One Year Later...

Happy 1st Birthday to my Blog :)

One year ago today, I published my very first blog post, appropriately titled, "Some thoughts on the First Amendment."

It's appropriate that I started this blog with a discussion of the First Amendment, because I've had to rely on my constitutional right to free speech a few times to defend myself (here, here, and here).

I draw inspiration from the motto of RedState's Erick Erickson to "fight the left and clean up the right."  Anyone who thinks that harassing or threatening me will shut me up is sorely mistaken, and the attacks have only furthered my resolve to continue criticizing those who deserve it.

It's hasn't been all fights and challenges. There's been a lot of fun in the past year. Some highlights:

• Having a front row seat to the amazing journey that was the Marco Rubio campaign (and having a good laugh at Charlie Crist's expense along the way) 

 

• Attending my first ever Conservative Political Action Conference as an Official CPAC Blogger and getting to meet in person so many of my favorite conservative bloggers.

• Meeting the hosts of one of my favorite shows, RedEye on Fox News, as well as frequent RedEye guest Stephen Kruiser, at CPAC...and then seeing some of my photos from CPAC end up on RedEye a week later:

• Being invited to be a guest on Flashpoint, local talk radio, conservative podcasts, and other media appearances. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a little (OK, very) opinionated and getting to share my thoughts and debate political topics is always a lot of fun.

• Becoming a semi-quasi-almost celebrity on Twitter. I signed up for Twitter in March 2009 as "@rumpfshaker" as a bit of a joke on my last name and this epic song, but didn't really participate in the twitterverse much until about a year ago. Now I'm followed by more than 2,200 people and consistently ranking near the top of the "Top Political Tweeters in Florida" lists that Saint Petersblog publishes each month. Twitter has been a great resource for me too, as I've crowdsourced everything from restaurant recommendations to a frightening (but fortunately quickly resolved) computer virus attack last week.

• Getting to meet so many conservative leaders and politicians over the past year, too many to list. There's really no substitute for getting to hear a candidate speak in person, unabridged and uncensored. A few minute clip of a TV interview is not the same, never mind an over-produced 30 second ad. That's why I won't ever endorse a candidate unless I've met him or her in person.

• My "12 seconds of fame" - discovering Charlie Crist's debut TV ad for his new gig at Morgan and Morgan, posting it on YouTube, and watching it go viral the next day (43,000 views and counting).

• What I've enjoyed most of all is hearing from all of you. It's been fun getting feedback from friends or meeting new people who read the blog or follow me on twitter. I really do appreciate all your support and encouragement, and thank you for your continued interest in my little corner of the internet.

A few semi-interesting statistics about this blog...

Most viewed posts:

• It was only a matter of time
• Just in case you aren't sick of post-election commentary yet
• What's the deal with the tan?
• My thoughts on this year's amendments 

Top traffic sources/referring sites:

• Google
• Facebook (both from my Facebook page and other's pages)
• Twitter
• Linkiest (Thank you John Hawkins for listing me on your sites!)
• Conurls (an excellent listing of conservative blogs, news, videos and more)
• Right Wing News (Again, thanks John Hawkins)
• Sayfie Review (from the Sayfie Review Twitter Ticker)
• Rick Scott for Florida (the original campaign site is down now, but I was listed on the Bloggers for Scott Blogroll)
• The Other McCain (Stacy has only linked me a few times, but each time, the Fedora has brought me a huge spike in traffic)

Visitors - Top Countries:

• United States (94% of traffic is from the U.S., all other countries are <1%)
• Canada
• United Kingdom
• India
• France
• Germany
• Australia
• Israel

Visitors - Top States

• Florida (60%)
• New York (6%)
• District of Columbia (4%)
• California
• Georgia
• Texas
• Virginia
• Illinois
• Pennsylvania
• South Carolina

Browsers used to access this site:

• Internet explorer - 46%
• Firefox - 28%
• Safari - 9%
• Chrome - 8%
• Mobile - 4%

Operating Systems:

• Windows - 77%
• Macintosh - 12%
• iPhone - 3%
• BlackBerry - 1%
• Other Unix - 1%
• Linux - 1%
• Android - 1%

To all of you who have been there for the entire year, those of you who found me along the way, or those of you who are new readers, THANK YOU. I'm looking forward to sharing the years to come with you.

FYI - you can join the Sunshine State Sarah Facebook page, follow me on Twitter @rumpfshaker, and sign up for "A Daily Dose of Sunshine," a free email subscription to this blog.