A year ago today my first post went live on RobotSkirts. It may not seem like a major event since this blog is neither high traffic nor high volume, but it was the catalyst for most everything that happened the following year. Some time in early April last year I answered an ad for Hack-A-Day bloggers. Since I had been blogging daily up to that point, I had some nice example posts to show my work. On May 7th, I graduated from the University of Nebraska with a BS in mechanical engineering and my first post for Hack-A-Day went up. I wrote the feature post for each day and worked full time at UNL controls (great job). Blogging went fine and I got to go to Defcon where I met my boss for the first time (not really realizing that most bloggers hadn’t). In early August I became Lead Blogger at Hack-A-Day. I had moved out of my apartment and was commuting to work which was putting a lot of pressure on me. I decided to leave the UNL controls job and start pursuing a full time mechanical engineering job. I also moved in with my college roommate Frosty who was working as a mechanical engineer at Case New Holland in Grand Island. Fabienne was brought on board to do how-tos at Engadget with me. In October, Weblogs, Inc. sold to AOL and I became the how-to editor at Engadget (up to then I was just contributing). I kept working for ENG and HAD for the next few months, but engineering opportunities seemed few and far between. The blogs were going fine and HAD was turning in some impressive numbers. On my birthday last Thursday I was offered a full time editing position at AOL. It’s an incredible opportunity and I jumped on it. Tomorrow I’m moving back to Lincoln where I’ve rented a two bedroom apartment that I’ll use as a home/office. I guess what I’m trying to say is: Happy Birthday Neal and thanks for encouraging me to blog.