by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

I keep falling into these traps. In the early years of modems, it was BBS's where you called the board server directly. I can remember many, many nights where I spent 8 hours or more reading and posting on these. And then I discovered Compuserve, Delphi and Prodigy (even then I didn't take AOL seriously...): the big, proprietary online services. Each was its own little universe which had no contact with the others. whassisname (sorry--senior moment) over in Switzerland had yet to take Darpanet to the next level, so we splashed and played in our individual puddles of choice. My first was Compuserve where I was part of The Point online community. I still remember a couple of the major players (Fox and Legato) from that long ago place.

When I moved from Philly to New Jersey, I dropped Compuserve and joined Delphi mainly 'cause I could access Delphi free after 7pm whereas Compuserve cost money. Anyhow, on Delphi I quickly found the World Community Forum, and that little group of friends took up an inordinate amount of time (at least according to my long suffering wife). For almost a year my life consisted of eat, sleep, work and Delphi. Ma femme was not pleased with that lifestyle choice. However, this was just at the beginning of the growth of the Internet. Delphi was slow at adapting to this new technology, and suddenly found itself left in a swirling backwater. The Delphi communities began to dissolve as their members stuck their cyber-toes into the rushing stream of the Internet and were sucked into the flood and swept away. That happened to me in about '94; I joined the Internet via Netcom, and never looked back.

Since then I have been a member of various communities online. Three or four years after bailing from Delphi, it showed up back on the 'Net--or, rather, to be perfectly correct, the Web--with communities quasi intact. My well loved WCF had pretty much disappeared. Oh, Gunter was still keeping it open (still is as of my most recent pass through Delphi), but it really wasn't the same. Louellyn, Meadowlark, Dennnis and a couple others had moved on. So, I found a couple new communities to join. One of them, run by a guy in Mississippi, threatened to eat up a lot of my time for about a year. But other things happened in my life to counter that pull, so I sorta drifted into a lurking presence in a couple places. And that was that until this thing called Blogging turned up on my radar.

Now, Blogging is interesting. It is not so much about community as it is about expressing yourself. Sure, some blogs begin to build a following, but even then the interaction is more between the blogger and his/her individual readers than it is about community. And yet it is a very seductive medium. Over to the left of your screen is a growing list of blogs that I read, or have read, or...or...Anyhow, each of these give you a window into the life or thoughts of another person. Sometimes that window distorts what that person is like and sometimes not. Whether what you see is true or not is not the issue, though. What is the issue is that what you see is, to you, interesting in some way. So, you read them and you write to your own Blog. All of this is good and managable until..

...Until along comes syndication. Now, whereas once upon a time you had to manage a portfolio of links which you only added to slowly, this new thing called Syndication allows one to automatically be notified each time a blogger updates his/her site. This means I don't have to do anything but scroll down a list and click. Some sites give me the whole post and some just publish the first 250 characters or so. The thing is between now posting to at least two active blogs with another two inactive but with plans waiting in the wings, Blogging has suddenly started chewing up a big chunk of my time. If I'm not careful, my ass will grow roots into my desk chair...which reminds me...I've had this chair for a long time: It's time to look for a new one. I want a leather "executive" high-back chair with cushioned armrests. Yep...that what I want...oops, slight digression there...where was I? Oh yeah, growing roots. Like today; I've been at the computer now for close to 3 hours doing nothing but blog stuff. And I'll be here for another couple hours 'cause I'm not even close to finishing what I want to accomplish. *sigh*

Danger, Will Robinson...Danger!!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005