So today marks two full years of Rocksnobs. Yep. A little over two years ago I got (wrongfully) fired from my job and suddenly had all kinds of spare time. Not even four classes and homework and pinball could fill the time available. Then one day I was at my coffee shop doing homework and noticed something magical in the back of one of my textbooks. An appendix of basic HTML coding. Hello useful, useful time filler.
I had been planning on starting this site for months but I was waiting until my first web design class came up in my schedule. That wasn't until April, but here it was January and I had both nothing to do and an HTML guide. Woo! So I learned HTML. I had already written the introductory article by hand, I just needed a place for it to go.
The initial Rocksnobs main page was very, very ugly. Well, maybe just very ugly. And it was on my personal web space through my ISP because I didn't have a job and didn't want to pay to have the domain name hosted. But the Everyone Else Has Bad Taste In Music. You Know This To Be Fact part has been there since day one, and so has the Official Rocksnobs Disclaimer.
People seem to like these items and that never fails to surprise me because both of those got written because I needed to fill the blank space. There was one article. Newsflashes didn't even exist. I had to stick something else in there. And the original color scheme, by the way, was pink on black. I am still fond of that look which is why I use it for the Freddie Mercury birthday tributes.
So I start the site, email the link to all of my friends, and just like that I have a readership of five people. Maybe eight. It was pretty hard to plug the site when I didn't use the Rocksnobs domain name, but I made do with the eight readers I had.
And then one day I wandered into my record store. I was talking to the sweetheart who works there (popular Rocksnobs character Aaaahj) and then some dork appeared. He was an employee I had only seen one other time and I didn't care for him at all. The first time I met him, he was kind of a snot and on top of that he was wearing sandals. Strikes one and two, right there.
On this particular day Aaaahj and I were talking about rock singers and Mr. Sandal Dork offered up this comment: "I still think that Freddie Mercury is the greatest rock singer ever." Glee! Not only did Mr. Sandal Dork have no prior knowledge of my love for Queen, he didn't know about Rocksnobs or the fact that I had just recently posted my very own list of the great rock singers. On that list Freddie Mercury is the undisputed champion of the world. So that is the day I befriended the Pirate.
But before I decided I had a new best friend I directed Aaaahj and the Pirate straight to my web site. They embraced it and promptly became readers nine and ten. I only tell you these two incredibly boring stories because of an email that I got from Aaaahj last month.
When I saw mail from Aaaahj I knew immediately that he was writing to lecture me about how The Number Of The Beast came out in 1982 and that I had no right to the pictures of Bruce Dickinson with a moustache that he had photocopied for me. (Mustachioed Bruce is another story for another day.)
Anyway, I was wrong. Wrong! As it turns out, Aaaahj had a story to tell:
Yesterday I had someone come into the shop that actually asked me "Have you ever been to Rocksnobs.com?" I was like ummm.... I'm Aaaahj, and the Aspiring Pirate is in the back room. Apparently he lives in Michigan, but is from here, and loves your web site. He said he tells everyone he meets about it.
What?
Two years ago I was soliciting readers in that record store! And last month somebody that I don't even know was trying to solicit two of my original ten readers. I called Aaaahj right up and accused him of inventing the story but he swears it is true. Sure, record stores are a pretty good place to plug this site but I think it is hilarious and delightful that a reader was plugging my site at my record store.
Anyway. Two years. Thank you for reading. And if you are a friend of the mystery reader, could you buy him a cola or a beer? It would be very much appreciated.