First Post

Once upon a time, some years ago, I remarked to a friend of mine that blogging was a sign of mental illness.  While I have not changed my mind on this topic, I have elected to succumb to hypocrisy and engage in this particular mental illness myself.

Hell, why not.  We're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy.  A wise man once said that.

This blog exists to expose the varied and astonishing contents of my mind to the scrutiny of the cold, cold world.  It is also designed to accomplish a small portion of my larger goal of staking claim to my name on the big, bad Intarwebs.  I have elected to do this before somebody else does it for me.  The only thing worse than being unfairly judged on the basis of one's Internet presence is being unfairly judged on the basis of somebody else's Internet presence, or on the lack of an Internet presence to evaluate.

I may update it.  I may not update it.  It exists for my amusement and convenience, and not anybody else's.

My rough envisioning of the layout - which I have little intention of deviating from - is five sections:

1. The Arcanum (ideas, designs, free-ranging novelties; these may be updated from time to time; I will care about comments in this section, please make them useful)
2. Writings (personal observations and creations; I don't care what you think of them, and will not read or answer comments)
3. Tricks (clever ways I have discovered to manipulate technology; comments will be incorporated in post updates if they extend or improve things in some way)
4. Fearpoop (stories of situations going horribly wrong, lifted shamelessly from my experience, others' experience, Internet stories, &c. ALONG WITH tales of how recovery from those situations was achieved; again, this mostly involves computers, and comments are welcome [and may be mined for future posts], again, so long as they are useful) 
5. Miscellaneous (things that do not belong in one of the above categories)

This blog's existence is the extent of my narcissism.  I will not brag.  I will not whine.  I will not post anecdotes of my life, any more than I do anywhere else.  To the extent possible, I will not post opinions; I have done that elsewhere, and while fun, an untrammeled stream of opinion (overt or covert) is the cancer that is killing the Internet.  I will not flame.  (That last is a bit of work for me, it being my natural response; please don't test me, that's not why this is here.)  You will not see pictures of me, my dog, my cousins, the mountains, the last thing I ate, or squirrels with lightsabers.  Everything I post will be either interesting, or useful, or both.  Just the facts, ma'am.