The Last Person To Start Blogging 6/22 or 6/23 2024

When I was a young lad, probably starting around 12 or 13, I was pretty good with computers. I could put one together, troubleshoot, build webpages from scratch in notepad, install Linux before there was a graphic option for installation and you had to edit/write a few scripts before you could get your computer online and get a graphic user interface up. They used to throw installation parties so everyone would get together to install linux together so they could help each other because it was more complicated back then. Today it is about the same as installing Windows, but with more configurability.

I know we had a Commodore 64 at one point and my mom says I was really good with it but I honestly don’t remember it very well. The first computer I remember was a 486 I believe, and that is when we got AOL as well. The first day we got AOL I stayed up all night talking to people in chat rooms, and I remember my mom getting up the next morning to find me still on the computer. At that time, we kept it in the living room.

I didn’t have a lot of friends, or any friends, for a number of years. I was held back in 6th grade, so I was completely disconnected from my original class and anyone who might have been my friend at the time, and was put in a new class who were not nice so any friends I had were the other outcasts. Online, I found a community of people who wanted to talk to me, listen to what I have to say, and build some sort of new cyber friendships with. I even had “girlfriends” on AOL. I remember one time a bunch of kids were making fun of me to my sister or to me, I can’t remember exactly but my sister responds with “well he has girlfriends on AOL!” I know she meant well and I don’t remember being embarrased about that.

I learned to make webpages, like I mentioned, and I have made many webpages over the years. It used to be typical to make a webpage with information you are interested in, a page with links, and that would be something people could really use. This was even before Google search engine became popular. The only webpge I ever made (not counting professionally) that got any traffic was a webpage for our rave production company. When I was in highschool, a girl in my math class introduced me to raves. She had one of her friends pick me up and bring me to a rave and that day changed my life.

Similar to how I had found an online community that I was welcomed to, this was even better. These were people in real life that were accepting me, and due to the fact that we always helped clean up at the end of parties and we also would show up with boxes of apples and oranges which we would go around and pass out to everyone, we met basically everyone in the scene. We know all the people who threw parties and so we started throwing some parties ourselves. Not to brag, but our parties were the best parties in the scene for sure! We had a free massage therapist at our first party, free pancakes, all kinds of free free free, and wow that first party was an incredible experience that I will have to blog about at some point.

Bottom line is that I was welcomed into a community of people who were kind to each other and were compassionate towards one another. If we saw someone sitting by themselves and looking sad we would go and see if there is anything we can do to make them feel better. First and foremost we would make sure everyone had water and knew there were people they could come to if they needed anything. If they wanted to be left alone, fine, but people were so kind to one another. It completely changed my outlook on life. I was very depressed and this just showed me there was beauty in the world.

This story is kinda rambling on but I’m just telling a little about myself and what kind of experiences brought me here. When I was 18, two of my friensd and I decided to try to walk from San Francisco to Eugene, Oregon. That is another long story in itself but I ended up in Seattle by myself at the end of the trip, and I spent most of the next 10 years in Seattle, coming back every year or so most of the time. Often, it was a couple jobs that would bring me back. I would work for the White Sox and Diamondback baseball teams during spring training. I would help selling programs, jerseys, hats, etc. and make quite a lot because we would all share a percentage of the sales. When spring training was over, the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show would be starting and I would work selling semi-precious and later precious stones for 3-4 weeks until the show was over. Then I would usually get myself a one way ticket to Seattle and head back for the summer.

For a long time I lived like this, and I did not have a computer. I had become completely disconnected from the friends I had made and the continued learning about computers was stopped. It’s kinda like math class, when you miss a few and come back, it is very difficult to get cought up. Ever since then I never really did get cought up. I’m still learning about things much later than people. I still have never tried tik-tok. I haven’t had a Facebook in years, but I am trying to re-join the online movement and become a part of some online communities. I really like NOSTR, but I am not active on there at all.

[Fell asleep and woke up at 5:00 AM the next morning]

So back to blogging. What I mean is back to blogging about blogging. I am trying to post pictures and content to several different platforms, but the writing is as much for me as to create content. I like writing… I certainly like talking. I can talk a professional fighter into submission (?). When I was a kid my friends mom wouldn’t take me anywhere because I was always bouncing off the walls and embarrasing them at the grocery store. My wife and I both are very talkative so anyone who can tolerate us in real life is a very wonderful person indeed!

Now I have started a blog like 3 or 4 times and I’ve lost some content. I even lost some content about loosing some content. I’m going to keep trying though, because I think it is good for me and the things we are doing at our house really are quite awesome. We are transforming our seemingly dead and compressed backyard into a lush paradise. We are building living soil and a microclimate that will keep the yard a little cooler in the summer. We have been here about a year and it is already much better, although once we put trees in that will be some real good progress.

I don’t expect to make any money from a blog, or get really popular. This is generally a blog about gardening but it will probably be about a lot of things. I want to make it so I have a sort of record of all the things we have done. I lost all my pictures recently. It was terrible. I want to be able to look back but also to record my mistakes and projects and if anyone wants my help then please give me an email and we can talk about it. I do a lot of reading and research about gardening, among other things, and if I don’t know I love learning new things and we can figure it out together.

Yesterday (June 22, 2024) we got about 2.25 inches of rain where I live. If I had gutters and other rain catchment features installed on my property it would have been a great accumulation of water. I have worked on my land somewhat to reduce the loss of topsoil and water, but I lost a lot. Generally when you are planning for water collection, you are planning for a 1 inch rain event, so this was quite a doozy. I did get 80 gallons in some plastic tubs that I am adding to an IBC I have, but I’d love to know how many gallons I could have got. It’s a simple formula that I will put up here when I do it.

This is just a blog about living in the Sonoran Desert. Specifically, I live in Tucson, Arizona. We are in a valley surrounded by mountain ranges, and are at the base of a 9,159 feet (2,792 meters) mountain called Mt. Lemmon. We have been gardening here for 4,200 years and we’re not about to stop now.

Nichollas@fracti-cacti.com