My oh time files! Wait I said that already!!

I've been at JU since June 2004 - 3 years! I discovered Joe while trying to find an outlet for personal reasons, my mom was ill. I was so green at blogging and my readership was nil...wait, at least two people!!

Who knew I would ever get to the Top 10 Site list not to mention the Top Ten Users! I've had the same job and lived at two addresses since being a member of JU. My kids have practically grown up here, me talking about them that is! My son was 9, my daughter (the first one) was 14 and my bay was 2 when I started! (I started before their birthdays that Year so...) Now they are 13, 18 and 6 - wow! I'm still married to the same person.

I've gotten more outspoken, and enjoy sharing my thoughts and opinions and varied interests with JU! Oh yeah, we have fishes now and new plants that haven't died!!

The big Plus is I can now count over thirty people who have become special acquaintances and friends, I would never have guessed that I would have on-line friends who I have never met! If I ever win the lotto (if I remember to play at all!!) the first thing I would do is have a JU celebration at Disney - all expenses paid!!

I blogged about this recently, so I won't rehash that, but I only found JoeUser because I remembered it being Brad's personal blogsite and I came back to read what he had to say, and found all these people on here... At least he was still around! And the other guys are all right, too.

Actually, I kind of wondered if I had just made up all the Brad's personal blog stuff. Glad to know my memory isn't shot.

I came to JoeUser merely by accident and ended up staying. That was in October 2004. I was looking for another blog site I'd read about but couldn't remember the name. I googled 'blog' and JoeUser was one of the entries returned in response. At the same time as I joined JoeUser, I joined an Australian site simply called Blogs. But after reading a lot of the material on JoeUser and seeing there were people blogging from around the world, I don't think I have been back to Blogs since.

I found JU on Valentine's Day of 2004.  I was looking for a blog site to document my knitting, and came across JU.  The format was attractive and easy to use, and I liked the people here, so I started a blog and the rest, as they say, is history.

JU has seen me through one year long remote tour, deployments, house moves, surgeries, deaths, knitting, finding my birth mother and figuring out that I don't want anything to do with her, seeing my big brother and my mum for the first time in over a decade, heartaches, happiness, a Presidential election, jobs, finally figuring out what I'm good at and being given the opportunity to do it, knitting, yarn, more knitting, kittens and puppies and too many other things to mention.

It's been good here.  I've made some really good friends - it sounds strange (almost crazy, really), saying that I love people that I've never physically met, but it's true.  I DO love everyone I've become friends with here - some more than others, but I do love all of them. 

I've been here for amost 4 years.  Wow.  That's unreal, isn't it?

Luck, I suppose. Unfortunately I think my battlecat is still in the mail...poor kitty.

~Zoo

Once I subscribed to Wincustomize, I noticed that there was a link to set up a site here.  I had started a Blogger blog, but was pretty much bored by the lack of any interaction.  The crap I wrote just sat there, doing nothing.

Started blogging here the beginning of February, 2004 and have been going ever since.  I have waxed and waned in my participation (currently wanning), but have enjoyed my time here. 

Blog for me created: 11/18/2004 

Prior to that, I had been a participant in the forums for The Political Machine.  From participating there, I wound up finding JU and eventually started blogging fairly regularly there.

After I was done with the mine and actually found myself with some "free time", I wanted to start blogging to archive my writing online. I originally planned to blog primarily on religion, but I found little to no readership for those articles.

In that space of time, we've travelled from NV to Texas. I returned to school, have nearly completed my Associate Degree, I ran for State Representative, gaining 15% of the vote as a complete unknown with no money or name recognition, and have become a somewhat notorious activist in my region.

We've had two kids in that span of time, and I have gone from a plumber (the job I held when I started here) to a paper carrier to a support technician and head of PC Repair for a local ISP.

I was an OS/2 user back in the 1990s and knew Brad (Draginol) from the OS/2 newsgroups. We also had a common friend , in fact we probably still do.

I moved to Ireland from Germany in 1998 and stopped reading news for a while. At the same time almost everyone moved from Usenet to Web forums. I returned to Germany to study (but later studied in Ireland afterall) and that's when the blog scene started. I read the odd article on JoeUser when it was Brad's personal blog. I think he was mostly talking about his basement.

I stopped using OS/2 a year after Brad, used BeOS for half a year, then Linux for a year (on Macintosh hardware), then finally Mac OS X.

It was shortly after JoeUser became this big site for everyone that Brad replied to one of my emails asking me why I hadn't joined JoeUser. And join I did.

Compared to others here I write very little. And occasionally I don't comment for a long time, several months or a year even.

I moved back to Ireland and revided my personal blog. and have since used my JoeUser blog only for more or less non-personal only for postings that warrant commentary. "I bought new shoes yesterday." does not warrant commentary ("I disagree! You DIDN'T buy shoes! You are a liar!").

I only recently (2 weeks ago?) discovered that I am at an "Elite" level. I found that most funny since I wrote maybe a tenth of the articles of others at the level.

My first blog post is from 2/20/2004 titled G-d, the world, and other creations.

That's it I suppose. That is my story in a nutshell, and the shell fits.

I joined Dec. 1 2004. One of my students was showing me her blog. It was a really cool blog with lots of pictures and funky backgrounds and stuff she drew. Talented girl (incidentally, she was also ranked #3 cosplay dresser in Tokyo in a magazine dedicated to that stuff). He blog was in Thai (she is Thai) and in Japanese.

I said, "Hey, I want to do that, too!" She said to google some free blog sites and I found a couple and I liked JU the best. This might have been because it was the easiest to figure out.

I now have two other blogs. One is for my clay character (www.estelloproject.blogspot.com) and the other is about writing and photography.

I wanted to blog because my family wanted to know what living in Tokyo was like so I thought I would keep a blog about adventures in Tokyo. This ended up being problematic for two reasons: I don't live an adventurous life; my folks can't really be bothered to click on the blog site. It ends up being one more chore for them. I guess I need to be a better writer or start being more adventurous.

Maybe I should change my blog title to: "Procastinatrix; blog of a Tokyo Stripper."

Hmmm... Yeah, right. I think I would be scared to see who would pay me money to strip. Yikers.

I haven't posted much recently. At one point, I felt I was spending too much time on JU, and lately, it's because I figure if I have time to write, I should be writing my book.

I like the community here so that's why I keep coming back.

in hindsight it's actually quite funny... not the fact that people got hurt, but the fact that people took it so seriously... then again, my warped sense of humour is well documented, and I find many things that I probably shouldn't hilarious...

not to turn this into a love up or anything, but there is a definite sense of community here, and it is stronger for occurances like the moron wars...

Hah! Really? Always wondered what happened to him.

~Zoo

I started my account in December 2005, after having followed my brother, BlueDev's blog for quite some time. I've been here almost two years now. Crazy . . . but I've loved (most) every minute of it. The fights have been long, the recriminations bitter, but the friendships strong and ultimately worthwhile.

So, yeah. That's me.