Bloggy-posties
GR Corolla: Toyota Dispatches a Fixer
Mar 15, 2024
When I arrived at Toyota-Volvo of Keene, New Hampshire, there was already a palpable buzz amongst the service staff about the man I have been scheduled to meet there. The wheels of warranty-repair justice turn slowly, but the tech that Toyota have dispatched for me is the man they call when no one knows what to do, he is a fixer, he is the Wolf; I am half expecting Harvey Keitel to walk in the door.
This did not end the way I expected.
The Awkward Interlude: Lyza.com 2023
Mar 13, 2024
For several years my pank content machine sat idle, ravenous. Cyclical guilty impulses dogged me: I should do something about my site, I should update my site. Finally, a forcing function.
Vignette: Mud Season Choreography, Love, and Driving
Mar 12, 2024
In which I suffer an irrepressible need to take the Grafton Road because it’s perfect. To Grafton village, seven miles, then back, and then I do the trip again. The first pairing to set the lay of the road conditions in my mind, the second to fly. Window just cracked to hear the sound of the car, keeping just tight enough on curves not to throw myself into the forest.
Lyza.com came back with aplomb from its almost-nothingness in the summer of 2015, decked in pank. It was hand-crafted. Blisteringly fast. Exquisitely tuned. And fundamentally boring for lack of any real content.
I used to say anything to everyone. That ended in the spring of 2011 and I flipped inside myself, pausing for a few years and then reducing my entire site to the minimal thing possible when I couldn't avoid it anymore.
The Beautiful Years: Lyza.com 2010-2011
Feb 28, 2024
For several months in 2009 I developed a feverish hobby: meticulously crafting a visual design for Lyza.com down to the last pixel. Then I applied that lush coat of glamor to my existing content. I call these the Beautiful Years.
I dreaded this post in the series about Lyza.com’s history because I thought I’d be describing the site’s embarrassing Dark Ages, two years when my content wasn’t hosted on my own site, followed by a couple more years of something that looked even less considered than an afterthought. I had it backwards.
With Celeste!: Lyza.com 2003-2005
Feb 16, 2024
Basically I wrote a bunch of blog software. Again. But I still wasn’t calling it that because I was intent on reinventing a galaxy full of wheels. Tada! It’s Celeste! Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
The Early Glimmers: Lyza.com 1997-2003
Feb 15, 2024
The Internet Archive took its first snapshot of Lyza.com on March 31, 2001. I could call the time between 1997 and this 2001 crawl the Dark Ages of Lyza.com, but I don't. Instead, during those years, everything was wonderful and ugly.
Lyza.com Turns 27 this Year
Feb 9, 2024
I registered Lyza.com on the 18th of May, 1997. I don’t know that because I wrote it down, or because it has enough weight with me that I remembered it on its own accord. I know because an ICANN lookup today told me so.
I made oak angels today at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, on a day trip with my friend DG. I just dropped down in the duff and scribbled my limbs for a while.