fine whine

It is not without a little sadness that I report that my original web presence, the "Page of Original Content" has disappeared from the web. ACORN has taken down its personal accounts server and with it my pages from the mid to late 1990s. Somehow I never got around to archiving them, and unfortunately neither did Google or the Internet Archive. So, barring some other massive cache of bits and bytes appearing, it would seem that what was there is lost forever. It almost brings a tear to my eye.

Except that it isn't really gone, per se. All of the content that mattered (that is, the stupid jokes and bad poems) has long since been assimilated into this very site, and all that is really gone is the address and the original layout, complete with its hand-drawn two color background image. So why cry? I no longer have my bragging rights. I cannot say, "Look, I was here; I did this." and moreover I cannot show anybody how I once had a horrible eye for layout just like the rest of the early webmasters. Really, it was awful. I even had the little icons of the Netscape and Microsoft banner boxing with (gasp!) an animated gif.

What it really means, though, is that I have failed in my quest to archive everything digital I have ever done. My packratting instincts have failed me, and I won't have those pages to kick around any more. After all, I have a copy of every single image that has graced my desktops at home and at work (I think) as well as ever paper I've ever typed (including those done in DOS Q&A) and so on and so forth. If it were anybody else's work, it'd be an obsession, but somehow being only mine it just seems a shame. I miss my page.

I think there might even have been an "under construction" image there too.

Now that you have all commiserated with me, go out and find what "Free Steve Chung" means. Now, and stop that damn sniffling.