This is what happens when a programmer likes his job so much that its also his hobby!   I'm a programmer by trade... I'd spent 14 years in the Army, and when I got out, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, so I decided to return to school, and try to make a living doing what I liked to do anyway... which ended up being a pretty good idea, I think.

RIGHT: An early version of my website, from 2001

I started my website in 1995.  Its hard to remember, but the "World Wide Web" wasn't available to the public until mid-1994 or so... and wasn't widely distributed.  Most folks hosted BBS's, which quickly faded once the "web" caught on, but at the time I started my site, the whole idea of having a personal website was pretty new.

I started it with the goal of keeping my family up to date on what I was up to... I had moved across the country from them, and I'd not done very well with the letter-writing thing.  Most of them were on America Online, which had started allowing folks to browse the web using its interface, and I thought I could put something out there that they could get to, which would be "cool", and it would let me practice, learn, and have fun... all while letting them see for themselves what I was doing. 

So, this is a pretty old website... Its changed domain names a few times, and I've used a few different hosting companies, but I've kept at it, and now its very much a part of "me".  Its been a great hobby!

Most personal websites seem to have a couple of pages of pictures of the family, or a blog of rants and musings by the person who owns the site... I also have those things on this site, but there's quite a bit more than that, as I'm sure you may have noticed...  My primary goal of my site is still to keep my family - most of whom live across the country from me - up to date as to what's going on in my corner of the world.  But I also like to have fun, and share interesting tidbits I pick up or run across... so the site has become quite large over the years.

About... ME
Here are some (Mostly) Current Pictures of me.

Want to find out what's new?  Here's a list of recent Changes that I've made to the site.
 

At the top left of each page, you'll see a header that includes a set of "tabs"... 

Mouse over a 'tab' and you'll get that section's submenu. 

Remember : every node on the menu is a link... even the headers.  From there, you can easily get to anywhere in my site...

I changed the layout a bit over the years to try to make it easier to find stuff, and to make it easier to maintain and keep up to date.  The Briefly, Tadpole, and Currently sections are now all integrated into one general area, to save space, and improve readability.

 

I added a "My Stuff" and "Where do I go from here" block to make it easier to get to places, and for folks having problem with the menus (Safari had trouble rendering the menu items for some reason)

The Make it mine link will let you set up the three links and the zip code for the time and weather widget.  It uses cookies to keep the information, so its only as good as your cookie settings.

Rest assured, this website didn't happen all at once... Its been growing since my very first shot at a personal website in 1995, shortly after I got out of the Army, with a set of 6 pages.  At first, when I added new pictures or whatever, I'd just overwrite the pages I already had.  After a short time, my cousins started to ask about pictures I'd had up there before, and I got an idea... I started adding additional pages, and turned the original pages into "landing pages", adding links to the related content for that section.  That ended up turning the site into a growing log of sorts and it's grown from there as sort of a personal, and now family, journal.

Timeline of Domain Names this site has used:

1994 - The World Wide Web becomes available to the public.

1995 - www.ados.com/~jimb - Hosted in a "Tilde folder" by my ISP.  They went out of business sometime
          after 2001 or so, and now their domain belongs to a document management company

1996 - GobleCreek.com - Hosted by a service out of Detroit.  I liked the name, but folks had trouble spelling
          it.  I moved away from Goble, Oregon, and the creek it was named after, so it didn't make sense.  I
          still own the domain name, though.

2003 - "JimBesso.com" - I used my name as the domain name for a while, but after a bit, I ended up not liking
          that idea as much as I thought I would, so I changed it... I kept ownership the domain, though, in
          case I ever decide to run for office or something.  :-)

2004 - MyPNW.com - I liked this name over the years, and I'd checked on it.  It was either this, or
          "MyNWLink", which ended up being taken when I changed the name.

