How This Blog Came To Be

I bought my first domain name in 1999. It was like most personal web sites of that time – the URL was http://www.myname.com , I had my own email address iam@myname.com, it had my pictures, my resume and portfolio, links to other places on the web that I liked (or wanted to be affiliated with) – all kinds of fun stuff.  My family and friends thought I was cool and would write me email that said stuff like “you web site is awesome” (it really wasn’t).

Then web starting birthing free hosting sites – most of them for for personal profiles, blogs, resumes, and the like - FOR FREE! So why was I paying?  Well, it also happened that I needed to re-purchase my web hosting subscription and I didn’t feel like spending the money.  So with some new money in my pocket I hopped on the web 2.0 train and started a blog.  I also couldn’t help but purchase a new domain name.  That’s where the story behind the name of this blog comes in.

I started my search for a new domain name knowing that it might be harder to find a free one that I also liked. It had now been 10 years since I bought a domain name a lot of them were taken up.  Sure http://www.ihavechlamydia.com is available – but that just doesn’t resonate with me. 

I started typing in names of web sites that I thought I might like to have - checking if they'd already been taken. Throughout my search I became increasingly, and obsessively, frustrated and annoyed with all these fucking companies that went and bought up every combination of two and three-word domain names, that I got to the point where I was typing some of them in twice (or even 3, 4, 5 times) just to make sure they were really taken. I was especially broken when, after an hour of searching, I typed what I thought was "the one":

http://www.thepowderroom.com/

I even thought about compromising for http://www.powderroom.com/.  Here’s the rub: not only are the web sites I wanted taken (and, frankly wasting valuable space on the web) but they’re also owned by these jokers:

Loqi Tamaroon Berkley, CA, owner of http://powderroom.com (I’m not kidding)

Name Administration Grand Cayman and British Virgin Islands, owner of http://thepowderroom.com “Name Administration Inc. BVI (NAmedia) is an online media network that operates thousands of generic domain names for paid search and development purposes. You may not have heard of NAmedia before, but you have probably visited one of our websites. Our master catalog of properties includes a significant percentage of the Web's most commercial, memorable and highly trafficked generic website names.”

Here’s the best (or worst) part (depending on your sense of humor), when explaining why they are located in the British Virgin and Cayman islands, Name Administration so kindly explains:

How come you are based in the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman
Islands?

Doesn't everbody dream of living in the Caribbean? We are in the Cayman
Islands because it is a great place to live. The weather is warm, the people are
friendly and there is good Internet access. Everyone lives somewhere. We live
here (http://www.caymanislands.ky/). We may be
contacted via email or through the Contact form on this
website.

So, some dude in a bunny outfit and a guy sipping pina coladas in both the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands are buying up sites on the internet, filling it with their useless shit, and making money off it.  Awesome.   Clearly, I’m doing something wrong with my life.

Hence, the inspiration for the name of my site.  I think it does a good job of capturing not only the essence of what I might end up writing about but also an appropriate dedication to the fuckers at Name Administration Inc: you Can't Buy This!!

Peace.