«« return to gallery Celebrating 10 years of...well...I'm not entirely sure Since this summer will mark the ten year anniversary of writing my first line of HTML I thought it fitting to wax nostalgic one final (?) time. The passage of time is met differently by everyone and while the accrual of birthdays does little to make me feel my years (even while staring straight down the barrel of the dreaded 3-0, as I am currently doing) this collection of sites always does a good job of making me feel very old. Probably because of how fast time passes online. At any rate, even though I have long since found a new home on the west coast ChristopherL.com remains very much at home in the midwest (both figuratively and literally). I just recently renewed the domain so we will all be able to regularly visit and continue to ask ourselves, as I have regularly over the last five year, why it is that I keep this thing alive. -just Chris now... 06 Feb 2009 I can't believe I just spent 20 minutes moving this thing to a new web host...what a vanity project. - 16 Feb 2010 The "History of ChristopherL.com" (mildly revised in 2009) Where it All Started In the summer of 1999, as a Psychology major, I took an intro to computing class at my university. It was as part of this class that I would create my first homepage. I spent close to forty hours working on an assignment most of my contemporaries spent but a few on. It was only one of over thirty minor homework assignments for the course that semester. Looking back I find it interesting how greatly this seemingly inane college assignment has changed my life. I spent countless hours teaching myself HTML & JavaScript. The late nights, and late coursework, soon began to pile up as I made my way around online tutorials in web development, absorbing as much as my sleep deprived caffeine soaked brain could handle. Sadly the culmination of that work, simplistic as it may have been, is gone forever. Victim of a hard drive format in the days long before my obsessive data backup habits took hold. Shortly after the conclusion of that summer course I approached the instructor for guidance in changing my major from Psychology to Computer Science, I had decided it was so much "fun" I had to do it for a living. He was quite convinced I should stick with Psychology and did his best, in as polite a way as he was capable, to discourage the move. His advice was some of the best I've never taken. That single decision was the most significant turning point in my life. The Birth of ChristopherL.com From Composer (yes, Netscape), to DreamWeaver, to FirstPage, to HomeSite and beyond I slowly improved my arsenal of tools and steadily built up my "website" - because homepage just wasn't a serious enough term for it anymore. About a year into my new major life, the time had come for my baby to graduate from my free student hosting to it's own official "dot com". I registered ChristopherL.com and started the search to find it a home. It was during this search that I met someone to whom I will be eternally indebted. I found speckz.com while searching for cheap web hosting, the website claimed they were willing to host personal websites for free. This was very good news because as a largely broke, continuously underemployed, college student I didn't want to give up lunch money for hosting. Within a few days he had my hosting setup, the DNS changes had propagated and my placeholder page was live waiting for me to upload my site. ChristopherL.com was born. It was beautiful. Not because of any particular talent in my design skills, but because I could say "oh yeah, email me at chris@christopherl.com". I loved that. Not many people on campus had their own .com in 2000, it was a significant braging point. The year that followed was a big one. I published M2 Math Tutor, a small elementary math tutor that grew out of a Visual Basic course assignment, and spend countless hours force feeding my brain new web design and development skills. It was the year that really solidified my desire to make a life out of "that computer stuff" as my parents would come to call it. It was all a result of having my own .com to play with. Thank you, Barnabas. Growing Up Not long after the launch of ChristopherL.com I took my first job related to my now all consuming hobby. I became a member of a two-man lackey team performing tedious HTML work for my university's "webmaster". I had the perfect skill set for the job. I knew more then three html tags, could write them "by hand" and I was willing to work for $5 an hour. I spent a little more then two months in the most cramped office occupied by the least friendly people I've ever had the misfortune of working with. It was a telling glimpse into my future, one I wasn't prepared to dedicate myself to fully just yet. My departure from the University Communications office brought me to the university newspaper, as it's Web Editor. I got to rewrite the entire website and publish weekly articles on it. I still have the desk clock they gave me at the end of the year, it was one of the best jobs I have ever had. A Love Hate Relationship I landed my college internship based almost entirely on the ChristopherL.com site. I would spend the next two years working as a web developer. The future had arrived and for awhile it was like a dream come true. To be paid well to do what I loved, I was very lucky. Then things changed and I stopped loving it. The End of an Era After nearly five years, four at it's own .com, I decided to take the site down. This decision was largely made as a result of finding out that my coworkers, at the 11 person company I worked for, were reading it regularly. This discovery, coupled with the fact that I found out about it out less then a week before I was let go, made the whole endeavor lose it's appeal. I'm pretty sure that the site wasn't the reason why I was replaced with intern labor. I am sure, however, the site was the reason why I felt increasingly ostracized over the last year of my time with them. I didn't fit in with their "corporate culture" and because I was so honest about who I was on my website it ruined my ability to fake it while at work, they knew better. In hindsight I don't really blame them, phony people aggravate me too. Why Bring Them Back? You may be wondering why I would republish a series of sites that are, at best, of laughable quality. Particularly given my current portfolio. Could these sites cause me professional embarrassment? Maybe. If you take five year old stuff I did in college seriously. But why expose a part of my past that couldn't be more inaccurate at representing who I am today? Well...sentimental value. These sites are a catalog of a time in my life that represented a lot of growing up. It was a tumultuous time in my young life, one that I am greatly distanced from now, both personally and professionally. When I found them, on a long forgotten CD, I spent far too many hours reading over their content. While taking my stroll down memory lane it became very clear to me that the one constant, the one thing that really helped me keep my sanity, was working on these sites. This was especially true during the little gap between versions 6 & 7. :) Had I not thrown caution to the wind in the summer of '99, or not stuck it out in the winter of '04, who knows where I'd be now. With that in mind I've published them exactly as they were on that CD. I noticed a lot of stuff I'd like to remove from them, or fix, but I decided for the integrity of what they were to stand I shouldn't edit them, in any way. So with the exception of a few deleted resume's these sites are all exactly as they were on the days I took them down. What Am I Doing Now? Well I guess the answer to that is probably rather obvious (especially if you know how to whois a domain). Fortunately, I've been able to recapture the excitement I got the first time I opened ChristopherL.com in my browser (oh Netscape 4.5, how I loved thee). As a result my love of web development has never been stronger, which makes these sites all the more important to me, shoddy code and all. I have long since abandoned my ChristopherL.com email address, so should you like to get in touch you may do so using this contact form. -Christopher L. November 22nd, 2004 (Revised: 06 February 2009)