2005 - MyPNW.us - The Detroit hosting company had a "We'll never raise your rate as long as you're a
          customer" thing going when I signed on.  They did a great job for a long time, but then I guess they
          were moving on to something else, and I started running into more and more difficulty, and was getting
          less and less help. I moved to GoDaddy.com as my hosting service (they're awesome!), but when I did,
          I couldn't move my domain name over because my old hosting service had it locked, and wouldn't
          answer my emails, so I changed it to ".US", which caused some problems until the .COM dropped off,
          and I was able to repurchase the MyPNW.com domain name through GoDaddy... they both work,
          now, but I'm more used to the ".us" extension, and I like it better anyway so I just forward the ".com"
          stuff to it too.

          No plans to move the site to another name... :-)

Ever wonder what is the oldest page on the site?  Its this one,  "The Oregon Coast", which was added in early 1996.  I scanned some pictures I took using a hand scanner (remember those?), and posted them online.  That page took FOREVER to download back then!!!  I had some others with it, but I deleted them over the years, but that one has remained.  I've modified it to fit the latest version of the "template", but the content hasn't changed.

Over the years, the site has gotten quite large.  I guess it helps (?) that I'm not limited by a "theme" (some folks, for instance have sites devoted to a particular thing, like Microwave Towers (see here)... Ultimately the goal of my website is to keep my family up to date with what's going on "way over here" on the left side of the country.  Its become a sort of "Digital Scrapbook", if you will.  A lot of things go into the site - I enjoy Family, Travel, Taking Pictures, History, Programming, Science, Humor, Weather... you get the idea.
 

More stuff about my site....

How big IS this site, anyway?  Well, its actually kind of surprising!  I am as amazed as anyone!  Unfortunately, I didn't really start archiving things until about 1997, and then not very diligently, so things from the early days are largely lost.  Over the years, I've updated pages to use the newest format, and in 2003, I figured out that I should make the new versions "compatible" with the older ones, but I missed some here and there, I'm sure... if you run into one that looks particularly bad, please let me know.

These numbers are from FrontPage's Site Summary Reports, and from my ISP's Usage Reports.

These numbers were garnished on December 2008:

Selected File info:

• 4,568 web pages
• 43,552 Graphic files (jpg and gif...)
• 3,503 MB of space  (3.5 GB)
        (If you think that's big, UC Berkley estimated in April of 2007 that the WWW held about 92,000 terabytes!)

In 2008 My ISP reports the following info:

• 5,200 Page requests per week, on average
• 1,900 Visitors per Month, on average
• 725 Unique Visitors (meaning a lot of folks come back), on average
• 12 page views per session, on average
   
• Top 5 Search Phrases that led to my site in June 2007: 
       Pictures of Mt Rushmore  (on search.yahoo.com)
       Golden Gate Bridge Pics  (on Search.yahoo.com)
       Where can i find pictures of the seattle aquarium (on www.ask.com)
       Why we have earth day   (on www.google.ca)
       Deception Pass Pictures (on search.msn.com)
• Funniest search? 
       town welcome signs   (on ie.search.msn.com) - I'm not the only one!  :-)

Some Technical Stuff 

OK... in 2005, it was estimated that there were about 11.5 BILLION indexed pages (and some estimate that more than a  TRILLION that weren't indexed!).

If you viewed just the indexed pages, at a rate of one page for one second, and went to the next, it'd take you 133,000 days, or more than 350 YEARS to view them all... NOT COUNTING the pages that were added after you started - you'd NEVER finish!

I think that sort of puts my 4,500-someodd pages in perspective... :-)

Random Tidbits about MyPNW.us

• The page content is limited to 900 pixels wide, to allow for the resolution of my mom's computer (she can't see very well ). 
• This site looks best on at least 1024x768, with at least 32,000 colors.  The better the settings, the better the experience...
• The site is hosted by http://www.godaddy.com...  they do an awesome job... I've been with them since November of 2005, and I'm VERY happy with them.

I've used - and use - a variety of applications to develop my website: