Happy Birthday, File it Under!

Today File it Under turns 1-Year old. It's our first blogiversary. [Keep reading to the bottom... you may like what you see.] A brief history of File it Under June 4th, 2004 - The inaugural post. Typical of your average blogger indeed. File it Under was originally called... something else. Hoodlumman's Commentary or something tool-tastic. It was created to comment almost exclusively on the "controversial" stock-exchange (since mothballed and all-but-abandoned) Terrorxchange.com , heretofore recognized as the 'TX'. All members of this blog - Tom, Rob, Darius and myself met via the TX and it's message board. Sporatic posting ensues during the summer of 2004. FIU comes close to being shuttered and abandoned. On October 7th, 2004 FIU underwent a format change. The format went from rarely posting about TX stuff to joining in the politics and current events fray. Sitemeter was also added that month so I could track how many times I hit my blog per day. Tuesday, November 4th, 2004... you know it as election day. I call it FIU's early shining moment. I "live-blogged" Texas' electoral votes. However, FIU got a then-to-date record number of hits and more than 10 comments in a single day. I later installed Haloscan to give me comment control and to offer trackbacks. Sadly, though all previous comments (approx. 15 or so) were lost. Tom and I were frequent email exchangers regarding events, blogs and the TX. On December 1st, Tom joined me at FIU. He had his own blog but liked the idea of a group blog. He then instantly inspired the only rule for FIU contributors - No cursing in the large font post titles. Tom added tons to FIU: double the content, more humor and web hosting/internet expertise. About one month later, we considered the idea of more consolidation. This time Rob B. was in our sights. Rob was a fellow TX junkie and he had his own blog, also. FIU wanted access rights to all that funny. After a unanimous 2-0 vote, we offered a non-hostile takeover bid for rights to Rob. He bit accepted. The idea for redesigning the look of FIU was floated by Tom in January. It was agreed to whole-heartedly. Not only did Tom revamp the look of FIU, he went out on his own and locked down our current html address. On January 27th, we pulled up shop from hoodlumman.blogspot.com to fileitunder.com. Before and after - night and day. We (TXers) all read STFU. It was ran by Darius and had lots of excellent, frequent posts on current events with brutal honesty and no pulled punches. Darius also had a steady group of readers, too. Unexpectedly, he went on unannounced blogging hiatus, causing me to email him inquiring his whereabouts. In a very flattering move, he offered an unsolicited request to join Tom, Rob and me at FIU. The honor was ours. On February 7th, Darius joined us. In April, Tom headed to bootcamp. He's rumored to check in August. We've kept his seat warm. There's been a lot in between. Thought provoking posts, humorous posts, moonbat run-ins and lots of weiner jokes. May was a breakthrough month regarding FIU traffic and content. We discovered last month that Rob is a photoshop pimp. Special thanks to Gail and her readers for sharing their time for the occassional FIU post. A big thanks to all who have trackbacked to us on their own (with additional thanks to Wizbang and IMAO for their carnival links and WILLisms.com for the frequent linkage). As a special THANK YOU to all, we've decided to give something back... Cash. Cold hard cash. A $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com to be exact. All you have to do is make some funny - our favorite pasttime. Nothing like a good ol' fashioned caption contest to celebrate a birthday. Yes, their everywhere but this one can win you money and they're something everyone can participate in. Rules - You must have a legit email (to email you the winnings) Employees of FIU and their families are not eligible for the contest... EVERYONE ELSE is No purchase necessary and enter as often as you like The contest will go through Tuesday the 7th with winners posted next Wednesday. Caption this... Howard Dean: the gift that keeps on giving And why not Howard? Have fun and thank you again...