Bob Wertz

Thanks to the librarians at the University of South Carolina, I have a scan of my 1997 honors thesis. It’s not terrible… and it is full of fun 1997 acronyms, like UPN, CNNSI, ESPNET and CNET.

Posts in the “Then” category were originally shared on my “Now” page.

First up, Happy birthday Norah! My oldest turns 20 today. Two decades is a long time and so much has happened… and yet, it feels like it has flown by.

I’ve seemed to settle in writing these updates every other week instead of weekly. Since they are mostly for me, I going to be okay with it. But if you happen to be reading along, just a heads up.

Feels

• Excited. I’m excited for the Christmas season. Yes, most people started planning for Christmas early, but we have three family birthdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hard to focus on Christmas when we are still celebrating birthdays!
• Proud. Of my kiddos. All three of them are growing up to be amazing people. I love them so much, but I’m also incredibly proud of who they are. I’m also very proud of...
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My favorite eight pictures from 2024.

I want to find a copy of my 1997 honors thesis.¹ I wrote it on a Power Mac 7500 in Word Perfect 3.5 on the classic Mac OS 8. It probably fit on a floppy drive, but I know I saved a backup copy of it on a Zip drive. At some point, I decided that I needed to move things off the Zip disks and consolidated all of my old files from college onto DVDs. I’m not 100% sure where that DVD is now, but I’m guessing it’s in my attic. Even if the disc hasn’t been ruined by the South Carolina heat, I don’t actually have a DVD drive to read it.

And then I remembered that the University of South Carolina library has the official copy in the off-site annex. I can request that they pull the physical copy for me to review in...

Listening to a podcast this week and I realized that my 1997 honors thesis about media branding in the age of cable TV and the internet is actually relevant as media branding continues to change. I might dust it off and turn it into a history of media branding instead.

You say “Bless you” when someone sneezes. My son wanted to come up with something to say when someone coughs. We’ve settled on “May God have mercy on your soul.” 🤣

I started watching F1 this season with the Canadian Grand Prix and adopted McLaren as my team. So cool to see them win the Constructors’ Championship. And overall, such a great season for me to start with… so much fun to watch.

Subscribed to The Verge’s new subscription plan. I think $7/month is a reasonable price for everything that the site offers and I’m happy that I can support quality tech journalism.

Enjoyed Skeleton Crew last night. It does feel like a Goonies + Star Wars mash up. They’ve built an interesting premise and there seem to be some interesting avenues for them to explore. Looking forward to rewatching it with my son.

I think professional wrestling might have more consistent rules than Formula 1.