Yesterday, I found out that November is NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, which encourages all bloggers to post at least once per day throughout the month. There is a little contest being held here to encourage people to participate. I sent off my entry yesterday at about 9:30 PM, so due to time zones, I may or may not have been entered in the drawing. If so, great, but if not, that's also fine. It won't stop me from playing along at home, so to speak. I'm doing this for the best reason possible... because I can.

Many people don't realize that there were online communities before the rise of the Web. Indeed, there were the walled gardens, such as CompuServe, AOL, and The Source, but there were also Usenet, FidoNnet, WWIVNet, UUCP networks, and of course thousands of free-standing BBS systems . These were computers sitting idle, just waiting for someone, anyone, to RING and CONNECT 2400 (or 1200, or for unlucky people like me, 300.)

Once a month, BBS users in my general geographical area would converge on a particular pizza restaurant and hold a meeting of MORE, the Modem Operators of the Redwood Empire. It was a chance to introduce oneself to the "modeming" community and attach faces to the names that one may have engaged in thoughtful discussion and/or flame wars. In fact, it was through MORE that I made some of my oldest friends, some of which I keep in contact with to this day.

Back then, I went by the rather bizarre handle of Robomobozobodobot, which nobody else could be bothered to pronounce, let alone spell, but at least it was recognizable. Where, you may ask, did I come up with such a ridiculous name? Good question. My thought was since it seems like everything was robo- this, and -bot that, (which goes to show how long ago this train of thought occurred) just throw in the kitchen sink and go for the totally ludicrous jumble of syllables.

Funnily enough, this was long before anyone I knew had ever heard a motherboard called a mobo, and I've just been informed that Zobodo is a place in Haiti. So it would seem, that one could retcon the word robomobozobodobot to mean "robotic motherboard from the robot from Zobodo." But I would strongly discourage anyone from doing this. The magic, you see, lay in not knowing exactly what a Robomobozobodobot is, or does, or where it comes from, or what it will do next.

My point, and I do have one, arrogant though it may sound, is that I feel as though one post per day should not be a big deal. The only difference is that here, unlike bulletin boards, fora, and e-mails, there's nobody to directly react to except for myself. And that is the challenge.