foran_object

Justin Hall and a brief history of my time

In early to mid 90’s my primary interest was audio and building and tinkering with audio things. I hated the crap information that was in the magazines and I thirsted for real technical information.

The original reason I got online, sometime around ’94 was to access the BBS of the audio company Madisound, who had a great (for the time) collection of information, programs and spreadsheets for designing speakers and other audio equipment. Some of the stuff were downloads, so I made the investment is a U.S. Robotics 14.4 modem. 350 some odd $. At this time BBS’s were the thing, I hadn’t even heard of the Internet.

A while later, I tried out some of the online services that widely offered free trials: AOL, Compuserve and the like. They were OK, but nobody told me that my parents would get billed for the call to their site. The trial service was free, calling the number was not.

A while later I got onto the Internet. My first site visits were audio related, but I quickly started exploring other things. One of the first sites I went to regularly was links dot net, the online-log of Justin Hall. Justin’s web site was a “blog”, at least decade before I ever heard the term. His content was raw and unique, documenting his experiences with drugs, sex, traveling, meeting people, computer stuff, etc. Over the last 13 years I’ve visited Justin’s site regularly and am always envious. Justin is a guy who lives life, and shared his experience. In 1998, I started my own site, and shut it down because I was unhappy with the number of “hits” it got and how boring I’m sure it was. Justin’s site was my model, but if I couldn’t tell his kind of stories, what was the point?

A few months ago was the last time I visited links.net, and I was sad to find that it didn’t seem to be there. I wondered if the rise in popularity of blogging turned him off. This article tells the real story:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/20/MNGBKBEJO01.DTL

I am now happy to say though, that

www.links.net

has returned, albeit in a new condensed form without the good stuff of yore, but I don’t care, I’ve already read it.

The rest of the roof put up by the pro's:

Big thanks to John Schryver of 3F construction, and his crew. They did an awesome job on my roof, even making up for most of my mistakes in misalligning the rafters and not squaring the roof well framing well.

Fell off the ladder:


Visit to the hospital, diagnosis: concussion. Painful bruised and bleeding shin.

/dev/null thinks my injury ironic based on my fearless picture standing on the roof (below)