Greetings, folks — I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome you all to the Oddball Update. I can see your faces now, scrunched up in utter bewilderment at the name I have chosen for this weblog. Well, suffice it to say, it’s a joke of the very, very inside nature, which I don’t expect a single one of you to understand — well, perhaps one or two of you, but that’s about all. In an attempt to allieviate at least some of the confusion, I present this Miniature History of Oddball™.
The original Oddball Update started on March 20th, 1994, at 3:24 am EST. How the hell can I be so specific? Perhaps because I actually time-stamped my first entry into the journal which I called “the Oddball Update”, written in the “Write” word processor accessory that shipped with Windows 3.1, on that date so many years ago. Why the name “Oddball Update?” Because my entire decision to keep a journal was a result of a collection of rambling thoughts which, I was certain, any normal human being would consider quite odd. Essentially considering myself an oddball, but reveling in it, I started the Oddball Update — and kept it updated for the next seven years.
Over that time I eventually traded in Write for Wordpad, and then Wordpad for the full version of Word. But the original format of the Oddball Update remained the same: A huge frickin’ document, sometimes exceeding 70-80 pages, full of random garbage that was not in any way organized save for the start- and end-date and time stamps around each entry. The original Oddball Updates chronicle some of the most interesting and tumultuous times in my life, including several ominous and foreboding entries that accurately foretold of impeding crises.
After going on “oddball hiatus” for the entirety of 2002, in March of 2003 I took the initiative to finally convert the kludgy old Word documents into a web-based storage system. Using MySQL and a weblog system known as Movable Type, I set up a local database on my home computer and painstakingly entered each and every one of the past seven years’ worth of Oddball entries into the system by hand. I still maintain that local copy, to which I post things when the mood strikes.
Back to the present day. While all of this had been going on, I’d been keeping another weblog on a live web domain, to which I would routinely post rants, display game reviews, and yak about the automotive world which I have always been a part of. But since I had previously used that domain for a variety of other activities which I no longer wished to be associated with — not to mention that the domain itself was my actual name — I decided to register a new domain at which I could keep a somewhat less “censored” weblog of thoughts. The only difficulty was deciding on a name to register.
After considering and rejecting a bevy of mostly random, largely showy domain names, I decided to look back at my past and, finally, draw the natural conclusion — that OddballUpdate.com would be the perfect domain name at which to keep an ongoing public journal of oddities in my life. I’d noticed a whole slew of largely anonymous people getting into the weblog game, to the point where this entire group of people had their own nickname — the blogosphere.
As someone who has always been interested in creative writing and publishing, I asked myself why I was not yet a part of this group. I realized that it was probably because I used to have a good friend who shunned the concept of a “personal website” as a waste of space, an utterly pointless exercise. Strangely — and perhaps ironically — this person was an artist. I always thought that was a strange perspective for someone who claimed to be such an elite artsy-fartsy type. What kind of artist looks at a product of artistic expression — like the writings on a personal weblog — and says its useless because it serves no pragmatic purpose? An artist who’s kidding himself, I think. Or full of himself, maybe.
Deciding to cast that weight from my conscience, I registered OddballUpdate.com and began working on a design. Now you all find yourselves reading the first post. I’ve since moved away from Movable Type in favor of a PHP-driven weblog system known as pMachine. It lacks certain usability and customization features that Movable Type had, but I’m going to stick with it for a while and see what I think. Basically I got tired of the Perl engine MT used. I am not a fan of Perl at all.
So who am I? Around here, you’ll know me as Blazkowicz. Slayer of Nazis, perhaps? Or grandfather of Commander Keen? Not really, but my namesake is the star of the classic PC game Wolfenstein 3-D, ever one of my favorite titles. It was for this reason that I originally used the “Blazkowicz” moniker when writing the original Oddball Updates, so it seemed appropriate to continue that tradition as well. Especially since I prefer to retain some amount of anonymity around here.
Lastly, you all may be wondering what you can expect me to post at the Oddball Update. The answer to that is simple: Anything and everything. I’ll continue to gab about cars, discuss the latest PC games, rant about shit that pisses me off, and post up completely random thoughts. I’ve also opened a topic for Critiques in which I’ll post reviews of games, software, movies, TV shows, or whatever else I’m into at the moment. No holds will be barred, and no four-letter-words will be filtered. If you get my drift.
What can you expect not to see me talk about here? My cat, for one thing. Because I don’t have a cat, and I never will. You will also not see me talking about my Macintosh computer. Because I don’t have one of those either, nor do I have any real desire to own one. I thought it noteworthy to mention these two things, because they are the topics about which you undoubtedly will see the most written if you happen to browse other sites in the blogosphere. Seems like every blogger is a cat owner and a Mac lover…or is that a cat lover and a Mac owner? Regardless, I’m more allergic to cats than I am anything else, and the only Apple Computer equipment I own is an iPod. You’ll see no toeing of the party line on this blog. We’re x86, American V8, social conservatives all the way.
Over time, I plan to add additional goofy features to the Oddball Update — you know, the kind of stuff that really serves no purpose except to say “Look at this funky thing I figured out how to do.” Like random photos, lists of crap I want to buy, and perhaps even the ubiquitous PayPal/Amazon donation button for anyone who wants to be a dear and fund my ludicrously expensive hobbies. Woo! Electronic panhandling!
With that, I’d like to thank you (whoever you are) for coming by. For my friends and relatives who formerly witnessed my rambling dross on another web domain, I hope I continue to entertain you on this one. Please note that in order to post comments on any entries here, you’ll need to register for a free Oddball Update membership. No purchase necessary.
Till next time.
