On December 18, 2000, this blog was born. The site had a different name and address, and there was really no good blogging software then so I hand-coded it. But that was no big deal because I figured to only post an item or two each week. That plan didn't last long.
Eventually, I converted to this name, this address and this software, after a few years with a different software. As soon as I post this, there will be 26,119 posts up here. If that sounds like a lot, look at it this way: This blog started 6,574 days ago so it's an average of only a little less than four a day.
I have not written them all, at least by myself. A crop of very sharp readers (I like to think…) send in good questions or recommend fine links. So some of you deserve some of the credit.
In that time, I have occasionally thought about blogging less but never for long. I don't think I've ever considered giving it up…or taking advertising or setting up a paywall or anything which might make it more profitable. The Amazon links bring in roughly the amount of money that it costs me to have this thing online via a not-cheap hosting company that almost never goes down. Since I moved to them a few years ago, we've averaged about sixteen minutes a year of offline time. My two previous hosting companies were averaging sixteen offline minutes a week and sixteen a day, respectively.
That's about all I have to say here. Thank you for your support and your patronage. And I'm sorry I can't give up all that paying work and just do this for a living. The previous sentence is only about 10% accurate.