With the recent return to the posting section here, it reminded me how the structure of the blog has been in need of some effort to catch up on the changes of time and WordPress, but, importantly as well, just the maintenance of the information presented here for viability as sources.

I spent about an hour a few nights ago working my way down the blogroll links. It evoked some interesting thoughts.

– Some of the blogs are gone. As I pondered that, the recollections of the resaon for interaction and the content of those sites came back, some in more detail that others, and many I found as a result of work with the Soldier’s Angels projects, particularly of note being the Project ValOUR IT that provided laptops with voice activated software to our injured troops.

– Some blogs have had their domains purchased by others and now, while the link is live, it’s nothing related to the one I linked to some many years ago.

– Some blogs are present, but, the last entries are years ago, some have the last post indicating the posting had come to an end and this was a digital goodbye, while others are frozen in time.

– And the rest are still there, some plugging along, still posting new items, but the tenor has changed with the World and history’s diffrences from the time when we were very actively engaged in a large sacle effort to combat an enemy with conventional and special forces.

On one hand, we have come to believe, what is posted on the net, stays on the net and never dies. That’s true and false, depending on whether a site stays active. Be it Facebook, or a personally owned and managed blog, if it even drops it’s registartion, the content, unlike that of a hard copy document, is gone. Unless someone has diligently copied the full text/media to their site, then the link gets “broken” and that snippet of detail so linked is gone.

I’ll caveat this with the site of archive.org, where, if they have crawled a site, you may be able to find that old info you seek. I just went ant looked, for the remembrance of it all, for the well read, well written, pretty much my favorite blog of all time, Neptunus Lex. It’s long since been off the air, and thankfully not hijacked for the purposes of leeching off his massive daily traffic and backlinks. The link posted is to the snapshot taken by the recording process on the day after Capt Lex had “died with is boots on.” March 6th, 2012, an afternoon “hop” to train our future warriors in the air got enmeshed in the bad weather and he died trying to land his F-21 in high winds and pretty much no visibility. Even as recently as a few weeks ago, I told someone who’s grandson wants to fly that it was a shame Lex’s blog wasn’t still there, for it, even without his personal advice to a specific request, was a massive archive of career guidance. So, the prior comment on it all going away isn’t completely true, but it can be if the “Way Back Machine” didn’t get around to your site as frequently as needed to make your content immortal. I have noted that when using the site for some business work. Certainly the well traveled sites will be there.

In the scanning of the links that were active, I gleaned some information, one bit being Maj Chuck Zigenfuss, the man who was the inspiration and first ValOUR IT user retired from the Army in January of this year. He was one of those exceptional leaders I met along the way in the MilBlogging world, and I suspect he was that to his troops and his commanders. His work, along with Beth’s has provided over 6000 laptops to those in need, and still does today.

SteelJaw Scribe sill presents news from his world and provides analysis of the geo-political side, too. Cdr Salamander’s site is probably the most active MilBlog going. One of the leaders in the Milblogging world, GreyHawk, who’s site was the Mudville Gazette, is one of those sites that has been taken over. Matt Burden of Black Five is still there, and some basic posts are being done.

Enough of the reminiscing. I will be cleaning up the no longer useful links/sidebar entires to begin, then I will go hunting a more up-to-date theme. For those who have been at this across the versions of WordPress 1.x to the 4 series, know this isn’t just a few clicks of effort. On top of that, I need some housekeeping in the main content world, to clean up little glitches that have occured as I moved the main data table forward. For over 1300 posts, there will be some detail work needed.

Anyhow, blogs are not forever (sort of), so I’ll make my final point: It’s it’s worth hanging on to, pull it out and ant least create a book out of it, even if it’s just a big Word document to be passed along.