Who do I still think I am??

This one's about the old days' shhh...

30DBC PROMPT: "On the last day of the Official Birthday Celebrations, I want you to remember back to your first days as a Newbie on this site. Tell us about how it was way back then (if you are really old, *cough* *cough*) and/or how you felt coming into such a thriving community. Did you think then that it would grow and evolve how it has over the past years/months/weeks? (Bonus points for welcoming a newbie in the "Noticing Newbies" forum.)"

Well, I'll never learn my lesson. The warning signs...always ignored. And now, the failsafe copy/paste function has failed me as well. I need to type better and faster rather than laboriously watch my words. I typed up 90% of an entire entry. Most of it revolved around links that were once posted in Elle - on hiatus 's blog entry, "Why you yellow bellied ingrate!" . There are some great links to archived WDC pages, including some from the old Stories.com days. Be sure to check the comments section too, because there are more links in there worth checking out as well.

I spent way too long typing out an entry that is gone. Again. I'm beyond pissed about it too. It's not like I've never written a blog entry before about what WDC was like 12 years ago when I joined, or how it's pretty much nothing like it used to be. And go figure...the one time I dread repeating myself for the fifth or sixth time, that's the time Internet Explorer decides to wait until I'm just about finished to crash. Happy birthday and whatnot. I'm not typing it all up again. I probably jinxed myself to typing "long live Stories.com" in bold text and bitching that there were no torch emoticons. Hell, we were lucky we had emoticons back in the day. WritingML was bold, underline, italics, a few colors, and maybe margins. The most disputed part is whether ports were ever totally free and had no restrictions based on how many items you could keep in them. I say at one time this was the case, as there originally were no upgrades or premium memberships. But what do I know? I can't even use the internet without it proving me to be a fool.

Most of the people that helped me out on this site aren't around anymore. But there also weren't as many, if any, groups dedicated to helping newbies like there are today. Of course, there also weren't so many ways to get lost in this website either.

That's all I have to say. Check out the links in Elle's entry. That's where it's at. Forget anything else you think I might've said about it.

BCF PROMPT: "Finish this sentence with a story: It's a secret but I know I can trust you..."

I had a lovely diatribe about this lost in the ether as well, about how I don't trust anyone and don't wanna be trusted right now. Four or five solid paragraphs of absolute piss 'n vinegar about how you can't trust people who say "trust me" and that life is supposed to be "you get what you give" and vice versa, but it's not.

Secrets aren't meant to be told anyway. About the only thing you can trust these days is that nothing and no one is reliable. Expectations are unrealistic, unless you're expecting failure.

Wow...I was in a pretty bad mood when I originally typed up what I had to say. It's amazing how much worse your mood can get when you foolishly lose an entry.

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

Normally the computer just loses a Wi-Fi signal once I'm cozy and ready to fall asleep watching "Love American Style" or Dave Chappelle comedy routines on YouTube if it's gonna do anything crazy. Last night I lost 17 minutes of a 47 minute episode of Oprah (yeah, her) where she interviews Chappelle about why he quit his $50 million contract and crazy awesome tv show. Had a connection...the video just played and stopped, with no chance of cueing it up to the spot I lost.

And today's International Cassette Store Day. Google it yourselves. I did it once already and I'm not going through it again, nor am I going to explain to you why it was so important to have a sharpened pencil handy when your tapes got eaten.

And with that, I'm gonna try to calm myself. GOODNIGHT NOW.