So when my brief mid-life crisis manifested itself last week with an uncontrollable urge to play around with this here blog, I inadvertently made a change that makes Uncle Crappy look a whole lot more interesting than it really is.

Here’s what I did: Blogger had been pestering me for a couple of weeks to switch to a new beta version that promised much more control over templates, along with a whole lot of extra goodies I’ve been wanting to add for a long time. So, as I mentioned before, rushing out and buying that sports car, obtaining a mistress and getting fitted for a hairpiece weren’t realistic options, so I decided to jump to Blogger Beta instead.

There were some jokes in that last part. Really. Don’t get all excited.

As part of the switch, I had to dump all the coding changes I had made to the original blog. Most of the stuff I had was fairly easy to re-create, but in one instance — that of the tracker button — I had to start over.

Not really a big deal, because they had a new version ready, one that tells me where you’re reading from, all the specifics about your computer and every single password and bank account number you possess.

Again. Joking. As far as you know.

So I installed the new version and went to bed, forgetting about some previous nonsense I had signed up for while wondering how to get people to read Uncle Crappy — well before I cleverly thought of actually telling people it existed. So I had forgotten that one of those services automatically directs a shitload of people to your blog … on your birthday.

I completed these changes late in the evening of Oct. 11. When I woke up on Oct. 12, the 40th anniversary of my birth, I noticed that something like 19 people had visited overnight. And I ended the day with 39 visitors, most of whom are unknown to me.

In and of itself, that’s kind of a cool thing, although it’s really screwed my average daily visits, which had been hovering around eight or nine a day. The current average? 17.

Wow. Uncle Crappy is huge, boys and girls. Time for me to start selling some ads. Maybe for sports cars. Or hairpieces.