23 Things on a Stick Assignment #1--part 2

Creating the blog, naming the blog, selecting the template and registering it with 23 Things on a Stick were easy. (This blog was actually created in February 2006 as a way to record my learning experiences for MN Voluntary Library Certification, but I never posted anything on it--until now.)
Creating the avatar and placing it on the blog were also relatively easy. I did that in September 2006 when I tried to do the California Libray School Learning 2.0/23 Things program (which I didn't complete, by the way.) I remember it took me a bit of time as I had problems figuring out the codes, but I eventually did it.
Trying to do the challenge parts of Assignment #1 were difficult and, at times, a royal pain. But I thought I better do a couple of them, since I did the "easy" parts of this assignment months ago. Adding a blog roll and a visitor counter were my initial goals, but those goals changed once I started to dig into the work involved.
When I tried to add a blog roll, I couldn't find any info in the layouts or settings part of Blogger, so I clicked on "help". The definition of a blog roll was different from what I thought it was and I decided I didn't want that on my blog. So I moved on to visitor counts. Feedburner looked incredibly complicated (at least their web page made it look that way). So, I tried Sitemeter. It had all these features I didn't want and I didn't know what I would do with all that information. So, I decided I didn't want a vistor counter either.
I went back to the settings and layout of Blogger, thinking there has to be any easier way to list the blogs I read and count the number of visitors to my site. Well, I did find a way to list the blogs I read (which is what I thought I blog roll did) and added that feature to the blog. While in the process of doing that, I discovered I could add Adsense (and maybe make a few cents), so I added that feature. Then I thought maybe I should know where my future or potantial customers are coming from or how often they are visiting my blog, so I went back to Sitemetter and added that on, too.
Over all, I did learn some things I didn't know before (such as how to add various features to my blog). But, assignment #1 took me way longer than I thought it would (almost 3 hours) and it was a more complex than I thought it would be (or perhaps should be).