Subj : Happy Anniversary to me
To   : All
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Mon Apr 15 2024 07:18:00

I realized that my blog and domain (kataan.org) are 25 years old today!
I started a project to move the older items from a text archive
(downloaded from blogger, remember them?) into my Wordpress database.
I hadn't realized that with blogger, I used it like Twitter as a
microblog - there are some days where I posted multiple times a day, on
different trains of thought.

I'm always cognizant of how long the BBS has been in operation, this was
the first time I thought about being on the web.

1999 was a crazy time. I was working in the middle of the first dot-com
boom, right in the center of it all. I quit my job at a gaming company
for a jump in responsibility and a share of a streaming music startup
right in the middle of the Napster mess. I was in the meeting on
business deals where we danced around money, because no one was sure who
should be paying whom. Do we pay for exposure, or do they pay for
content?

There were 3 search engine companies within a couple of blocks of me.
Hotwired became the cool new site. Friends at web companies were charging
clients like they were attorneys, getting them a presence on that web
thing that they didn't understand.

South Park, a little green oasis in the SOMA area of San Francisco
became the center of "Multimedia Gulch". Companies that had been focused
on CD multimedia moved to web design and creative services.

It all went a little too far. fuckedcompany.com documented some of the
excesses, like flake.com, a portal for breakfast cereal lovers, and a
company down the street that had their coming out party on a Tuesday and
closed the doors on a Thursday.

[oh, the parties - it seemed like someone was getting a round of funding
and throwing a party in their converted warehouse/sweatshop space. One
of the guys at my startup hosted an email list with all of the "private"
parties going on almost nightly in SOMA. The recyclers in the area had a
field day with collecting empty beer cans and bottles...]

By mid 2001, the money had started drying up, Aeron chairs and office
furniture were available at bargain prices from closed-door dot-coms.
9/11 ended the boom once and for all.

A friend of mine, a San Francisco native, went through his address list
in 2002 and realized that two thirds of his contacts had left the city
as quickly as they'd come a few years back.

But, it was a good time while it lasted.



.... Don't give Chad a big neural network
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