I first went online in late February 1996, then spent more than a month converting my screenplay formatting software from the DOS version of WordPerfect to Windows.

So March was hairy. But in April, after I put up a website to sell the software, I thought it might be fun to start an online diary. I designed a cute little "Top|Up|Down|End" link-navigation system and started writing.

Blogs didn't exist back then. Nobody was really keeping an online diary, because you had to know HTML. And code geeks generally avoid writing. They like to code.

In December of 1997, 20 months later, the term "weblog" was coined. It was subsequently shortened to "blog."

In July of 1999, the first automated blogging software finally appeared.

By September of 2001, I figured everyone and his dog had jumped onto the blogging bandwagon, so it was no longer cool to be a blogger. Plus, I was burned out. I had to quit.

But in February of 2004, I signed up for Blogger and never looked back.

Until now. ;-)

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PS: I taught a Blogging 101 course for the University of California in 2005, and Palm Springs Life magazine hired me as their online-editor-slash-in-house-blogger soon after. That lasted for only a year, but it was fun.

PPS: My screenplay formatting software eventually evolved into this family of 10 free downloads that won a $3,333 prize.