What Happened to This Website?

I still get pitches for the Backup Blog now and again, and people asking to write guest posts, even though nothing new has appeared on this site since 2011. I thought I should at least clean it up a bit (since that would also give me a chance to see what a Genesis magazine theme would look like on a site that didn’t have featured images), but no, I will not be returning to writing it.

Here’s what happened.

First, by early 2011 my career had moved completely away from providing tech support. I was writing the Backup Blog as a public service, and while it was nice to get some free equipment for review, the blog was not contributing to the growth of my business or the growth of my income. (This is the only site on which I have ever shown ads, and only once since I put it up in 2005 have I received a check from Google for AdSense.)

It just didn’t make business sense to keep going.

Then, in September 2011, I got married.

I don’t know what it’s like to get married if you’re a guy, but if you’re female, getting married means taking on a 20 hour/week unpaid job as a housekeeper, cook, and chauffeur. There was no way I was going to be able to keep this blog up after that.

So it’s not coming back.

I’m sorry to have just let it slide without preparation or explanation. There didn’t seem to be any obvious person to pass it on to. I don’t know that there’s really that much value in leaving the content up here: the general principles I espouse are still valid, but all the hardware and software reviewed herein is painfully obsolete. (The trip down memory lane might be amusing if you’re a geek.) I notice some of the images, or at least the links to them, got mislaid in one or another transfer between web hosts, and I should really fix that. In my copious spare time. With no activity, there hasn’t been much readership. No one has exactly been complaining.

The new design has worked out tolerably well, for something slapped up in an evening. At least there are functioning menus again.

In another year or so, I may retire the content entirely, but it’s really not doing anyone any harm here. It’s part of my history on the Internet. So it will stay, at least for now, even though I’ve moved on.