Where do I start?

I used to think that people with personal blogs fancied themselves a little too much to believe that the rest of the Internet world actually cared what they have to say.  I guess my view has changed somewhat over the past couple of years as it has become a simple thing to sign up for blogger/blogspot accounts and as I've watched friends and family spill their guts for the civilized world to see.  I kind of see it now as a way of writing and publishing your own autobiography as you're living life.  We all know we should be recording our deepest thoughts and passions in a personal journal, but since none of us remember how to write on paper anymore, why not do it on the computer and why not put it out there where family, friends and wierdo stalker people can enjoy it as well.

Now, just for the record, I actually had a blog set up about 5 years ago, but, as I said, I didn't really see any point in posting my own personal rants, so I used it as a family message board for a year or so and then converted it into my full-blown family forum and meeting place that now exists.  But I've had a few things happen lately that made me realize that 1) as a professional web developer, I should have some sort of web presence and 2) I actually love to write and might as well create an outlet for that urge and 3) I don't see my siblings/parents/aunts/uncles/friends as much as I'd like and it wouldn't hurt to give them all a little news about me and my family every now and then.

And so begins the personal blog of me.

Now, a few notes about the blog itself.  It's based on a great piece of open-source blogging software called BlogCFC written by a great guy and hard-core geek named Ray Camden. (UPDATE: I'm no longer using BlogCFC, but Ray is still a great guy.)  Next, the images in the page header are all images taken by me that represent some place or moment in my life that has significant meaning to me.  They're not all great pictures and a real photographer could have done so much more with these moments, but I don't really care.  These are the bits of my life that I always want to remember, and what better way to remember than to have them at the top of my personal homepage.  Now I say images (plural) because I've actually programmed this page to pull one of 10 or so random images each time you come to the page.  In fact, if you refresh the page right now, you'll most likely see a different image.  I plan to keep adding to the collection of images that are used in the header as I capture new moments.  Also, I was going to give credit for the title of this website, "A Good Life...all in all", but first I'm going to see if anybody besides my wife knows where it comes from.  Those who know me well should be able to come up with the source without too much trouble.

So anyway, I hope that this site will be of interest to a few people out there in interweb land.  But if not, that's ok.  It's really more for me than anything, so that I can liberate some of the thoughts and feelings that come to me which normally stay all cooped up inside my head or which my patient wife has to sit and listen to while she tries to get things done.  I'm sure I'll cover wide-ranging topics, but for now, I've created the following as my list of entry categories: General Musing, Family, Music, Soapbox, and Tech.  We'll see how far that gets me.