I turned off my blog/web server today. I approached the task with little regard to how I would feel. I was simply powering down a computer. But the computer was more than a cold hard metallic machine whirling in the night. It was an extension of me. It was my digital self broadcasting out to the ether the lone cry of, “Here I am!” It was the existential embodiment of my technological soul. It and the computer incarnations that had come before it continued to breathe life into my aging techno-skills. It helped maintain my geed credentials and keep me firmly ensconced in the annals of geekdom as a true nerd.
And now it is gone but perhaps not completely void. For while the physical form is no longer within arm’s reach a piece of my digital reality still floats in the ether connected to other digital personas housed together, sharing space, electricity and physicality. So I may no longer be able to boot, reboot, hard boot or otherwise touch my digitally distributed self. I can still find me out there, somewhere, and continue to shape and enhance that digital ID that is as much as me as I.
I suppose this is not truly and end but a new evolution in the extension of myself. Before I was solely reliant on myself to provide the habitation of my digital form. Now others have stepped into to help alleviate the burden of carrying my thoughts out to the digital world. And that I believe is probably a good thing as giving up one burden allows me to carry forward with others.
So my journey continues and while I’ll remain digitally prodigious as ever I leave it to those more skilled hands to ensure that my binary soul continues to roam the electronic universe without fear of being down, offline, or altogether unavailable.
Sorry that my casual suggestion has caused such grief… 😉
Dear Lost Chennaults,
Still looking for info. on that E. V. Chennault from Arkansas in 1880’s?
And did you find out the lineage (if that was the interest) in Constable Elijah Chenault?
Larry Chenault