This is my first post referring back to an article from one year ago. I plan to do this on the days where I have a decent one to refer back to, if you know what I mean.

My first post was my Welcome message. Before I went public with the blog, I did a few things in preparation. One of them was to copy my Google AdSense code into the blog. It was a different theme that I started with and a different format for the code. I had the code on a previous website that I will never mention on this blog.

I believed that any serious website would have their own domain and not be hosted on any of the many free hosting services. I was wrong about that, but I still prefer it this way. I have total control and I like having total control. I ran "sandbox" versions of many software packages, and not just for blogging, before I settled on WordPress. To be honest, I never thought that blogging would be my final choice for public communication.

As short and lame as that first post was, it has been viewed (as of right now) 563 times since I installed the plugin to count views during the first week of February 2007. It's number 100 in my Top 100 Posts list! (This is post number 581, I believe.)

My original goal was to merely chronicle my life after moving to the Philippines. I had so much to do. At first I was looking to buy a house, already built, and then ended up having one built. My wife nagged me into buying a car — I really didn't want one. I took very few pictures and posted them along the way. I wrote about not having anything but a dial-up connection. I thought I could go with a wireless broadband connection, but I was wrong, and then I found out I could get DSL at almost 6 kilometers from the "CO" (central office box). I've dealt with the rain, the heat, the humidity, and the typhoons. There were very few gems along the way.

Sometime in January or February of 2007 (I really don't know for sure), my blog took a different turn and not because I intended it. I started writing about things that didn't affect me. I started helping other people in various ways, both online and offline. I started linking to all sorts of blogs and writing about them. I started using the knowledge I'd gained from experience and with age in constructive ways. My various rankings started improving during that time.

Sometimes I brag about how well the blog is doing in various rankings, but you want to know something? I really don't care if I'm number 1 or number 1 million on any particular ranking. I do this to please myself and not to get rich or famous. If I want to brag, I want to compare how my blog ranks today as opposed to how it ranked in the past. For example: My Technorati rank was at 1,391,021 in July of 2006. It's down to 17,635 now. My Alexa traffic rank at that time was at 4,691,319. Now it's at 63,521. They're just numbers. I could not care less as to what they really mean. I get between 100 and 200 visitors per day and that's really all that matters to me. If that number increases, it means I'm doing something right and I can feel good about my efforts. Heck, even if it just stays that way for the next ten years, I'll be happy.

To commemorate the day, my old hosting provider just sent me an email telling me that my domain on their system expired. Ha! Like I really care. I have a much better hosting provider now.