August 21, 2009

• Original AllThingsMike Site Disappears

  I think it was this past Wednesday when Homestead.com pulled the plug on my original website.

  Over the past month or so, I've saved the source code for a few of the pages, and actually recreated some of the "important" pages in my Dreamweaver program, for eventual repositioning on www.allthingsmike.com.

  Last weekend, I was maneuvering around the old website for the last time, and when I got to the "Virtual Pantherama", a failed attempt from back in 2000 to create a "social network" on the internet for alumni of the high school I attended in the late 60s-early 70s, I began to develop a lump in my throat, and became sort of sad.

  I saved the main page, but just didn't have the time to recreate the whole site, which contained "start pages" for each of the graduating years 1963-1974. The intent was to establish a "community" (much like Xanga or MySpace or Facebook) of alumni from the school. The site comes up as the 7th listing on Google for a "Rosemead High School" search. (even though as of last week it no longer exists!) Back at the turn of the century (It's somewhat difficult to realize that was almost a complete decade ago!) I joined Classmates.com, an alumni website which is still quite popular. In the "early days" of the internet (the internet had actually been around a while, but was only really getting popular in the late 90s-early aughts) everything was free. When Classmates.com began charging membership, I created the "Virtual Pantherama" (Rosemead's mascot is the panther, and the yearbook is called the Pantherama) online using the Homestead service, which had a "community" feature allowing members of any given site to edit their own pages. Heady stuff for 2000.

  I was able to attract a grand total of three editors, for 1970, 1973, and 1974, but they couldn't attract too much interest. The guy who helped me set up the site by supplying a lot of the photos which graced the pages (designed to look like the old yearbook pages) was Henry Sakaida, a graduate of the class before me, in 1970. He once told me not to be too discouraged. "In high school, you might remember there were only a few of us who were really active, and it's the same in "real life". " I created a Yahoo Group for the site, and waited for an exodus from Classmates.com. After a year of actively promoting the site, I sort of gave up. We never did get lots of photos sent in from other alumni, as was my plan. However, the guestbook on the main page always got lots of entries, from graduates as far back as 1963.

  The Yahoo group was still getting members, but since I stopped moderating it years ago, it turned into a spam collector, and I disabled it last week as well.

  It doesn't bother me too much that the original ElectricPoetry site is now gone, because I transferred it to www.allthingsmike.com in 2001 with a much better navigation system and display of the poems. I have lost my 9/11 tribute page, and didn't save it or it's guestbook, but that's okay. I have three 9/11 tribute pages on this blog. (which still generate lots of hits.) 

  The essays written for failed sites like ComputerBS have been replicated on this blog and elsewhere on www.allthingsmike.com. Other essays don't really matter to me, because reading through some of my website, I do notice I've repeated my themes and intents dozens of times, as the site progressed.

  Because it's the 10th anniversary online, this was the year I was to completely go through my ten year old website and make some updates I'd been promising for years. That didn't happen. (It might yet, the year isn't over.) "Real life" got in the way. Although now I'm pretty much completely healed from the operation (I'm beginning my "power walks" with my cane, and I should be told by my doctor on Tuesday that I don't have to use it anymore) and I'm managing my finances better, so should be able to get out and take some more pictures on "photo expeditions" soon. Heck, I haven't even been blogging too much, and am frankly amazed that I still manage to get at least a dozen comments on my sporadic entries, which seem to be appearing every two weeks now. That's only twice a month.

  I think that my "online life" is perhaps making a change. I moved this year, after 14 years in the same place. Because I live in a "mobile home community" (As the photos in my last photopost proved, it's much more than a "trailer park") I am becoming a part of that community. Over this past summer, while recuperating from my operation, I've been hanging out poolside, and I've made lots of new acquaintences, and perhaps a couple of real friends. Even though I'm single, money matters are keeping me from doing a lot of the things I like to do, but I've really been enjoying my "movie screen sized" HDTV and I've always got dozens of programs lined up on my DirecTV and Netflix queues, so I'm never bored.

  I don't think I'll ever "go away" or "disappear". I'm a "lifetime" member of Xanga, and I still get a twinge of an "incomplete" feeling if I'm not posting. That's what has generated this post. Once I begin typing, I can't seem to stop, but I really don't have much to say, and as I've mentioned in a few recent blogs, I'm just not feeling that "creative." When one's blog and website is one's creative outlet, and that creativity is being supplanted by something else,  that outlet tends to stagnate a bit.

  I guess I'm delighted that I'm making changes in my life, but sort of discouraged that I can't seem to find the time for this blog that I used to. Many thanks to those 15-20 loyal readers who do seem to immediately stop by when you see a new sporadic post. I know a lot of foks do care about the fates of their fellow Xangans, and are always flummoxed when one "disappears". I think I'm repeating myself again when I say I won't disappear, and I won't whine too much about "readership" and "hits" when I'm sort of absent around here lately anyway.

  The reason I let my Homestead website subscription lapse is because I can use the 99 bucks it costs to renew. I haven't edited any of the pages in years. I'll have to go through the main site and delete all the links which will now send visitors to a 401error page, but I don't feel like doing that right now either.
  As soon as I get off work, I'll be out by the pool, socializing with Jeff, Mary, Jim, the other Jim, and Jerry, and perhaps Linda will show up. After a couple of hours, I'll go home and watch my latest Netflix offering in vibrant High Definition. This weekend, I'll cook my own meals, and hang out by the pool again. Gas is up again to almost $3.00 a gallon, so I don't know if I'll be driving anywhere. Since I'm more ambulatory than I have been in almost four years, I do have the itch to go take a photo expedition, and might even drive up the coast to Frisco in the near future, but probably not this weekend.

  On the main page to www.allthingsmike.com I state that I've led a charmed life. This is somewhat an "inside joke". Losing my parents while young. Losing a lot of my friends (including three "best friends") over the course of my life. Never really falling in love. I've always claimed I'm "lonesome" but not "lonely." Using this blog for the last five years as a social outlet has been intriguing and fun. Xanga seems to have changed a bit, but that's because a lot of the folks I knew "way back when" are not actively blogging either.

  Well, at the risk of repeating myself yet again, I'll complete this entry. I really don't know when I'll become an active blogger again. At least I am trying to make sure my few entries are readable. I still consider myself a "writer" first and foremost, and do attempt to "craft" all the entries you read on this blog. So another benchmark has been attained. A few hundred pages of my thousand page website have disappeared. I mourn for them, but I'm not particularly sad. I'm sad that some of the 'great experiments' I've tried online have failed. But I'm happy for the dozens of great friendships I've garnered over the past 10 years online

  Happy/Sad. Good/Bad. Yin/Yang.

  As the prophet Frank Sinatra once sang, "That's Life"

  • 10:09 am
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