Donel. The D stands for Donel. And if you didn’t figure it out, the T stands for Taylor. When put together it spells Taylor Donel Dewey, me.

• Seinfeld is wrapping up it’s final season
• A small start-up called Google emerges out of California
• President Clinton was impeached
• Mr. Kaczynski pleads guilty
• Viagra makes it to the US market (likely fueling spam for the next century)
• Microsoft is taken to court by 20 US states on antitrust charges
• A random kid in Beaverton, Oregon starts High School

In 1998 I was a freshman at the relatively obscure magnet High School whose student population will gladly debate the difference between the terms “nerd” and “geek,” tend to gravitate toward trench coats and graphing calculators, and have memorized Pi to [at least] the 17th place (3.1415926535897932384…). If you went there, you’ll recognize it instantly as NRST (Natural Resources, Science and Technology) or SST (School of Science and Technology).

Back then, Geopages/Geocities was a major player and along with a few other free webpage sites (tripod, angelfire) served as the only way for cash-strapped students to get “into” the web. What I saw happening was the pre-blog “personal” site explosion. Everyone it seemed had a webpage devoted to themselves. What was I to do in such a technology-oriented school? Learn HTML was my answer.

My freshman year of High School I downloaded, printed, and read the entire HTML 4.0 and CSS specifications. My Sophomore year of High School I taught several of my classmates how to design their own websites. Junior year I learned ASP, which I promptly forgot for PHP. Senior year I created a website design business (Zipline Design), but decided that school was more important.

This is but one example of the wide variety of different hobbies, interests, and skills that I’ve gotten myself into and ran with over the last decade or so.

• Amateur radio
• Model rocketry
• Boy Scouts
• Venturing
• Sea Scouts
• WWII Historical Reenacting
• Movie prop manufacturing
• Backpacking
• Mountaineering
• Computer technology
• Blogging
• Podcasting
• Graphic design
• Web design
• PHP web programming
• Photography

Ironically, although it was my environment that taught me HTML, CSS, and PHP my design skills were almost entirely focused on enhancing my experience in the above listed activities. It wasn’t until now that I have a website that is really just about me. Thus, this site is a modern throwback to those old “web 1.0″ personal websites (a la Geocities) — but hopefully with a tad more design sense and significantly less animated GIFs.

Thanks for stopping by, feel free to shoot me an email, or stop by the blog and leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.