Screaming into the void would have been a much better seo title choice but based on my internet choices and page views over the last 30 years I’ve never been doing this for the views.
So what am I doing here?
Well, I had two domains from 2005 to 2008 where I posted pretty steadily. The two domains overlapped, but I don’t exactly remember when. Then I had a hosted site on an old ISP in the late 90s that had some stuff. Then I had two blogs: one was mine from 2013 to 2023, and one was about my husband from 2016 to 2023. I believe his had zero views. He didn’t even know it existed.
So I’ve had the idea to put all this together for a while, and now I sat down and did it. I’ve had some bumps with some other hosting services where I tried to do this a couple of times over the last couple of years without success. I have this current hosting plan for four years and I’m hoping to get this well enough put together to decide what I want to do with it… to decide if it is a worthwhile project to continue to pursue or if I let it die into the ether again.
After Montey died I sold the house and moved. And moved again. But, through both moves, I kept every last CD and diskette labeled “data” or “backup.” I have CDs with the original copy of my ftp directories. Not all, but enough years and media to fill in a lot of the gaps from what I’ve also backed up from the wayback machine.
Eventually there should be some navigational menus to take you back into hand-coded html and some early WYSIWYG website editor output.
The recreation will be two-parted. Where I can identify a “blog post” – some sort of dated writings – I’ll be putting them in here and published as of that date, to give the most well-rounded trip down my memory lane. Including the pictures as identified in those early posts wherever possible. Everything started in 1997 with hand typed html in notepad where backups were never automated, and vital, so a lot of the pictures exist in my backups with their original names.
The post part? They’ll be findable on here by their categories – I expect that to be the first data to be recreated.
twilight – garden of heather – one crafty bitch – my random kind of life – what’s up with m – starting over – various writing sources
And the sites themselves, where able, will be recreated. I haven’t decided on the exact how of that yet – let’s just start with all my years of typing into the void.
First site, was hosted on dp.net which was my ISP. My username was twilight. NOT named after the vampire/werewolf twilight of the late 2000s, but rather from a V.C. Andrew’s book of 1992 – book three of the Cutler series – Twilight’s Child… the internet was new, I needed a username in 1995 for my ISP, and the bookshelf with the paperbacks was to the right of the computer desk
This picture’s data says December 26, 1997 – the computer is the Compaq which came after the Gateway 2000. Montey made us buy additional RAM for it, I believe we paid over $250 for 8MB. That was the last desktop we ever bought pre-built.
Day before. Merry Christmas. This site is 1997 – 2004
The next two sites were One Crafty Bitch and Garden of Heather – One Crafty Bitch came first and then I was hesitant about using a domain name with the word bitch in it because I was getting my teaching license in 2007 and the state of PA has some draconian laws that can be used to remove a teaching license for anything any thing that offends a close-minded ass-hat. Hence Garden of Heather. Sweet and flowery – no bitches here.
Sadly, I let One Crafty Bitch expire and, being the awesome domain name it is, it’s gone. Garden of Heather “exists” for someone but they have nothing there. Oh well. Lesson learned. These sites run 2005 – 2008
Then, the WordPress sites, they are here in their entirety already as they were the easiest to export/import and boom, done. My Random Kind of Life which spans from 2013 – 2023. And then What’s Up With M? spans 2016 – 2023. I started that when he was diagnosed as my way to document the journey – it’s not very emotional, it just is. That’s part of why I never shared it with him – it wasn’t loving wife, it was caregiver.
Along this recreation journey, if I find unpublished posts, random emails, etc. that I can identify a date? They’ll become Various Writing Sources.
And what is now? Well, I’m Starting Over.