About This Blog

The Sledgehammer was the name of my first web site, which was run for roughly two years between 1996-1998.  At the time, I wrote on a (mostly) weekly basis, and wrote primarily about technology in general, and the telephone technical support job I was working in at the time in particular.  Although I did not realize it until much later, that particular site was in many ways a proto-Blog, at least in content.  As far as the site itself went, everything was static HTML, written completely in Notepad (which back in those days was something of a point of honor for a website builder, although some of the Unix geeks who preferred to work in VI or EMACS would have turned their nose up at you for that.)

 To be honest, whenever I go back and read the stuff on that site I find myself more horrified than anything, considering the significant quantity of typos and the general sense of cynicism that showed throughout the site.  Although I kept up with the site for quite a while, and even received a couple of plugs in dead tree magazines, the site never really took off the way I had hoped it would.  Eventually I lost interest, and the pages found their way into the great big bit bucket in the sky, but not before the Internet Archive got a hold of them.  If you have a high tolerance for bad writing, the link to the original site can be found to the right.  A few years later I started another Blog over on Blogspot and wrote sporadically over there, but at the time Blogger was a real pain to use, and eventually that site fell by the wayside as well.  At some point, I’ll bring over some of the more interesting posts from there to that particular site, but for now it has pretty much sat untouched for more than three years now.

Which brings us to this site.  Originally, I had intended this site to be something of a reincarnation of the original Sledgehammer, with a focus on technology and computers, but in the six months that I have run this site it has turned into something entirely different.  A significant number of the posts here focus on the everyday absurdity I encounter in my aimless wanderings.  In addition to this, I also post on a number of other subjects, including a series of posts about some of the malls in the Seattle area that I am currently working on.  If I feel like it, I will even delve into technology (and video games in particular) every once in a while.  Pretty much anything goes really, with one exception.

 For the most part, you will not find anything related to politics here.  While I could just pick one echo chamber or another and throw red meat to that particular base ( and probably double my hit count overnight in the process,) I’ve just decided that I don’t want to bother with the whole mess.  Between the last couple of elections I’ve just gotten so sick of politics in general that I have largely reduced my involvement to lurking (and occasionally commenting) on a few political Blogs, and the occasional trip to the ballot box when the need arises.  Based on some of the links I’ve got in my Blogroll and my comments elsewhere you could probably figure out my politics if you wanted to (or I can just make it even easier and say that I’m a right-wing nutcase,) but I don’t exactly plan to bludgeon my readers over the head with the topic.  This isn’t to say that I won’t ever post about politics, but I’ll probably be less likely to be posting anything substantiative about the candidates and their issues than I would be to make fun of their campaign signs.

 Anyway, enjoy, and watch for additional posts that may not show up here at my other blog over at buzz.mn.

 About the Author

 My name is Brian Lutz, and I am currently 29 years old and live in Redmond, Washington.  My day job currently has me working as a contract software tester for the Friendly Neighborhood Evil Empire.  I come from a close-knit family, and I am the oldest of five children (plus three in-laws, two nephews, and way too many Beagles.)  I am still single and would eventually like to do something to fix that, but I’m probably just being way too picky about the whole thing right now.  In my spare time when I’m not working or blogging, I enjoy wandering around semi-aimlessly, and probably play way too many video games for my own good.