On April 4th, 2003, if memory serves, I made the first post on my previous website, “Off In The Tall Weeds.” Portions of that site can be found at archive.org, but not that first post, which I remember was a profound essay on the order of, “Hello, is this thing on?”
That site, like this one, was largely a “shiny things” blog, but it had a bit more in the way of essays than this one has had.
I produced the site with a PC desktop CMS called CityDesk, which is no longer an active product. It served my needs at the time, though, and had the benefit that all of my posts were in a database under my control.
I’ve had occasion to browse through the old site a few times in the last year or so, and there are a number of posts that have suffered linkrot. I wonder how much linkrot the older posts on this site have suffered. I didn’t have comments on the old site, and I haven’t had too much trouble with comment spam on this one (probably because I haven’t had too many comments, period). Almost all of the comment spam is on post #100, but I doubt that’s significant.
Ah, well. I don’t feel qualified to do political analysis and commentary (I go elsewhere for that), so I doubt I’ll ever have the big traffic numbers. And that’s just as well – if I had to devote significant time to moderating comments, I suspect I’d resent having to spend the time.
It’s too late to have a drink to celebrate the anniversary tonight – I’m overdue for bed. I’ll take care of it tomorrow (actually, later today).