Happy Birthday To Me

Today's my birthday.

Well, not my NATAL birthday, although it is a form of genesis. It's the first anniversary of the day when Cogito Ergo Geek was born.

Actually, I published for a couple of weeks before December 15th, but this is the day when I installed StatsCounter and started keeping track of hits. (20,706 as of right now) Almost everything posted earlier in 2005 was just practice, trying to decide on a format, and learning to use the software.

My first post was on December 1, 2004, and it was pretty gruesome.

But the second week of January contains articles which still are among the most commonly referenced (by keyword) over the past year, and in fact are still getting 'hits' today:

January 15, Gold Medal Gunslingers - VPC takes on "IPSC as an Olympic Sport"
January 12, STI IPSC 30th Anniversary Edition - a beautiful STI EDGE
January 12, Heston, "Winning the Culture War" - 2/16/1999 speach to Harvard Law School Forum
January 12, Heston, "On Gun Control" - 2/11/1997 speach to National Press Club
January 11, The General - Eulogy to Mike Jones, who started IPSC competition in Oregon
January 10, STI Special Edition - a 24 caret gold-plated (looking good!) STI Edge
January 9, Amazing Stories - television commercials that lie

Since then I've written about IPSC rules, gun-control issues (including detailed analysis of new and proposed state & federal laws), police shootings that have made the news, gadgets, gizmos, guns, girls, Gargantuan Gunsite Gossip (still haven't found a copy I can afford), cars - ugly cars, car races, car accidents, shooting matches, political elections, fluffy kitties ....
okay, I lied about the kitties.

I've installed new software and new features: Statscounter, Technorati ("Blogs that link to me"), books, music and movies I'm reading/listening to/watching, a photo gallery, a rudimentary website (work in progress - very little progress so far, no link offered!), Day By Day Cartoon, Haloscan, software to upload, download, resize and reformat both photos and videos. I've got rid of dial-up and AOL in favor of high-speed internet and Comcast email. This last move actually SAVED me money and will save me even more as soon as I quit my telephone landline and go to strictly cell telephony. I've even learned some HTML, and bought Front Page . . . which is the reason why my web-page is still rudimentary, since after I bought it I learned that my web hosting friend (Thank you again, Brian!) can't support Front Page-generated webpages.

Actually, I've spent less than $300 on this website during the past year: $100 of that was the FrontPage software, and the rest was subscriptions to online services. For example, to research the 'TV ads that lie" article, I subscribed to Consumer Reports so I could get the low-down on an "ionic air purifier" . . . just to prove that it didn't work. Blogspot is free, ImageShack (hosted my photos for a while) cost me $5 so I could upload a lot of photos at once, WS-FTP cost me $40 so I could upload a LOT of files to the webhost, and I'm currently enrolled in a 'trial period', with NapSter so I can download music to go with the videos I produce.

(I don't count the $300 I paid for a digital camera, which also takes the photos; it's my blog, I can do my accounting any way I want to.)

Actually, the internet hosting and the photo gallery haven't cost me anything yet. My friend Brian is hosting online services, and the gallery software is free except that Brian had to install it on his server.

Have I thanked Brian enough yet? Probably not. He hosts websites for the Columbia Cascade Section and the Albany Rifle and Pistol Club (ARPC) as part of his ARPC volunteer support, and has graciously allowed me to piggy-back on his server. I promised to overload his system, but I haven't yet. I'm working on it, and apparently the 1000+ photos and videos haven't over-encumbered his server yet. When it does, I've made a standing offer to buy another hard-drive, but we aren't there yet.


I've met a lot of new friends here.

I started by linking to other RKBA- and Shooting-related websites. Then I got to meet some of the other gun-bloggers in the PNW last September. I've found quite a few of them, and enjoyed the email and occasional personal chats with them. They only reinforce my opinion that gun-folks are the nicest people in the world.

I would, and probably should, identify them all by name here. But if you're a regular reader you know those who I have already met, and you see all of the links on my sidebar. I consider that a formal introduction and if you haven't read them yet, you should.

In my original post I mentioned that this was a "vanity" blog, and this article simply serves to reinforce the impression.

I've indulged myself here by just talking about how my experiences in the past year have been satisfying and fulfilling. I can do that, because it's my blog and often I don't expect what I write to be very interesting to others.

Sometimes, though, I've been able to contribute to a dialogue on a subject which takes hold of the reader and enhances comments made by others. The continuing story of Barrett's .50 BMG is one example; evaluation of proposed gun-control laws is another.

When I talked about the love and respect that followed Mike Jones after his death, over 200 people linked from the Canadian Gun Nuts Forum because they understood that a man's life extends past his death, if he is a worthy man. Mike was one such a man and I miss him still.

If I can say that I was proud of any single thing I wrote, it would have to be "The General".

You will note that the only links I've included in this article are to my First Post, my first 'good week', and to "The General".

That's because I realize that if I started providing links I would have to admit that 99% of the content was just BS.

Vanity. All vanity.

I'm having a good time. Thanks for the ride. I wouldn't have done it without you.