Over the past year or so, I’ve received a couple of emails from folks asking why my blog had disappeared.
Last week, I found a post on Foxite asking “What happened to Kevin Ragsdale?”
My response (edited for this post) was:
I’m still alive, just been a bit less visible over the last couple of years due to personal and professional reasons.
Professionally, I was bored. Bored with my (non-FoxPro, all ASP.NET/VB6/SQL Server) job and uninspired to do anything. I spoke at the Advisor conference in early 2007 and was very disappointed in my preparation and delivery of the sessions (and non-delivery of session materials). Then I spoke at FoxForward in September and was, once again, disappointed in my preparation.
All of this built up and I felt I just didn’t have anything interesting to say anymore.
On the personal side I would have left my stuff online, but I deleted most everything based on my attorney’s advice, during a child support and custody battle.
It looked like the court would side with me, until my ex’s attorney showed up with copies of all of my blog postings, screenshots of my websites, pictures of me speaking at conferences (and enjoying more than a beer, or two, or ten), etc.
My attorney — worthless piece of garbage that he was — folded like frightened child he saw this presentation of my “success.”
According to them, I was a highly successful, world-famous (thanks to the Desktop Alerts) software developer who had taken a lesser job solely to reduce my child support payments.
Of course, I knew I was barely scratching by on the only job I could find in a five-month job search, but according to them I was simply the worst of all deadbeat dads.
Sometimes, an online profile just doesn’t work out.
In 2008, after attending a “town hall” meeting with my congressman, I decided to launch an independent run for Congress. For a few months, all of my energy (except the 40-hours per week at the job) was directed at that — didn’t work out too well, though — I finished 4th out of 4 candidates, behind a guy that said ‘selective breeding is the solution to the health care crisis in America.’
If I ever feel I’ve got something interesting to say, I’ll start blogging again. I have a new job, this time all FoxPro, which has completely rejuvenated me!
So, it all boiled down to some really bad advice and an irrational response to an impossible situation…
Flattered that anyone showed any interest in my thoughts, I spent most of the day Saturday combing through the Wayback Machine and a couple of old external hard drives, picking out as many of the old blog posts I could find, and ended up recreating 74 of the old posts.
As it turns out, “deleting” your “stuff” on the internet can be pretty doggone difficult, thanks to search engine caching and archives.
In the process of searching, I found that an old blog post of mine was used as a reference for a patent Microsoft was granted in August of last year.
Freaky!
Anyway, I’m now working full-time again with Visual FoxPro, and I’m looking forward to sharing my new development experiences with you.
Visual FoxPro ROCKS!!!
