Most regular readers of Robert’s Journal will probably recognize Nick Flandrey as the nom de plume a longtime commenter here.  Shortly before he became sick, Robert asked me to upgrade some of my longer comments to posts, and encouraged me to post whenever I had something worthwhile to say.  He also reached out to a couple of other commenters here at the same time, making the same offer.  One, known locally as OFD has since also passed on, and the other is busy with life and dogs 🙂  (I still have hopes she’ll post more often.)

When Robert went into the hospital, I took it upon myself to open each day’s discussion (as one of the 3 people with posting privileges) with the hope that he’d be back home soon, mainly so that we’d have somewhere to share info about his recovery.

When he failed to recover, and with his wife Barbara’s blessing, I continued to post daily, opening up the day’s thread.

This site had become a community under Robert’s watchful eye, and we really didn’t want to see it end, or have all of the useful and knowledgeable posts disappear.

So here we are today.  The special pages are arranged along the top of the site, and tags are on the right.  There is a LOT of overlap in the tags so if you are looking for specifics use the search tool in addition to the tags.  Because of the nature of the community, MUCH if not MOST of the good stuff is in the comments.  Don’t just read the opening post.

There are some incredibly smart folks who visit and comment here, with a true diversity of background. It’s that community that make this site what it is.

I’ve tried to stay close to Robert’s format and style, but my life is not his, and there have been small changes.  Later in his life, the site’s focus changed to prepping as he was working on securing a future for himself and Barbara and working on a new book about prepping.  I tend to focus on prepping, security issues, conservative politics, and the perils and joys of a small home based business.  As IT has become commonplace, there is much less discussion here of computers/OSs in and of themselves, but more on their use in society.  This is still a great place to ask a computer or software question though.  Many working professionals are ‘standing by to take your calls’…

I love hearing from long time readers who finally have a reason to comment.  I love the ongoing conversation with the most frequent commenters.  I understand now why someone would spend so much time and energy on running a site like this- it is tremendously rewarding to be part of a community.

I encourage anyone reading this page to spend some time reading through older posts, and the comments.  Join the conversation.  Ask a question.  Contribute an answer.

I couldn’t and wouldn’t continue to do this without the support of the readers and commenters, Rick Hellewell on the technical web end, and of course Barbara.

Nick Flandrey