The James Website

A 2022 Update & Things to Come!

Hello Internet! I realize I haven’t posted anything to my personal blog here in…a while…but that will change soon! I’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes and, most importantly, refining my writing craft. (My professional content has done well, but let’s face it — my previously personal content here has been crap, hence the hiatus). So here’s what’s been up and what’s coming up —

First, I’m one of three hosts in a soon-to-go-live weekly podcast! The first episode of Little Podcast of Horrors hits the interwebs air next month to kick off Halloween. In the meantime, check out our trailer here!

Second, the drought of content here has largely been due to my focus on building up my new freelance writing business over the past two years. I’m proud to say it’s had a humble bit of success and is continuing to grow over at Panetti Tech Insights.

A lot of my recent work has been as a contributing author to ransomware.org, the latest of which was my three-part series on how the zero trust model can be applied as a ransomware defense strategy: Can the Zero Trust Model Prevent Ransomware?, The 3 Principles of ‘Zero Trust’, and Microsegmentation: Trapping Ransomware Before It Can Spread.

Third, I’m slooooowly working on growing my Discord gaming community. It’s being going strong for nearly a decade now (hit me up in the comments here if you’d like an invite).

Fourth, you may recall from my 2019 post, I’m Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, and “Panetti” was Made-Up (one of my better pieces, if I do say so myself), I have never known my father’s identity. My mother took that secret to her grave, and other family members have only been able to offer hypotheses that unfortunately never produced any real leads. That being the case, I finally took the dive and had a DNA test done via Ancestry.

Those DNA results are in and have led me to a whole new list of 1st-2nd cousins. Most of them do not appear in my mother’s side of the tree in any way and the last names are all foreign to me, suggesting likely relation to my mystery father. This has produced the strongest lead I have to date, but I’m still not holding my breath.

I’m happy to say I can die happy never knowing — I live an awesome life as-is and am blessed with financial security so that I have no need nor desire to chase down any possible inheritances or the like. It would just be a nice bonus to meet new family peeps if the opportunity ever arises.

That’s it for now — Going forward, I intend to post more often then every two years. Drafts are in progress!

The James Forums

So…there are forums now:

https://jameswebsite.net/forums/index.php

As some old school friends may know, I’ve had bad luck with this in years long past. I think I can swing this without breaking it this time.  *knock on wood*

It’s gonna take a bit to build up and mold to my purposes, but in the meantime, please jump in and play all you like. The more random user-generated content I have there, the better I can test it out.

In the Beginning…

“If you do not write today, you are not a writer.”

I posted that yeeeeeaaaars ago in the early days of my old Xanga blog.  Remember Xanga?  Of course you don’t.  That’s how long it’s been since I’ve been on the blogging scene.  And I have not been a writer.  (That was said to me by an author I met at a book signing meet-and-greet sorta shindig at a Barnes & Noble in Little Rock around the time I was fresh out of college.)

I’ve been looking for a purpose to resurrect the ol’ JamesWebsite and it occurred to me, lately, I’ve spent way too many hours writing mini-essays in response to friends’ and acquaintances’ Facebook posts, regarding topics I like to think I know something about, because I like sharing and educating.  I went into overdrive with this during the week after the election, much like everyone else did, and in retrospect, it’s given me much-needed pause.  Hours of writing…that will be buried in various Facebook feeds in a matter of days (if that long), never to be seen again.  It’s like writing passionately upon paper, then promptly tossing the paper into the trash.

So here I’ve kicked this up.  I intend to make a habit of writing things worth reading, or, at the very least, worth writing.  I haven’t blogged in years because it felt narcissistic to me. Why would YOU care what I have to say about any topic?  You don’t see any PhD or other letters of importance by my name. I’m just a dude, and a dude who often rambles incoherently on subjects he’s often wrong about.

But hey, if I can redirect my writing time away from the Facebook trashcan and into the concrete foundation of my own site, perhaps at some point, someone will find something worthwhile here.  If not, well, I’ll have fun making this up as I go.