Greetings and Salutations

Yesterday I got the chance to meet a local blogger and friend, Jacob over at AtomicTumor. And as I sat there discussing whatever topic came to mind for a few hours, I was struck that this was all possible through blogging. I would have never met or conversed with such interesting, cool people if I hadn’t visited their site, left a comment, and proceeded with email conversations and blog comment-swapping for weeks on end.

Blogs are changing the world I tell you…or at least they’re changing mine. And that’s good enough for me.

One of the things we spoke on was the inevitable “Why blog?” At the time I spieled out something about connections and so forth, but I’d like to get something down ‘officially’ regarding that topic. Here are my primary reasons for throwing down letters in the text box:

1 – It makes me a better writer. This isn’t saying too much because I still make horrible grammar mistakes from time to time, but writing is like a muscle: The more you use it, the better you become and the stronger it is.

2 – It makes connections. The good folks at AT, the coolness of being recognized by local bloggers such as Michael Silence, hell, I’m even happy to be recognized by Herb Newton Nissan in a negative fashion. If they didn’t care so much about what I thought, would they have bothered to try and stop my words from being posted here?

3 – It keeps my loved ones up to date. My weekly Family Update series has enough little tidbits for my relatives to get a quick overview of how my family is doing, and what is going on at the time.

4 – It keeps a record of what happened in my life. Stupid, sappy, but true. I don’t remember every last thing that happened during the year, more specifically when those events occurred. But I do know that I spoke about Newsporn on January 6th, 2005, and on April 20th I moved into my new office. I have a timeline and the ability to trace my steps and my thought processes back for years. That’s pretty powerful stuff, I think.

All other reasons that are currently floating around in my head pale to what these represent for me as the most important facets of what the blog means to me. I throw down words here to share my opinion on things going on in technology, gaming, and my family. Everything that comes as a result of it, including some amazing friends and opportunities, is just icing on the cake.

And just wait until tomorrow when I begin my best-of lists! The Best of the Search ‘05 is coming tomorrow.

Twenty-seven people, even more
They were boys with their cars, summer jobs, Oh my God