My 8,00th Post*
Posted on June 12, 2013 Posted by John Scalzi 38 Comments
Hello! This is my 8,000th post on Whatever!*
*Not actually the 8,000th post on Whatever, because other people have made guest posts over the years. This is actually the 8,093rd post on Whatever.**
**It’s not actually the 8,093rd post on Whatever, either, because the posts here currently only go back to March of 2002, and I was writing on the site far earlier than that (going back to September of 1998; September 13th, 1998, to be precise). There’s probably between 1,000 and 2,000 posts unaccounted for.***
***Speaking of unaccounted posts, I don’t know that Big Idea posts should count as posts by me, because they are mostly written by other people; I just put in an opening graph and post them, which means the WordPress software counts them as mine.****
****Also, now that I think of it, there are some guest posts from several years back which I accidentally deleted and then reposted, which are now reposted under my account. They probably shouldn’t be counted as mine, either.*****
*****Also, I think there may be at least a couple of duplicate posts, caused when the database of entries was ported over to the WordPress VIP servers back in 2008.
So, uh. Yeah.
Hello! I’ve been writing on Whatever for a really long time now.
Here, have a picture of a cat.
Congrats on lots of good posts whatever the actual number is.
Cute cat. Looks content instead of angry today.
Nice cat.
Regardless of your actual number of posts, congrats on keeping a blog successfully and continuously for so long!
Congratulations on your longevity on the internet!
Your kitty is saying: “John, you wrote 8,00th in the title of the post, you haven’t had your coffee yet, have you? Oh, and feed me!”.
8,00 is a nice number.
Error report: I went back and was dismayed to discover that some of the 8.000 posts did not contain cat pictures. Please fix ;-)
Congrats!
Also, is just me, or does Lopsided look like he’s about to eviscerate the picture taker?
Congratulations on achieving some random number of posts between 8,000 and 20,000. :)
This is the first thing that I’ve said today, other than “This is the first thing that I’ve said today.”
“This sentence contains
ten words,
eighteen syllables,
and sixty-four letters.”
[Jonathan Vos Post, Scientific American, reprinted in “Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern”, by Douglas R. Hofstadter, paperback reprint March 1996, pp.26-27]
This is a thoughtful meditation on the meaninglessness of numbers. I’ll print it out, and give it to my partner the next time he forgets our anniversary.
This blog is entertaining.
Congratulations on your longetivity!
Needs more bacon. :)
That’s all very well and not so much informative, but do you actually know how many cat posts you made ?
That’s all we really want to know. Because we are discerning readers. And also because I like to speak for everybody that reads whatever.
Yup.
Congrats, John. Expect catnip in the mail soon.
For the true “bank mailer” experience, should be:
Hello! This is my 8,000th post on Whatever!* ** *** **** *****
I’m too lazy to look up unicode for all those other goofy symbols they use instead of multiple asterisks now, I assume you are too.
you coulda gave us Daisy, but we get a cat?!? For such a momentous post (or maybe not so momentous)?!? Cat? Lions and tigers and Siamese for goodness sake.
P.s. Actually it is the fact that said cat is a long hair. I wanna sneeze just looking at it… not that short hairs have been that kind to me the last couple years.. but longs.. GAHHHHHHHHHHH!
Congratulations!*
*Unless it’s not ACTUALLY your 8000th post, in which case, it’s still a lot, so: Congratulations!
Congratulations on being tolerated by a cat!
(Also, the ~~8,000 post thing is impressive, too, in it’s own way.)
Is 8,00 like a keleventy?
So instead of “happy arbitrary milestone”, I wish you “happy illusory arbitrary milestone!”
I see your posts are improving with time.
The Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20081205002946/http://whatever.scalzi.com/
Dude, you lost weight!
Actually, I should have said. “you haven’t lost your cat fetish, I see.”
I’m pretty sure Lopsided Cat is thinking, “Get on with it.”
Oh sure, throw a sop to the Ghlaghghee lobby, but nothing for us Sunset people. Although, I guess, a sunset photo on this post might send the wrong message. Never mind.
sorry, it’s Lopsided Cat. my mistake.
cheeze! I have not heard so much equivocating since the last election! Celebrate it John! & then celebrate it every time you have a new reason to claim 8000. Its all worth reading
So…uh, Wh00t?
Let us know when you hit 10,000….
I make no apologies for celebrating random numbers with a bunch of zeros.
8000 is:
* The cube of 20;
* The product of divisors of 20;
* The 46th of the numbers of the form 2^i* 5^j with i, j >= 0.
* The 37th of the numbers that are divisible by exactly 9 primes with multiplicity (Also called 9-almost primes). That is, Products of exactly 9 primes (not necessarily distinct);
* The 9th of the umbers n such that Mordell’s equation y^2 = x^3 + n has exactly 1 integral solution;
* The 40th of the concentric 20-gonal numbers;
* The 35th of the numbers that contain only one nonzero digit;
* The 28th of the numbers n whose prime factors are 2 and 5;
* The 19th of the cubes which have a partition as the sum of 3 squares…
Hi cat! No, I don’t know why he’s counting the ones without your picture either…
Congratulations on reaching post 8,000 (or more). Lopsided Cat doesn’t look terribly impressed by the milestone, though.
congratulations on your numerical approximation of a large power of ten post! Huzzah!
Even with all the numerical uncertainty, pretty sure you meant eight thousandth rather than eight hundredth.
Lopsided Cat isn’t bothering to disguise his disdain for this photoshoot.
Ha! You think you can distract us from your inaccuracies with pic — aww, the boozhum!
Lopsided Cat really is a gorgeous kitty. He makes me really want to risk the fuzzy-wuzzy belly-rubbing gambit. That’s when you reach out to rub-scratch a cat’s belly, and they either commence to stretch themselves full-length with their belly against your hand while making kitty-song — or they rip your arm off for your temerity. But I don’t think he looks at all angry. I think he looks, well, lopsided.
In other words, you have no idea what the hell the number of this post is.