naked baby photos

By Todd Stadler · Wednesday, December 12, 2001 6:20pm

I recently discovered that Google allows one to search Usenet (newsgroup) archives all the way back to 1981, making it a bit like an internet Way-Back Machine.

It's interesting being able to read content - both banal and historical - that dates to well before the invention of the web, especially given that web pages themselves are quite ephemeral. Rarely can you view the way a website used to look or find content that was once on a page but has since moved.

But mainly I'm intrigued by my ability to read my old posts. I first started posting on newsgroups in the summer of 1993, after I graduated from high school. I was such a newbie dweeb back then, chock full of equal parts hubris and ignorance (it's okay - I can talk ill of myself back then because I've turned into such an upstanding specimen).

The whole experience is like finding a videotape of myself as a youth, and all the fascination and embarrassment that come with seeing how I've changed.

Of course, as this web site can attest, I'm still not above making a fool of myself on the internet for all to see. But in a more visually pleasing way.