The following telephone conversation took place earlier today:

Caller: “Hi, this is Kevin with Dell and I’m calling about your Dell Dimension 100. Your three year warranty expries this month and I’m calling to see if you’d like to renew… and tell you about some of our special offers.”

smays: “Uh, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, Kevin.”

Caller: “You’ve switched to Mac.”

smays: (surprised) “Yeah, I have. Uh, how’d you know?”

Caller: “People always say, ‘We’ve got bad news…’ just before they tell us they’ve switched.”

I still have several hours of work to resurrect The Basement Diaries, but have the site back online (5 min slideshow: Basement Diaries . It has been something of a nostalgic deep dive in that I created the site in 1998 (almost ten years ago) about events that took place in 1968 (almost 40 years ago).

Most of the work involved rescanning images. We had really crappy cameras in those days and I did little to optimize the scanned images back in ’98. So I rescanned about 100 photos, but this time I parked them on flickr. I still have a good bit of caption’ing and tagging to do. Basement Diaries alums might enjoy the slideshow of our Halloween party pix.

This rehab has moved me a little closer to my goal of 1,000 images on flickr. A target I’l easily reach when I get around to KBOA830.com.

“The Basement Summer was 1968. Some of us had been off to college for a year or two but gravitated back to Kennett, Missouri, as young people from small towns often do. This web site is about those people and that time. This would have been a lot easier if I had actually kept a diary or journal thirty years ago. But I didn’t, so the only record I have is a few thousand photographs and a lot of fuzzy memories. The time frame is roughly 1966 -1976. If you were there, no further explanation is necessary… if you were not, none is possible.”

That was the intro to one of the first websites I created (March, 1998). I say was because this morning I deleted the entire site. How I managed to do this is of no consequence. I believe I have a back-up in our safe deposit box, but can’t find a copy among the countless CD’s and external hard-drives that clutter my home office.

Given the sentimental importance of this site, I’m surprised by how calmly I’m dealing with this. I spent hundreds of hours creating the site but I didn’t know what I was doing in those early days and the tools weren’t very good. And the resulting site looked like what it was, an early effort by an amateur.

And I have all of the images. Digital and prints. I can do a much better job the second time around. I don’t think I could/would recreate the copy. So I’m hoping I have that back-up. And I feel bad for anyone that might have linked to the original site. Those links are dead. If you were among those immortalized in The Basement Diaries, watch this space for updates.

Update: Seems I did have the foresight to tuck a copy away at the bank. I’ll start rebuilding immediately.

Earlier this month I ranted about the mindless, clueless use of the REPLY ALL button. We’re currently experiencing one of these Dumb Storms. The following exchange has been shared with 80+ people in our office. (Yes, I do understand that some of the recipients find this witty exchange delightful.) I’m posting in reverse order to make this (on-going) thread easier to read. This is the work email equivalent of Open Mic Night at the Comedy Club. And you’re chained to your chair.

“Word has already been passed back to Learfield from I-70 that the troopers are out in full force, so be careful and watch out”

“Watch out now… my son is a trooper

“We love your son, but would like to interact with him in a more informal manner.”

“I really think it would be a great idea if police officers were put to work protecting people from murder, rape, and other vicious attacks … instead of being used by the state, counties, cities, and towns as men and women in uniform who main duty is to generate revenue. I’d wager they would probably prefer to be fighting crime than ticketing someone who has the audacity to drive at 65 MPH in a 60 MPH zone on I-70 in St. Louis County. How dare anyone drive at such an “unreasonable” speed on what is, at that point in the highway, an 8-late thoroughfare!”

“Thank your son for performing his duty. Many people have died at the hands of wreckless drivers who thought they were doing nothing wrong until it was too late.”

“I second that!!”

“Me thinks (name) is a bit cranky.”

“Maybe he got a ticket on the way to work???

“Well if he did, at least it wasn’t me this time!!