I'm Studying You

Painting Perspective By Numbers

Good evening Studyees...and happy July! All the Leos in the house, lemme hear ya ROAR!

As I'm sure some of you are aware, 7/1/09 marked my 8th WDC birthday. I was too busy working and having another barbecue to mark it appropriately in this forum, so I'll make mention of it now. Eight years is a long time to be writing things down electronically in one place. I liked lana bardot 's line in the last entry's Drop-Off..."I am still so shocked you have been here for 8 years!!! That's longer than my marriage lasted, and that lasted much too long!" So to keep things in perspective, here's some "Eight Year Fun Facts" about me.

In eight years, I've been through three cars (not including J's).

In the last eight years, I've had six jobs (including my present ones).

I've been in varying degrees of relationships with approximately six to eight different members of the opposite sex.

Believe it or not, I've been living in the same appartment the entire time. I've just furnished it a lot more. Although I'm only still paying for that place til the lady and I find something bigger for us to co-habitate in.

I haven't broken a bone in the last eight years...which means I've broken four bones and had one hernia operation in the first 25 years of my life, or between the ages of 15 and 26 to be exact.

I've logged on to WDC 2,191 times, and my port's been viewed 3,283 times. As of this entry, The Library has been visited 6,895 times. One can only imagine the amount of hours (in days) that I've spent at WDC.

I'm sure I could dig a little deeper into my personal history, but that just becomes grandstanding I figure, and I prefer not to go that route. My Studyees deserve better. So here's a little bit of WDC history that some of you Stoggers may or may not remember about this website...

The site was originally called Stories.com...if you were wondering why The StoryMaster's and StoryMistress's handles were named the way they were.

This site was also free. Eff-are-double-e free. Memberships did not exist. You joined, picked your login and handle, and that was it. And if I'm not mistaken, there was no limit as to the amount of items you could have in your free portfolio.

WritingML consisted of bold, italics and basic colors, maybe six or eight. Emotiocons didn't exist. Partly because...

...blogging didn't exist. There was a "journal" feature, but it's nothing like the blog feature is now. And emoticons probably didn't exist in WritingML also because...

...there was no chat room or instant messaging. So you can probably assume all the other cool shit that's in WML wasn't there eight years ago.

There wasn't much racial diversity...i.e., it seemed like it was so much easier to email/review cases of other colors. When a country is smaller, it's easier to access those above them. In comparison, Stories.com was a city, and now it's a country. Oh, and "Senior Moderators" didn't exist either.

I think I got promoted to "Preferred" in mere weeks, if not days. I don't think that happens so quickly anymore. In fact, I've only seen a scant few get to experience the joys of case-color changing in the last couple of years. Or maybe I just got lucky by having the right person catch my port at the right time and allowed herself to get sucked in. By my poetry, no less!

That last point leads me to this opinion...I got promoted when there were little-to-no groups dedicated to promoting, reviewing, gifting, etc. It was basically word-of-mouth...you saw something you liked, you emailed another user, they checked it out. It was defiinitely more of a writer's site back then. And I'll admit I'm guilty of this...there are probably a ton more writers on this site compared to reviewers. I'd say it was 60/40 in favor of writers back then. Now it's probably closer to 80/20 for the writers, although I could be wrong. I rarely get any reviews anymore, and 95% of my time now on WDC is spent either blogging or in blogs. There's one phenomenon explained, Studyees. And due to old "friends" leaving WDC for one reason or another over the years, the mount of items I've reviewed in eight years has dipped to 177. That's it. But I've probably seen double that amount, of items that no longer exist.

Accordingly, I once had about 235 items in my port before I was unable to extend my upgraded account a few years ago. And some different pictures were in there also.

And now I'm rambling, Studyees. I'm sure I'm leaving out some other things also...no merit badges, no costumicons, no fun stuff in the store like hoodies (my size is large, by the way ) and very few frills. It was a straight-up writing site for writers. And evolution has turned Stories.com into a legit social networking website, albeit not on par with myspace or facebook or whatever you choose outside of WDC. What I can say is that I've met some wonderful people, either over email, telephone or in person, and I'm thankful for each opportunity. So this is it...eight years. Crack a preferred beverage, and hope for eight more. I'd love to continue, but the hot chick in the other room won't shut up about some Consumer Reports magazine I got her about clipping coupons, and I can't keep my train of thought. All I know is that I love stats, and opinions. And I get to sleep in a little tomorrow before having an entire weekend free of job obligations. Hence, I will be spending time this July 4th blowing stuff up at 542. Maaad diesel!

So with that, I leave you with the immortal words gifted upon me from the one and only StoryMaster..."Just a quick note to wish you a happy account birthday!" Studyees, live every day like it's your birthday. Y'alls some good people. Stay true. GOODNIGHT NOW!!