Jared W. Smith

UPDATE: A tweet from Clay Taylor (@imallergictocats) indicates that Norm’s will be back next year after a renovation. I sure hope that’s the case! Original post below:

As you may or may not know, Norm’s Pizza and Subs — home of the fabled Nerd Table and an otherwise very important part of my college experience — is closing for good today. (The original closing date was December 1, but the restaurant got a 11-day reprieve, opening from 5-midnight in December.) Word is they’ve run into lease issues, among other things. It’s quite a shame, because there stands to be a great deal of College of Charleston students who will never understand the importance of Norm’s takeout during finals week. A great deal of the MUSC community is also going to have to find a new place to get lunch — not necessarily an easy feat on the western peninsula.

As long-time followers of this blog know, Norm’s was a staple of mine in the several years I lived downtown. I found it to be a wonderful place to swap stories, make new friends, or even just a place to sit back and step out of the madness for a little bit, no matter how full it may have been on any given night. While living in West Ashley had made it difficult to stop in over the last year and a half, I still managed to make it in for lunch a fair amount, and did my best to stop in during the evenings as well, even if it wasn’t as often.

Thanks to Traye and the crew at Norm’s for the memories over the last several years. You’ll be missed.

There’s lots of remembrance in the Lowcountry today in recognition of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Hugo.

You might be surprised to know that I wasn’t here for it.

My family moved to Charleston (specifically, Goose Creek) in the summer of 1988. But during the summer of 1989, my dad’s job relocated us to Dalton, PA (yes, I lived near Scranton before it was popular). We rented out our house (with the full intent of returning once my father was finished with his assignment in PA), and watched nervously as Hugo made a direct hit on the Lowcountry. Fortunately, just the fence took a bit of a hit, and we only lost one tree (and it evaded the house). We returned in the summer of 1990, and in the winter got a fun snowfall (that has unfortunately yet to really repeat itself).

I was a weather nut before Hugo, but I have to wonder what my attitude toward hurricanes would be today had I gone through it. I remember talking to a lot of my peers when we returned, and most said they slept through it. But others told tales of howling winds and trees snapping and general chaos — and the silence of the eye. The stories of the eye were the most fascinating to me, and are probably a driving force for me to try to experience what it’s like in that eerie calm, on the stage in a stadium of destructive power.

But somehow I might find that what happens prior to and after that calm might dissuade me.

I’m very happy to announce that I’m officially joining ReadWriteWeb as their full-time Webmaster starting on October 5. (Check out Richard MacManus’s tweet announcing my hire.) I don’t know if text can appropriately convey how excited I am to work with such a high-quality and well-respected publication on a full-time basis, but I suspect a video would just be downright embarrassing and ultimately detrimental to my “personal brand.” I’ve been working with RWW part-time since April on a variety of small projects, and when the opportunity arose for me to work with them full-time, I knew it would be a good fit going forward. The crew at ReadWriteWeb is brilliant, and if you don’t read them, you’re missing out on fantastic analysis and commentary on this wild, wild Web we all find ourselves in.

The ReadWriteWeb move ends a six-year chapter for me at College of Charleston, my alma mater and my employer since I was 19. I got started there in October 2003 as a student worker in the helpdesk; my initial assignment was primarily the preparation of Windows machines for deployment. My role at the helpdesk gradually expanded and I worked as a field technician for several years until I was hired as the College’s webmaster in June 2007. My time at the College shaped who I am — period. I’m so fortunate to have worked with excellent and downright fun folks at the College, where we did some fairly outstanding things, including a dramatically revamped website with not only a new design, but also a new content management system and supporting infrastructure to go with it. I’m really proud of what we did there. I’ll freely admit that it’s very hard to leave a place you’ve known for a good chunk of your life. However, the Web is in able hands there, and is in a good spot to move forward. And, for the Web-and-Linux-inclined, I do encourage you to apply for my old job when it comes out. I’ll tweet when the job becomes available.

The Twitter response has been incredible. Thank you, everybody. A lot of people are wondering if I’m staying in Charleston; and that answer is yes — for now, anyway. ReadWriteWeb operates virtually; our meeting room is Skype-based, for instance, and we’re spread out all over the world. (Founding editor Richard MacManus lives in New Zealand, for example.) The job’s virtual nature is very advantageous in that I won’t have to move at all — and who likes to move? So, I’ll be in Charleston for a while yet, I suspect. I’ll still be fully active in Social Media Club, and hope to continue contributing to the good work that we’re doing with nurturing and expanding the local tech community.

More to come here, including updates on BarCampCHS and what we’re doing with SMC — stay tuned!

Yes, I missed the third anniversary Lowcountry Bloggers meetup last night. Apparently the #jaredrumors abound, but there’s a really good reason. My dad, a life-long Trekkie, had wanted to see the new Star Trek but wasn’t sure when he’d be able to. A little quick thinking later, and we were all able to find a time when everyone was free (including my brother who puts in 50+ hour weeks routinely), and we decided to head down to the Terrace Hippodrome — really the only way to experience Star Trek.

So, last night, I enjoyed a movie with my parents and brother for the first time in nearly 10 years. There was high praise all around for the movie (which I saw with the bloggers on opening night at the Hippodrome) as well as the venue. If you haven’t seen Star Trek yet and you’re local to Charleston, please give the Terrace Hippodrome — located at the site of the former IMAX at the aquarium downtown — strong consideration. The seats don’t get much more comfortable, the screen doesn’t get much bigger, and you will not waste any time actually getting to see the movie (one preview ran, for the new Transformers movie). Admission may be a dollar or two more than what you’re used to paying, but it is completely worth it.

