Dominic Holden, the high school dropout who's been covering city hall since June and oversaw The Stranger's best city election coverage in memory, is being promoted to News Editor. Eli Sanders, the senior staff writer who covered the 2008 presidential race and has recently been covering county politics, health-care reform, and criminal justice, is now Associate Editor of The Stranger. He will continue to focus on long-form investigative projects, as well as contribute to the news section. And we will be announcing another full-time hire in our news department in the coming weeks.

Last month according to Google Analytics, we had over one million absolute unique visitors.

That’s over a million people: readers, commenters, trolls, lovers and haters, lovers who hate haters, fundies, foodies, and people who will cut you for using the word “foodies.” People who don’t give a shit and people who care way too much. People looking for a woman seeking a man, people looking for a movie about GI Joe dolls, people who have a question for a city council candidate about a sidewalk. People scouring the internet for the term “horse fucking” at three in the morning Omaha time. People who meant to go to thestronger.com.

We’ve hit one million absolute uniques in a month only once before, and that was this past June. And I was going to write a post like this back then, but something must have come up. It was June. People are busy in June. Well, this month we had even more traffic than June, so the hell with June. October is the new June.

Thanks, one million people, for intentionally (or unintentionally) visiting our collection of internet web pages. Without all of you, the world (and Seattle in particular) would seem like it’s weirdly empty. People who escaped thestranger.com rapture would walk the streets thinking, “Where the fuck is everyone?” It could happen. Remember when all those people who used Friendster just disappeared? Like that.

No, we haven't integrated the login systems (yet). But we did make a little box that will pull your Questionland activity onto your MyStrangerFace profile. Synergy!

All you have to do is go to the "Profile Trinkets" section of your MyStrangerFace Settings page, and add your Questionland ID, and your QL questions, answers, and comments will be there for all to see. Easy! And oh so much fun.

• tealeaves, from the Stranger's Flickr Pool

Head over to The Stranger's bar listings and leave a review for the bar with the best happy hour (according to you), and you could win a gift certificate to a great local restaurant!

We'll go through all the reviews, and print some of the best in our upcoming happy hour guide (out October 22nd). If yours is chosen, dinner's on us.

So go! Write your hearts out!

Tonight! 6 pm! At Pony!

• Kelly O

There will be $3 wells, $1 off all drafts, and specials on "Zombie Butt Pirates" until 8 pm!

You're coming, right?

(Pony is located at 12th and Madison on Capitol Hill. See many more pictures of parties at Pony here.)

• Kelly O

ZOMBIE BUTT PIRATE!

Paul's bringing a big ol' stack of free books too! And I'll have... uh... nametags. Exciting!

Slog Happy starts at 6 pm and Pony is located at 12th and Madison.

See you there!

Claudia Rowe, who was going to join The Stranger on Thursday as our news editor, has been offered another job—a non-journalism job at the Marguerite Casey Foundation that, like many non-journalism jobs, pays more than journalism does. Rowe had applied for this job before applying to be our news editor and hadn't heard back. Until yesterday. Considering that Rowe has two children to support, she's made the decision to leave the field of journalism to take this other gig. We wish her well and still plan to publish her writing and...

We're hiring again.

• JTContinental / Stranger Flickr

Like to eat food but hate the word "foodie"? Want to get ahead in life via data entry? Know how to write good? Be our Chow intern.

Remember how we used to not even have login around here? Holy shit! Anybody could just stroll on in and post whatever they wanted—it was mayhem! Threats to abandon Slog forever abounded.

Then we added registration and all was sunshine and kitten showers.

Still, something was missing. I'm sure we're all familiar with this scenario:

You're reading the reasoned and enlightened comments of your favorite level-headed registered commenter, and you get a bit hungry. Someone with such well thought-out opinions on health care, architecture, and the Blue Angels surely knows a thing or two about Pad Thai, right?. But how to find out? Google? Painstakingly searching through thousands of restaurant reviews looking for their name? No! Not good.

Well, as of right now-ish, you can just click their name and go to their MyStrangerFace profile. There you will learn what restaurants they've reviewed, which other threads they're enlightening all over, and which side they take in the ancient 'tushy' vs. 'tuchus' debate. Useful!

What do we call this thing?

Your personal profile will automatically aggregate your comments and reviews, and also gives you space to write a bio or manifesto, add links to your favorite sites, pull in your Twitter or Flickr feed, and tell the world about yourself by completing our peer-reviewed personality test.

Of course, you can choose not to do any of this crap, if you're against it for religious or dietary or curmudgeonly reasons.

This first version of the profiles is just a start. Version 1.0, as they say. Did I say "Beta"? It's that, too. We'll be adding lots of super-awesome features to the profiles in the coming weeks and months. All will be riddled with software bugs and poor design choices, and we're relying on you to let us know all about those.

I'll get you started: "Hey dumbass! Don't start pushing out new code after noon on a Friday! Will you never learn?" Answer: No, apparently we will not.

Already a registered member? Check out your profile now. Still hiding behind those anonymous posts and want to get in on the fun? Create an account here.

The rumors are true: The Stranger has hired Claudia Rowe to run our news department. Rowe wrote an assessment of the mayor's handling of youth violence for The Stranger earlier this month, and has been writing about youth, race, and social justice for nearly 20 years, most recently at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In 2008, her portrayal of a south Seattle family shattered by their teenage son's accidental shooting of his stepbrother won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and helped save a 16-year-old from going to state prison. Last spring, Harvard University honored Claudia for her revealing reporting on the allure of gangs—for instance, this piece of reporting for the P-I about gangs in Seattle: how they work, how they're organized geographically, why teenagers join them, what they get out of them, what the city is doing about it. And she has been contributing to the New York Times, reporting on everything from school budgets to environmental science, since 1997.

As news editor, Claudia will be managing The Stranger's coverage of local politics, crime, drug reform, transportation, and the environment. And she'll be on Slog every day. We are thrilled to have her. She starts October 1.

UPDATE: Here.

Big thanks to everyone who came to Slog Happy last night at the Lookout! Not only did nearly every staff member of the editorial department come out, but we also had a few new commenter faces in the house as well!

The piles of porn, books, DVDs, Fremont Oktoberfest tickets, and Sunny Day Real Estate tickets all went to a good home—but if you're bummed that you didn't win any of the tickets, be sure to check Line Out over the next few days, as there are more of both Oktoberfest and Sunny Day tickets to be given away soon.

The Lookout's staff took great care of us, and that view from the patio was amazing (you know, once the sun stopped blinding all of us). If you had a good time, be sure to show them some love in the reader reviews.

Also: Did anyone try the jalapeño margarita? It scared and intrigued me.

Now, where should October's Slog Happy be? Maybe we should do another trivia edition?

Slog Happy! Tonight! At the Lookout (757 Bellevue Ave E)!

It starts at 6 pm and it looks like it'll be be-yoo-tiful evening, which means we can take full advantage of the bar's patio! I can't believe I just said "be-yoo-tiful." Anyway. Need another reason to come? There will be lots and lots of FREE STUFF! Along with the usual gamut of free books, there will also be a drawing for a pair of tickets to the Fremont Oktoberfest (which also gets you six beer tokens!), a handful of passes to the NWFF, and a pair of tickets to Sunny Day Real Estate's reunion show on October 16th at the Paramount!

Rumor has it there might be some free porn too.

So I'll see you lovelies tonight at 6 pm!