History of the Tree

Greytree.com has been, at any given time, my personal portfolio of Web sites I've amateurishly constructed, an attempt at a Web design business multiple times, a source of my spouting off about the world around me before the term "blog" came into fashion, and a few other Web-centric functions that I honestly can't remember anymore.

I've owned this domain since 1997, long before anyone really knew whether this "Internets" thing would take off. I figured it'd be cooler to have a "blahblah(a)greytree.com" e-mail address than what I was using at the time, which was something offered by whichever dial-up service I was using at the time (AOL, Ameritech, Prodigy, who knows) or Geocities.

Like any novice who learns a bit of rudimentary HTML code in the beginning, I fancied myself a "Web designer" and attempted to offer my services commercially. Of course, the problem with that notion is that I'm not a good sales person. I can't stand it.

I got some business coming in here and there over the years via word-of-mouth, but in the end, it turned out to be just like fixing people's computers: the after-care ended up being much more work, and the initial amounts I charged to make it worthwhile just wasn't. And of course, since I wasn't willing to give up the steady paycheck of my day-job, I did't put a heck of a lot of effort into sales.

Which is to say "none."

So greytree.com has reverted back to being my personal site again, as well as being the consolidation of the multitude of personal sites I've had over the years that spread out over several interest fields: computers, hockey, Star Wars, and whatever hairbrained scheme or idea I'd come up with at any given moment.

What does "Greytree" Mean, anyway?

As if I couldn't be even geekier than I am, "Greytree" was the name of a long-standing AD&D character I had when I last played, about 15 years ago. It was a simple, two-syllable name that worked for a domain name, and it was registered in 1997. I've been slowly snapping up other Greytree TLDs since (I had to wait out the registration on "graytree.com" for about a year before the owner let the registration lapse; he wasn't doing anything with it anyway).