Amazingly, it was only a year ago that I started this Weblog, with a posting that said:

“I know, I know, Randy Cassingham has the delightful This Is True, Cecil Adams has the always-entertaining The Straight Dope, and even Chuck Shepherd has News of the Weird, but, darn it, I have a humble but interesting list worth mentioning too: Pearls of the Net. Pearls of the Net grew out of my personal mailing list where I’d forward funny or peculiar news stories to friends and colleagues, and when I broke 100 people on the list, I decided to drop it on Topica so people could manage their own subscriptions. Today membership is around 500 people or so, and I definitely think it’s kind of cool to know that many people are interested in what I find interesting online!”

And now, twelve months and 287 postings later, here I am! And here’s what’s surprised me….

First off, a year ago I didn’t worry about the “wrong” sort of people coming to my weblog and adding inappropriate comments, what I call blogspam. Nowadays it’s a plague, and even my math formula seems to have been defeated as of today: I had a stream of about 25 blogspam postings to my booktalk weblog this morning. Now, unfortunately, I am blocking all postings from two-letter domains (e.g., .cz, .cn) but I really hate doing that. But I hate getting my weblog polluted even more. I suspect in the next month or two I’ll upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type and use the ‘image’ protection scheme, lame though it seems.

A year ago I also wouldn’t have thought I’d have five different weblogs, not just one, but sure enough, I have The Intuitive Life, Booktalk, AP Parenting.com, and two more private weblogs. Sheesh!

The third thing I didn’t think would be the case a year ago is how our privacy continues to erode. Each week we continue with the War on Terrorism, we have another little bit of privacy taken away, and now the local library is petitioning the city council to take a stance against the so-called PATRIOT act to ensure patron privacy at the library.

Finally, a year ago I wouldn’t have thought I was going to be Dad to three kids, but here we are, just a few days away from the birth of our third child. And here I am doing research on vasectomies. Go figure. 🙂

It’s been really fun and interesting getting involved with the blogging community and I thank each and every one of you, dear readers, for being curious about my thoughts and ideas.