I’m impressed.

After 200 posts, this site has gone from being just a small pet project to something I look forward to updating daily.  In October of last year j2fi.net started on a small Synology DS-106 NAS device, and was replaced by a proper webserver shortly after Google and Yahoo started hammering that little box like a loan-shark teaching a dead-beat why it’s good to always pay your debts.

At first this was supposed to be just a small site for family and friends to come and check out the image galleries.  While travelling I would put up posts on my events and pictures from the day.  And, of course, when something in the news bugged me I would try and rationalize it in some form here.

That was the idea, anyways.

While much of this is true, I’ve also stretched to discuss things like network storage devices (which seems to be the key draw to this site according to my reference data), SQL Server, space technology and other scientific tidbits, interesting documentaries and just about anything else that tends to make this site appear to have no common theme … something we’re warned about when starting a blog.

Regardless of all the rules and suggestions that I’ve read in the last eight months regarding the do’s and don’ts of blogging, I enjoy the diversity of this site.  From educational discussions to complete rants that often make me appear completely irrational (until someone corrects me), j2fi.net has allowed me to express my tiny voice along with the millions of others that grace the internet.  While I doubt there will ever be any great truth written on here, I hope that some people can find value in what I have to offer on various subjects.

But this is what blogs are really for, right?  It’s our inherent need to communicate with others that drives us to start these pages.  Some people have multiple blogs, each focused on a particular subject.  These people often have a great deal to offer and share, which explains why their net traffic is so incredibly high.  The remaining millions have sites with no particular focus, but instead covers a range of ideas, thoughts, prejudices, insecurities, and everything else that makes us who and what we are.  This is the power that lies within blogs.

For the last decade, I’ve been communicating with people all over the world through IRC.  A text-based real-time chat application that allows users to discuss things in channels, or individually.  What’s great about this is that I’ve learned quite a bit about the world around me.  The people that make up the various nations all around the world.  I’ve learned that people in Germany are no different than in Canada.  People in the middle-east are just the same as you and I.  No matter where we come from, we all have similar fears, needs and desires.

Our blogs are like static pages of who we are at a point in time.  Like the paintings found on cave walls, what we write will be our personal impression on the world.  In a thousand years, our texts will still be found in an archive on some ancient optical disc.  A future generation will look back and identify with what we have to say on some rudimentary level.

We are a social creature with a deep desire to hear and tell stories, be they personal or professional.  So this blog, like the millions of others, is my attempt to tell the world “I am”.