Bout to turn 4

It’s hard to imagine that I’ve placed 4 years of my life on the internet, I wonder how many words that is (the old blogger tracked how many words you wrote, the only problem I have with the new one). Not many bloggers, let alone milbloggers have continued on so long, my secret? I wrote when I felt like it. I have more sites up then most but a majority of the info cross pollinates, they’re just reaching different audiences. I’m like the cable company that offers cable, phone and internet, I have a monopoly on the Doc in the Box corner of cyberspace.

It all started out with my fotopage way back in the dark ages of 2003, I was taking pictures of my Marines going through training and hit a lazy spurt and got tired of making hundreds of copies of the pictures I took every week so I began posting them online for them to get when they wanted to. Lately, I haven’t posted there as much considering I’ve killed 5 cameras over since 2003, one of the cameras was a 1000 dollar model (I could get a laptop that’s 3 times as fast as my current one for that!) I’ll get back in the photo groove once I get a new (good) camera and maybe clear the 9000 picture mark.

Eventually I went to check out what this Myspace was about and copied some of my information from the blog over there and found a new audience of people that I actually knew (most of my analog friends aren’t blog readers unless the blog is on myspace). There isn’t a month that goes by when I don’t get someone from my dark and shadowy past shows up and we connect again. They have great tools for keeping you up to date on people in your immediate circle and I enjoy the heck out of it. Laugh all you want non myspace users, it’s pretty cool, yup, another internet addiction.

One day I discovered YouTube and suddenly had a place to upload the numerous videos I put together over the years. Marine Vs Camel Spider has received more hits then everything else I have put on the internet, 500 thousand plus and the comment section has taken on a life of it’s own. Even with all of the attention, it’s just a side effort when I have time, a place to put the funny little bits about my life here and there.

But all of my online efforts circle around the Doc in the Box. Here I have laid out the mundane, the funny, the boredom and definitely over the last year the pain for the entire world to see. I’ve made lifelong friends that I’ve almost known since day one and this blog has literally taken me around the world. I’ve gone to meet ups everyplace that I’ve gone, from home in Prescott to the other side of the word in Iraq, Kuwait and Thailand.

Occasionally I get offers for people to host this and move over to another service but why would I need to? (thanks for the offers though) The machine isn’t broken and does everything that I’ve ever asked it to, I’ve had maybe a week out of 4 years of blogging of down time. I’ve grown up here and I can’t really imagine moving to different digs with other rules and having to tell all of the people that link me to change their addresses would take forever, sounds like taxes with a pen and paper. Plus its totally free, out of all of my internet ventures the only thing I pay for is the premium haloscan. This place fits me like a favorite pair of jeans.

I’m sure there are people out there who wished they were getting a more impressive product in this milblog but face it, I’m a low pressure dude and most of my military job involves the murder of trees, sticking unwilling Marines with needles and sometimes the pulling of some diabolical prank. Not the stuff great epics are made of unless you wanted a blog version of MASH.

Thanks for support over the last 4 past years (in two weeks anyway) and here’s to the next 4 years.