More 'musings' from 'Oldest living blogger'

That 'Oldest Living Blogger' or 'OLB' as I was known, used to be my 'handle' on the original local community blogging website that first got me started blogging. A group of smart young guys here started their own software designing firm years ago, in the early 2,000s, and by the time I got onto computers in 2004, it was a thriving concern. They had been testing some open-source software called 'Drupal' [ https://www.drupal.org/ ] and had created an central community blogging site that anyone could log into, and be assigned your own space on it, with which to rant, or you could also interact with others there through a very active commenting system, where the others in that community could all read and comment on whatever you added. We had lots of fun! And it was great practice for a 'newbie' like me to get his feet wet on the Internet.

My 'Oldest Living Blogger' handle caught the attention of an AP journalist, Carla Johnson, in Chicago, who was at the time researching an article about us old folk and our facility with modern technology, and she'd stumbled across my blog. So she asked to interview me, and I agreed. That got our local community blogging site written up and eventually mentioned in USA Today, and the young guys downtown operating that whole thing got quite excited. Me, not so much. I like to do the writing and let someone else do the reading.

As happens too frequently in the software game, those kids downtown got bought out by others, and those others didn't give a damn about their community blogging site, because it had already served its purpose of proving the system worked, so it withered on the vine rather quickly, and we moved on to other places like Google's 'Blogger' here. Which I wish they'd maintain with more regularity and enthusiasm. Alas, like other software giants, they're now so rich, famous, and diversified, they don't feel a need to nourish some of the roots that got them to where they are today. Too bad. Self-driving cars won't do for them what an active and thriving community of users of their software might.