It was excellent getting to see a movie with the family again. I hope my fellow bloggers will forgive me.

An era from the early days of the Web is ending, as Yahoo! has announced its intent to close GeoCities, its free Web hosting service targeted to novices, later this year.

I can’t have a legitimate discussion about my career in Web without starting it at GeoCities. I started a site at GeoCities in 1998 as a starry-eyed 8th grader, staking out turf for a little Windows tips site I would call “The Ultimate Windows Launchpad” in a little suburb of the SiliconValley neighborhood known as Haven. (GeoCities, up until about a year after the Yahoo acquisition, used “neighborhoods” to group Web pages together by interest. For example, tech-related pages lived in SiliconValley; there was MadisonAvenue for advertising-related pages, and so on. Looking back, this was fairly brilliant — cutesy, sure, but smart. Eventually, as Yahoo! merged more and more of GeoCities into its operation, this convention was eventually dropped in favor of shorter URLs using the Yahoo! ID.)

Between the lime background, scrolling marquee for a title, and animated GIFs, “The Ultimate Windows Launchpad” was exactly what you would expect from a novice’s first attempt at publishing a Web page. Even worse, I didn’t know HTML then — I had thrown the page together in FrontPage Express, which came along for the ride in the Internet Explorer 4.0 package. Yes, I got started by being a prototypical “n00b” that most experienced Web developers make fun of today.

And thus we run into one of the few regrets in my life — namely not keeping a copy of this old page intact. Who would have guessed its impact it would have on my journey? The earliest copy of the site on archive.org is from early 1999, after I had shortened the name to “The Windows Launchpad” and given it a more sophisticated table-based layout in a bid to impress the ladies. (Here’s all archive.org has for The Windows Launchpad on GeoCities.)

Of course, I eventually outgrew GeoCities as I started looking for more power user features. During the summer of 2000 I moved the site off GeoCities and onto a rather sophisticated free hosting service from Freedom2Surf (which they managed to run ad-free for a year), where I would eventually begin transforming the site into a message board, which actually did well for a couple years before my interest faded.

As the Web evolved, GeoCities fell from prominence and just became another Yahoo! property and the butt of many jokes from experienced Web developers who, more likely than not, got started on GeoCities or similar services with the “n00b” stigma attached (such as Angelfire and Tripod). Ultimately, more evolved Web services like WordPress and Tumblr, which come prepackaged with great designs, were the downfall of GeoCities and similar services. As ReadWriteWeb notes, people want a professional-looking Web presence, even at the novice level. GeoCities just couldn’t keep up.

Sure, we now have Tumblr, WordPress, and the like roaming the ‘net — but I have to tell you, there was something endearing about Web rings, lousy HTML, and the learning experience of it all that today’s starry-eyed 8th graders are more than likely going to miss out on. It’s a bummer. GeoCities’ hosting of “The Ultimate Windows Launchpad” ultimately proved to serve as the launchpad to a career, and for that it receives my deepest appreciation.

Today was a damn good day. While I was only able to have a limited number of guests, I was still able to invite my friends from all over the world thanks to things like Qik, Brightkite, Flickr, and Twitter. You can see my day as it happened on Brightkite, a couple videos of reasonable quality from the floor of the arena on Qik, and more photos like the ones above on Flickr.

Many thanks to everybody for your congratulations and well wishes — they mean so much.

Today is the culmination of a six-year journey which started with expectations (of graduating by 2006 with a computer science major) that were completely different from what ended up happening (graduating in late 2008 with a journalism major).

I have so many different drafts about this day in my WordPress queue, most of which may never see the light. One draft is a pseudo-inspirational look toward the future. One draft is a very detailed personal account of these last few years, with all the pain and joy and passion interlaced together; but today is not the day to rehash those things. I’m not sure when that day will be; perhaps it will be in my memoirs down the road. Either way, while time heals a lot of wounds, it’s still going to take a while before I can publicly talk about some of those struggles that ultimately molded me into who I am today.

So, for the first time in a long time, I’m at a loss for words. The timing couldn’t be worse, too, as this is my thousandth published post to this blog.

Perhaps it’s the relief of passing this milestone, which I made harder on myself to achieve but ultimately did.

Perhaps it’s the realization that just a few years ago, I was near rock-bottom, nearing financial and emotional ruin, drifting through life with no direction and a lack of passion, wondering “what next?” and “why me?”

Perhaps it’s my continued amazement at how a small epiphany during a trip to Atlanta with my dad in 2005 — a highlight of my life in and of itself — put my floundering life back on track, with renewed purpose and vigor the likes of which I had never felt before, wondering “what can I do next?” and “lucky me!”

Perhaps it’s the excitement of the possibility of what I can do with my life now that I’m degreed. Or, maybe that prospect is overwhelming me.

I’m not sure. Again, I can’t put it into words.

In the end, perhaps I’ll approach this like I have the last two years since my return to school, which I announced incredibly non-chalantly in August 2006: One day at a time.

Yes, it took a few more of those “one days” than I probably would have liked, but the end result is that much sweeter, and I wouldn’t trade what I’ve learned, both inside and outside a classroom, for anything in the world. It was worth the extra time, because I found what I love. That, folks, is what it’s all about.

To the Class of 2008, regardless of how many days are actually left in the year.