Just sayin'...

[alexpgp]

It would appear my subconscious comes through in the clutch, because as I went to sleep last night, the only idea I had at all about how to handle this week's LJ Idol prompt was half-baked and ugly. When I woke up, a much better theme had suggested itself to me, which made it easier to write.

That was important today, because when I opened the 10,000 words due Friday, the word count turned out to be closer to 20,000, which highlights the fact that I've not been as diligent as I ought to be with verifying incoming assignments. No matter how good the client, gaffes like this have to be caught and cleared up immediately. As it turns out, though I've been given an extension until COB next Wednesday, a bunch of rush items overwhelmed my inbox throughout the day.

* * *My Baikonur assignment seems to be coming together, which is always a good thing, especially once winter has handed the conn over to springtime.

* * *Out of curiosity, I decided to see what my LJ ranking is, and it turns out to be nothing to write home about. My current rank is 41,076, down a little over 30 positions since the rank was last calculated.

It would appear that this ranking thing only applies to the rather large segment of LJ that expresses itself in Russian (a group I suspect I am a part of because (a) I have, from time to time, made a number of posts from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, and (b) I have been known to use Cyrillic on occasion as well). I say this because none of the half-dozen non-Russian LJ friends I asked about is ranked, while all of the half-dozen or so Russian LJ friends are.

Then again, considering there are 2,863,278 people ranked, there is a positive way to spin my ranking: At position 41,076, I'm in the top 1.5% or so.

That about exhausts all the interest I can muster about this mysterious (formerly, to me) feature of LJ.

And now, with over 4,000 target words in the bag for today, I am ready to relax!

Cheers...

UPDATE: Based on comments from LJ friends bandicoot and emo_snal, it would appear that some other criteria are at work, here.

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, I checked my ranking. It was 342,274. That's in the top 12%. My question is, WHY? ;p

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

My rank is 6,873, due to my immense Russian cred :D

I think it just goes by number of friends-of?

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Well, your and bandicoot's rankings pretty much demolish my hypothesis of rankings being some kind of Russians-only club. <grin>

Cheers...

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

well I did once tick the "enable settings designed for cyrillic language LJ" or some such on LJ Settings once to get to some of their special features.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I think you probably hit the nail on the head, because I recall setting that option for my LJ some time ago. It is probably safet to say that folks who didn't set the option are not ranked.

Having tentatively established that, it turns out there are actually two rankings, by number of readers and number of visitors. My 41076 rank is for the former; my latter rank is 37048, having dropped 15767 (!) positions since the last calculation.

I think I have exhausted my curiosity on this subject. Thanks for the key.

Cheers...

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

A number of serial adder Russian LJs have added me at one time or another, if that's some kind of factor. Again, I have no idea why...

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

oh that's really interesting that it's number of visitors. Intriguing!