As a member of the forgetful class, I often have to look up things I used to know.

Used to be you looked in a book and the info was there


Same info

always

Now when I look up things on the internet I often find new info, or better, that the old info was incomplete.

Makes the " mis-remembering" less painful

There have been a few forums / webpages that have gone away, like a blacksmith's forum years ago, you don't know how much you enjoyed them til they are gone!

One of my favorite photo forums went away last month after a few years. It was a Texas based forum for a long time, then expanded to nationwide. Soon the forum became too cumbersome for the management and it closed. A great loss.

well a little bit of good news one of my favorite sites is back up
the Metal Web News
http://www.metalwebnews.com/

My email to Bill Gray the Webmaster bounced, still concerned about him.

Skip,  Reading your post made me realize several things have hit all to once.  Getting more mature, I don't feel like running all over the country anymore, to go find people I used to BS with.    Those more senior than I have been slipping away recently, so there are fewer fires to warm myself around these days.   The price of gas to do the running around has had a lot to do with it too.  That and getting hard of hearing has made setting around the table having coffee in the morning not as much fun when you just can't get the joke anymore.   I find I can sit in a pretty comfy chair,  in my warm house, check into all those disciplines and read what is going on.  Loss of hearing no problem this way.  Now if my ISP would stay connected, and Windows 8 was more easily navigated, I'd be spending more time in the shop, warmer or not. 

It certainly provides a venue to collaborate with some great folks I would otherwise not have access to.

  I don't really have a lot of opportunity to share who I really am and what I really love with very many people here in town. The web is my window to the world. 
  When you get down to it, the number or people who like what you like? Is a pretty small percentage, and you find like minded others across the globe because of the web.

  I "lost" one very small group of friends this year. I called it the old house gang, I am sure it had a real name.  But it was people who lived in and lived with, old houses.  A couple were "entitled" types, living in zillion dollar restored Victorian mansions  ("And the servants were 10 minutes late! I was mortified")
so we made fun of them for fun.
   But most of us were regular folks who leaned on each others knowledge and experience to get by. I think it started in '89. Never was feverish traffic.
Just occasional postings and we'd answer. Then quiet for a while more. 
  It never got bigger, just the same small group of folks, year after year. Dependable, until they became like family.

  But this year the woman who hosted it, married another of our group (cute, that part) and moved to Minnesota with him.  She wasn't able to continue, so we tried to go to Yahoo and Facebook and its just too impersonal.
  Not working. People are creatures of habit.
    yours Scott       
   

Scott:

I have a pretty cool screwdriver here, but someone buggered the end so its more of a chisel now.

If I send it to you can you make it back into a screwdriver?

I will include something interesting as payment for your services.

Skip