland’s rather fluffy and meaningless inaugural speech.

I’m at my dad’s office right now, and I’ll be heading over to the State Capitol shortly to take part in a rally protesting Governor Rowland’s recent unjustified layoffs of 3,000 state workers.

My mom laughs as my dad wears Groucho Marx glasses that my Aunt Patty and Uncle John gave him for Christmas. Here’s another picture of my dad being silly with the glasses on Jan. 7.

A model of one of the proposed architectural designs for the World Trade Center site, called the “World Cultural Center,” is displayed in Lower Manhattan. I checked out the designs in person on Jan. 6, and my favorites are this one and the “kissing” twin towers.

The Empire State Building is barely visible from 20 blocks away on a snowy and foggy afternoon in New York on Jan. 6. I took this picture after touring Cardozo law school; I also visited Columbia and NYU.

This piece of paper, advertising for a “progressive rock band,” originally said “BASS NEEDED.” Then somebody covered up the “B,” producing a message that’s, um, base. And damn funny. :)

The Democratic Party has now dodged two bullets: potential presidential candidacies by Al Gore and Tom Daschle, both candidates with lots of prominence and name recognition, but very little charisma, vision, or electability. Daschle added his name today to the “I’m not running” list. Hooray!

Now, hopefully the party can pick someone good. (Hint: Not a senator. Senators may look good to party insiders and primary voters, but they’re almost never elected president. Governors, vice presidents, and generals become presidents. Senators don’t. It’s all about Howard Dean or Wesley Clark.)

In other news, I got dismissed from jury duty today — after sitting around for four hours — because, well, I’m flying back to California on Jan. 11 and starting classes at USC on Jan. 13, so it would be a little hard for me to sit on a jury in a Connecticut criminal trial that’s due to begin Jan. 15. Yes, it took them four hours to figure this out. Gotta love our legal system. :)

Think Miami fans are upset about the controversial pass-interference call that reversed an apparent Hurricanes national championship Friday night? This website received a hit today from someone doing the following Google search: Ohio State illegitimate championship.

The person was probably disappointed in what he/she found: a Nov. 26 blog post that mentioned then-#2 Ohio State and also mentioned Nebraska’s status in last year’s title game as “an ‘illegitimate’ national-championship contender.” Alas, Google, like a referee, does not always give you what you want.

Tonight at around 8:30 PM Eastern time, USA Today national high-school football player of the year Chris Leak — a quarterback — will announce his college choice live on ESPN2 (at halftime of the U.S. Army All-American Bowl high-school all-star game). According to sources close to Leak, as quoted in the Charlotte Observer, the smart money is on the University of Florida. But USC seems to be Leak’s second-most-likely choice, and there’s hope yet that the sources are wrong and Leak wants to be a Trojan. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. With Heisman winner Carson Palmer graduating, the Trojans desperately need a star quarterback.

UPDATE, 8:51 PM Eastern time: D’oh! He’s going to Florida, as expected. Oh, well.

UPDATE, 01/06/03, 1:14 AM Eastern time: Here’s a CNNSI story about Leak’s decision. Here’s one from the Charlotte Observer.

Some more newspapers with front-page coverage of Friday’s Miami-Ohio State championship game:

The Dayton Daily News front page


The Cleveland Plain Dealer front page


The Arizona Republic front page


The Arizona Daily Star front page


The Orlando Sentinel front page


The New York Times front page

Click here to view the Miami Herald’s front page.

Thanks to the Newseum and the Herald and Plain Dealer websites for the above images.

Also, if you’d like to read the Ohio State student newspaper’s article about the game, click here.

…and my prediction was decent, but not perfect. Georgia finished ahead of USC for the #3 spot, but it was close — very close — just like I expected. The Bulldogs, 68 points ahead of the Trojans in the previous AP poll, edged USC by just 8 points in the final AP poll, and 16 points in the coaches’ poll.

My other mistake was underestimating the pollsters’ respect for Texas. I predicted the Longhorns would be 8th, but they were #7 in the coaches’ poll and #6 in the AP poll.

Here’s a comparison…

UPDATE, 01/05/03, 3:29 AM Eastern time: Something to ponder: How did Texas end up ahead of Kansas State in the AP poll? The #9 Longhorns (11-2) were 100 points behind the #6 Wildcats (also 11-2) in the last regular-season poll, but ended up 8 points ahead of them in the final poll.

Why? It’s not like Kansas State lost its bowl game. Granted, the Wildcats’ come-from-behind 34-27 Holiday Bowl win over Arizona State was closer than expected. But Texas’s 35-20 Cotton Bowl win over Louisiana State was also a comeback, and was hardly an incredible blowout. And it’s not like LSU is enormously better than ASU — both are unranked teams who finished 5-3 in reasonably comparable conferences (the SEC and Pac-10). So what gives? How did Texas gain so much ground?

Maybe poll voters suddenly remembered that Texas beat Kansas State on Oct. 19, 17-14. But head-to-head isn’t everything; Kansas State beat USC, another 11-2 team, on Sept. 21, yet the Trojans are ranked fourth, 234 points ahead of the Wildcats. And besides, the score of that Oct. 19 game hasn’t changed between the previous poll and this one. So why the drastic flip-flop? I’m guessing Texas benefited, in part, from playing in a later bowl. If Kansas State had played in the Jan. 1 Cotton Bowl and Texas was stuck in the Dec. 27 Holiday Bowl, things might have been different.

But, oh well. Considering the Longhorns’ victory on the Wildcats’ home field, coupled with Texas’s higher strength-of-schedule rating, it’s not exactly unjust. Just a little puzzling, because of the sudden change.

My predicted final Top 10 poll rankings:

1. Ohio State
2. Miami
3. USC
4. Georgia
5. Oklahoma
6. Kansas State
7. Iowa
8. Texas
9. Michigan
10. Washington State

I think the USC-Georgia contest will be really close. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pollsters split (probably with the coaches’ poll placing the Trojans at #4 and the AP making them #3). But I think the Trojans will edge the Bulldogs because at least a few voters will pick them #2 (ahead of Miami), whereas I doubt Georgia will get many second-place votes.

I’m also not sure Iowa will really fall behind Kansas State. But I’m predicting it because their loss to USC was so embarassing, and also because I think there will be a reluctance to drop the Wildcats down a notch after a bowl win. (They were #6 in the previous poll, too.) Yet I think Oklahoma’s dominating Rose Bowl win will be enough to vault them ahead of Kansas State, so the Wildcats must leapfrog Iowa or fall to #7. So, all things considered, I’m betting the Wildcats do edge the Hawkeyes. This might be another split, however — with the coaches’ poll, which has always liked Iowa better, putting the Hawkeyes at #6, and the AP placing them at #7.