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October 25, 2005

One Year Blogiversary

This whole time, I had thought that the 27th was my blogiversary. But it looks like I was off by a few days: it was the 22nd . . . that's ok, I'll celebrate today:

Today marks one year of The Adventures of Chester.

An adventure can be a good or a bad thing; if nothing else, it gives one a story to tell. So without further ado, here's some of the adventures in blogging I've had over the past year, the good, the bad, and the ugly, in rough chronological order:

1. It all really started with my predictions about, and live-blogging of, the Battle of Fallujah: Zarqawi: Be very afraid . . . was my first big post. Once the battle started, here's some of the other posts I remember well:
Today's Thoughts on Fallujah
Shaping the Battlefield
What will happen to captured US forces?
Gotterdammerung I: Insurgent Strategy
Why this isn't Hue -- Wavetop View
Insurgent Defensive Plan
Military Situation Reporting: A How-To-Guide
What if they left? Mao and Guerrilla Warfare
Insurgent command and control clues . . .

2. The next big adventure was raising a bunch of money for Spirit of America in their Blogger Challenge.

3. The January tsunami brought another flurry of live-blogging. See the January 2005 Archives for specifics.

4. In late January, I was on Fox News with David Asman. That was really neat and he was a cool guy. Lots of fun. Here's a post about it, and here's a follow-up post I thought was pretty good: Bloggers vs. the Mainstream? Not quite . . .

5. Shortly thereafter, I live-blogged the Iraqi elections.

6. During that time period I also "met" Steven Vincent and invited him to do some guest-posting here at Adventures.

Sadly, he was killed in Iraq a few months later. Steven was a great guy, and was pretty upset at his death. Rest in Peace, Steven is a small tribute to him, and includes links to the pieces he wrote for Adventures.

7. One of the strangest adventures ever was my involvement in Easongate. This was basically a case study in how not to react if you are under extreme media scrutiny. It was very bizarre. Well, go read the details if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

8. I took some time off in the spring to pursue a blogging-based business idea. It never really got off the ground. In the late summer and early fall, I did the same thing, working on another blogging-based business. I ultimately decided not to join the group of motivated folks working on this second venture, but they are headed for success. Both of those experiences were really interesting. I'll have to post about them someday.

9. The latest adventure begins today, Wednesday the 26th. In a few hours, Mrs. Chester and I are headed to New York for a summit entitled "Media, Communications & Technology in the Age of the Blogger." With luck, I'll be offering commentary periodically throughout the conference, which begins tomorrow night and runs all day Wednesday. I think it will be very cool. I even made up some Adventures of Chester business cards! Nifty!

The thing that makes blogging fun is all the people you get to "meet" electronically and make friends with. That has been the high point of the whole shebang for me. I've garnered tons of acquaintances doing neat stuff and have made several good friends. Standing out among them is Bill Roggio, who started as my free technical assistant and now is my confidant and good friend. I'll be to meet him in person for the first time this weekend. [Be sure to visit Bill's site because he is about to embark on his own adventure: based on his in-depth coverage of the Anbar Campaign in Iraq, he's been invited to visit the area of operations by the officers of Regimental Combat Team 2 and he's going to go. Bill is an unbelievable guy and this is an unbelievable opportunity . . . go check it out.]

Thanks to all who have been readers, commenters, emailers, sparring partners, editors, and intellectual adventurers along with me. As of this writing, there've been over 613,000 visits to Adventures. All told, not too bad for a couple of hours on weeknights! Every time I look at Site Meter I'm flabbergasted. Technology is amazing. Thanks to each of you.

Much of what's here concerns the war. I'd prefer there was no war to write about. But if there must be one, and in this case I think there must, then here's hoping it ends quickly and as favorably as possible for the Iraqi people -- and of course for the good guys, who are not only making history, but will surely not be forgotten in its pages.

Semper Fidelis

Posted by Chester at October 25, 2005 11:53 PM

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Tracked on October 28, 2005 10:25 AM

Comments

Posted by: Scott B at October 26, 2005 1:45 AM

Posted by: Bill Roggio at October 26, 2005 10:05 AM

Posted by: April at October 26, 2005 10:07 AM

Posted by: Ledger at October 26, 2005 3:29 PM

Posted by: tequilarose at October 26, 2005 4:48 PM

Posted by: Glenn at October 27, 2005 9:26 PM