I was inspired to search for my old home pages, but the only one I can remember (dinerwaitress’ guitar tab on geocities) is gone. I do remember learning to hand-code HTML on Angelfire in the mid-90s by changing little sections of the indecipherable text onscreen to see what it did, and the little tiny notebook where I wrote hex color codes, frequently-used tags, and where to find my favorite clip art. And yes, I had an “under construction” sign, although if memory serves me correctly, I actually had rotating barber-striped black and yellow bar gifs.

I remember chatting online with strangers (Keri, if you’re reading this, do you remember SugarMagnolia?) and trying to figure out something about them via their home page. Things really haven’t changed, have they?

Like everything else, this has come back around to my age. I’m coming to terms with the metal bands I grew up with playing on the classic rock stations, but I somehow wasn’t ready for the original, tacky web designs of my youth to come back into vogue. I know now how my mom felt when my classmates were wearing bell bottoms.

In a bigger sense, what does this mean for the technology age gap? If fashion trends resurface every other generation, is the lifespan of the internet generation as short as 5 years?

And what of elements outside of design? What about content? In the old days (when I walked uphill barefoot both ways to a computer with internet access, I know), you typed in a site and surfed the web from there by clicking a link, from there another link, and so on. Surfing gave way to googling, but that trend seems to be reversing also. Blogrolls abound, as do link pages, and a good portion of traffic in the blogosphere is from pingbacks and trackbacks. Once separated by a common search engine, we appear to be coming back together into a tighter-knit web. Even the dreaded web directories appear to be returning, although in a much better form.

We’ll probably never know whether the return to web 1.0 is due to the influx of amateurs on myspace, the overwhelming lack of quality search engine content*, or the nostalgia of a bunch of washed-up 0.1 hackers. I’m fairly certain we’ll be witness to a bunch of office-chair philosophers blogging about it, though.

*Let’s face it, if I want to find a new [insert random string of words here] to read on a regular basis, I’m going to check with sites/blogs I already read to see what they’re reading before I spend the time sifting through search results.

That damn bottle of scotch was my last concrete tie to the person that passed it along, and I can’t say I’m sorry to see it go. I would have dumped it a long ago, but I’m not one to waste alcohol, lest I be suspended in it when I die.

It seems to be the time of year for looking back and letting go — it must be in the stars. One of the dearest people I ever had the honor to know, Chris Trauger, was killed in a head-on collision 6 years ago last week. He was only 27. Chris was one of those people who changed your life in a heartbeat, even though you didn’t know it. It’s taken me a long time to get here, but Chris’ tragic death and his stupid-ass grin are inspirations to me as I work towards a simpler life. Happiness is what really matters, and life’s too short to live otherwise. Thanks, Chris.

My Grammy also left this earth at far too young an age.   I came into the rest of my inheritance last Saturday, and while it amounts to nothing more than a nicotine-stained rocker and a box of corroded costume jewelry, I am reminded of all of the things I learned from her.  She was feisty, bawdy, smart, and opinionated.  She could soothe my grandfather’s temper and hand me a fudgesicle all in one breath.  She walked away from the deli counter to answer my aunt’s questions about lard, and she is single-handledly responsible for my love of cheese.  I may not have appreciated it during her lifetime (I was only 15 when she died), but she had a major impact on the way I see life.  Sometimes, it’s not worth the anger; sometimes, it really is as simple as an iron in the refrigerator.

To all of those we’ve lost to death or other means, to all of those that have shaped our lives, I dedicate this new bottle of Glenfidditch.

Smash.