I think I'm kind of "over" this blogging section. When I started doing it, it was just additional bits of info I added once in a while when I wasn't very active. Then, a year ago this month, I transformed in a couple months time to an active, and then an avid, Georger. At that time, as hits went from very occasional - a few a month - to more regular, it was an exciting way to track, if only for myself, new milestones, records, notable hits, etc. But now, with the average month seeing well over 200 bills entered, daily hits the rule and not the exception, my Georging has pretty much slipped into a routine. While every new state, country, even county seemed a celebration worthy of sharing with the world back in the day, now its just more of a "hey, cool" moment.

Also, the other purpose this blogging thing served for myself was a place to go back and remember certain things that were a bit harder to call up quickly within the WheresGeorge web site, as well as a way to track the progress of my bill entry counts, hit counts and George Scores over time. However, back at the end of last year I began developing a Where's George spreadsheet for myself. While it started off pretty simply, this spring I put quite a bit of work into it and developed it into a pretty powerfull tool for tracking all sorts of stats and info. Probably the best section is a complete, and enhanced, version of the "Your Bills" page. But its not limited by the restrictions that Hank has placed on the Your Bills page - where all the stats are "bill centric". I now have instant access to hit-specific information, such as hits per month, cumulative hits (instead of cumulative bills hit), and current hit streak, that can't be found on Where's George. I can even, with a little temporary editing, recreate my stats for pretty much any point in time. So posting my stats, as I did in most of these postings, just isn't necessary for myself anymore. And, while it would pump my ego a little to think that anyone else actually cared or tracked them, I'm pretty certain that there's nobody out there who had done so. (If you have been... sorry. Let me know, I'd love to hear it - my ego can always use a little boost.)

So, the point of the above rambling is just to say that, in all probablility, there will be very few, if any, blog updates from here on out. I'm going to move this section to the bottom of the profile, just because I can's see deleting it, at least at the moment. Myself, I think the more interesting section of this profile at this point is the maps, so I think it will make more sense to have them closer to the top. And I'll probably start to develop an "interesting hits" section or three with simple links to things like milestones, foreign country hits, etc. Eventually, if I find enough other stuff to add, this section may fade away altogether, or maybe I'll move it off to a web page on my own site and just provide a link. But today, I'll just begin its slow march into the ether with a trip to the bottom of the page...

Oh, and one last stats table - just for old times sake...

1/7/2007:

Not a whole lot: Added state hit maps to my profile, reached 1200 bills entered, starting to get somewhat regular hits, better than 1 every other day, on average.

This bill just gave me not one but two milestones: It puts my George Score over 700, and it also gives me my first Federal Reserve Bingo! I'm stoked, even if nobody else knows. :) Missed making the 700 before the end of last year by one hit, but better late than never. I also seem to finally be solidly in the 130s in my state ranking. I've been bobbing up and down in the 140s since my GS was down around 630. And, I don't pay as much attention to this, but I noticed that I've also broken into the top 6000 nationally in the last couple of weeks. This puts me up 1000 places since I started saving the stats here back in late September.

Happy new year! I missed getting a George Score of 700 by the end of the year by one measly point! Oh well, a new year, with new goals and new possibilities. On the good side, I set a new record for hits in a month with 15, got a little (but record) hit streak of three days, and set another record in bills entered with 292 (which would have been higher, but I was away on vacation for the last 10 days and haven't entered anything for that time).

Here's to a happy new year to you, anybody who's reading this, and many happy hits.

Here's my end-of-the-year stats for the end of 2006:

Today I reached another of my goofy milestones. Just over a month ago, I posted that I had, at that point, entered as many bills this year as I had in the previous 2.5 years I have been registered on WG (356 each). As of this afternoon, I have now enter 2 times as many bills this year as I had previously entered. (And most of that is actually in the last four months. And most of that four months is in the last two months. ) At any rate, that's 356 pre-2006 entries, and 712 2006 entries, for a grand total of 1068 entered bills. Now to enter that strap I got today, so I can get December's number of entries above November's. Then it might be time for a bit of a break. Maybe...

My newest milestone: I finally have a comma in my number of bills entered! OK, so that doesn't count in the unofficially official Comma Club - it takes a comma in your George Score to gain that prestigious membership - but I'll take what I can get. I emptied out my change jar a couple of weeks ago, and accumulated over $100 in change (hey, its a big jar, and it was overflowing). So I "earmarked" that to use to get my next (second) strap of singles. Then I noticed that I was closing in on 900 bills entered, and decided it would be cool to enter a strap to reach exactly 1,000 bills. So it took a little fanagling, and when I forgot to bring the coin rolls to the bank a couple of days, I really had to get creative to not get extra bills to be entered. (I know - I could have gotten bills and just not entered them, but that's just the way I am.) But yesterday I finally got the strap, and last night I entered a final $20 bill I had been holding onto for a day which put me at 900, followed by the strap. (It was really annoying when I got to the end of the strap and the total was still only 999 - I managed to skip one durring entry.) So, there you have it: a beatiful, clean bill summary report with exactly 1,000 bills. WooHoo.

