yet another of "yano's lost blogs," missing for who knows how long, until recently discovered in a file called "blogs.txt"...

Day 7 of Christine's Summer Vacation

You know, I had my first homepage on the web in 1994, at the beginning of my sophomore year of college. (Yes, I'm THAT old. I'm sure some of you weren't even born yet) I was an addict to IRC, and I was chatting all the time. (some things never change, right?) U of I was one of the pioneers in the internet, and we were all pretty e-mail and internet savvy. My friend Mike showed me his webpage. I thought it was really cool. So he taught me how to make one. I went out and got myself a free Prairienet.net account. Then I built my page. And I learned how to figure out HTML code by seeing the source of other pages. Notepad was my page editor. I remember that Yahoo was the best page ever back then.

So my page was one of the first webpages out there. By the time I graduated, I had about 23,000 hits - not because my page was popular, but because it was one of the few pages out there to see. I learned Photoshop (V2.1 or something) to manipulate the icons on my page. I was constantly at the scanner in Lincoln Hall, scanning pictures to put on my page. I constantly updated my page with links and pictures. I had the most interesting guestbook entries at the time.

Once I graduated, I moved from the $15 a year Prairienet account (they had to start charging, since so many people wanted space), to a more robust account on enteract.com. I paid for the first year or so, but I had a friend that worked there, and after a while, I didn't have to pay anymore. However, after graduation, I really lagged on working on my page. I just had too many things to do and was too uninterested in it.

But in the early 2002, Mike, the one who got me into this whole internet hell in the first place asked me if I knew what a 'blog' was. I had no idea. I was hardly even connecting to the internet anymore. When he told me about the concept, I thought it was quaint. A web journal, eh? A page that is constantly updated with whatever is going on in your life, loaded with your experiences, your opinions, anything you want. Iiiiiiinteresting....It looked like it was time for me to dust off the old source code for my webpage. This 'blog' revolution sounded enticing.

I set it up. I linked it to my main site. I thought I might as well give it a try. I had always wanted to have a journal of sorts, but every time I tried it, I'd forget and eventually give up. Maybe having it online would force me to stick with it.

I gave it a month. I really didn't think it would last this long. I become so disinterested in things so quickly. But not with my blog. It's been more than a year, and my blog is still going strong. I'm always taking little notes in my head about what I'm going to blog about. I started it out for myself first, but when I put in the comments, I almost felt a small amount of pressure to post. It's like there were people out there depending on me. I never thought that anyone would care enough to read my silly posts, but well, you're reading it right now, right? Who would have thought that I would have regular readers? Not I!

I admit, I love it when people come here and post, or when they privately tell me that they're lurkers. I really appreciate all of you that come here day in and day about, reading my numerous misadventures. I love to see your comments, getting your emails, and seeing our little yanowhatimean.com community grow. You've all helped my through some really tough times, and I hope, in some little way, I've helped you through some tought times, too.

Boy, I'm a sap.

Thanks for coming by. Thanks for posting. Come back again soon.

Whew!

Posted by Claudine at June 1, 2003 06:03 PM

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