So yeah, twenty years ago tonight, I logged onto my dialup connection and used Fetch (which I still use on occasion) to upload the original set of HTML and JPEG files that became the first version of Planet SOMA (now Otherstream). A lot has changed since then–the fact that the site no longer runs on static HTML and I no longer have a dialup connection, for example–but it’s still here after twenty years, even if far fewer people care nowadays, so I guess that’s saying something.

Maintaining this space since 1996 has done some really good things for me. It’s how I met some of my closest friends and it also led pretty directly to a midlife career change for me. It’s gotten me laid several times, and it got me married once…even if not till death did us part. It’s given me a record of an interesting period in my life and helped me frame the way I thought about that period, and it’s resulted in no small number of adventures.

In recent years, the traffic and the content have been diminishing, which is to be expected because the personal website/blog is not the cutting-edge medium it once was, because social media has taken over many of the roles a site like this used to play, and frankly because my content has become less interesting to a wider audience. The proportion of posts that mainly involve me babbling about me has increased, which is not really a good thing.

But I don’t care all that much, really. While I’d be lying if I said that reaching other people is not important–otherwise this would be a diary rather than a public website–it’s always been more about amusing myself than amusing anyone else. And it will probably continue to be that way until I decide it’s time to stop. Until that time, I hope you’ll keep coming by, either here or here or here or even here. And many, many thanks to those of you who already do, and especially to those of you who have been doing so for a long time. I appreciate it.

Back to the fun…

This article pretty much sums up one of the major reasons I don’t want guns in my house. I speak from experience here, because this almost happened to me once when I was about twenty years old. I was working late, but I came home earlier than my dad expected that night. I got to my room and closed the door, but I had to use the bathroom. When I opened the door, my dad was standing there with a gun pointed at me.

A few of my cousins couldn’t quite understand how willing I was to get rid of my father’s guns when he died. They thought I might like to save them as mementos. Frankly, though, I didn’t really want to remember my dad holding a lethal weapon that was aimed at me. I loved him way too much to hold on to anything that reminded me of that particular incident.

Scary: When someone at work asks you who the lead singer of Dead or Alive was and assumes you will know the answer.

Scarier: When they are correct in that assumption.