A new first: I got my first strap of $1 bills on Wednesday (11/29). I resolved to just let the geek in me out and tell the banker about Wheres George if she asked what I wanted all those singles for, but she never batted an eye. Oh, well, next time, I'm sure.

I entered all 100 bills that night. That led to several new records:

Who knows: with all the crazy stats folks track on this sight, there's probably a bunch of other records I set without even knowing it. And my George Score soared over 670. All in all, a good day of georging. (Well, except for the DDOS attack that brought down the DNS servers. ) Now, if form holds, I've got 2 weeks till my next hit.

Oh, and I discovered where Hank keeps the smilies. Its all down hill from here...

Today's stats:

I got my first stamp today. I went basic - a one-liner from stamp-connection that says "Track this bill at www.WheresGeorge.com". I like to add little catch-phrases to my bills based on mood, so I'll probably continue to add those hand-written, as the spirit moves. I EMed three ones and a five to initiate it. Here's to a whole new era of easy marking. :)

edit: At lunch I cashed one of my birthday checks for $25 and got it in ones. The teller asked if it was going to be my poker money. I just smiled and didn't answer. I'm such a dweeb. Should be interesting to see how I handle it when I ask for a strap. :)

What an amazing weekend! On Saturday, the Buckeyes win the biggest game of the century against Michigan; I got 5 hits in one day on Sunday, breaking a 16-day drought and my record number of hits in a day (by 2); and Sunday evening the San Diego Chargers pulled off another come-from-behind win in Denver, breaking all kinds of records, including the only team in NFL history to come back from 17 or more points behind in two games in a row. Can anyone say "Superbowl"? Oh, yeah, the hits... Brings my George Score up by 9 points, and I cracked the 130s in my state ranking (though a lot of that is inactive Georgers, so it could go backwards at any time). Here's the score:

Today I enterend my 356th bill for this year, which means I have now entered exactly as many bills this year as I did in all the previous (almost) three years I've been georging. And there's still a month and a half left in the year. And, I ordered a stamp earlier this week, and I got a $100 check for my birthday which I'm going to cash for a strap of ones. Can I reach 1000 bills by the end of the year? I doubt it, but we'll see. Still bummed: no hits since the 3rd. All these entries, and nothing in return. My hit rate is really in the tank. :(

God bless our veterans.

My George Score hit 650 today (well, technically, yesterday, but the numbers always seem to update slow). That's a 25 point increase in the last 2+ months of renewed activity. Woohoo. I guess. I also hit 146th place in the state for the first time. But that's pretty fluid, based on the inactivity of better Georgers than I. No hits since my last update. Bah. (I'm in a bit of a George funk - can you tell?)

So, recent milestones: 113 bills entered for October - a new high. Three hits on 11/3 put me over the 50-hit mark (51). I drove to St. Petersberg, FL, on 11/1 and sprinkled a couple dozen bills along the way, mostly on the return trip on 11/4. My George score has gone up 20 points in the last month, but my state rank hasn't budged. Would you all kindly stop entering bills for a while? :) I guess I have gone up almost 300 spots on the overall list, so that's something - just a little harder to relate to. Current scoreboard, for my future edification:

My 600th bill, and my 100th bill for 10/06, my most prolific Georging month (and counting) to date. Here's the scoreboard:

Passed $3000 in bills entered. For whatever that isn't worth...

Woohoo! My 500th bill entered today. That's sort of a milestone, isn't it? Here are my stats as of this day:

George is such a tease!!! Gets me all excited with that triple hit day, and now its been a two week dry spell. C'mon, George, gimme some lovin'! (I mean, you know, in the bill hits way, not in, you know, that way.)

I just got one of the fastest "real" hits I've ever had - four days and 400+ miles traveled. Cool. (I had one hit within less than a day once, but that was a bill I put in an office soda coffer, which someone picked up as change - I don't really count that as really having been in circulation.)

Update: Wow! 3 hits in one day (9/6/2006), and all from different batches. That's quite a record for me. Also got a hit on a one-day-old bill, beating the "fastest hit" from the first one today.

Its been a while. 2 1/2 years and a continent away from where I started. I moved from San Diego, CA, to Western North Carolina last summer. Had "dreams" of sprinkling WheresGeorge bills all across the country during our trek, but things were too frantic. :( Been on another posting spree the last month or so. Still no match for the heavyweights with 10s of thousands of bills posted. But I'm approaching 500 bills, and have a score of 625. Not bad, I guess.

Update: Hey, 1 hit from that big batch last month. Not huge, but its a start...

I entered my first bill in May, 2003. It had www.wheresgeorge.com written all around the border. It was quite an impressive marking effort. Alas, when I entered it, there was no previous entry. :( I got into it, mildly, for a few months, and entered maybe 200 bills. But when I got very few hits, I got discouraged - it took 5 months and almost 200 bills entered just to get 10 hits and earn a George Score. So, except for a few occasions, I pretty much dropped it. This week, for some odd reason, I happened to accumulate 23 ones, so I thought I'd do another mass posting and see what happens...