I don't remember the exact day I signed up. It was 1999 or early 2000. I'm sure evhead pointed it out to me. I was probably in Pyra's dark basement office in San Francisco when I joined. A few months later I would be working with mathowie on Blogger and the MetaFilter server would reside in that office.
It's hard to remember, but back then the media didn't care about weblogs or the personal web. We had to cover ourselves. And people who cared about those things tended to gather at MetaFilter. They were our people. Not necessarily fans, but people who cared about what we were working on. They cheered on our successes and they held our feet to the fire for decisions we made. I didn't participate much at MetaFilter in those days, but having that concerned audience was an important part of building those early tools for blogging.
A Snark Free Post
Now that I work for MetaFilter it's tough to pick out a single fondest memory. For the past five years MetaFilter has been one of the biggest parts of my life. Most of my favorite memories are probably behind-the-scenes in Matt's not-so-dark office in his house. But I do have a favorite thread. Last year my wife and I had our second child and someone posted about it on MetaTalk: pbaby! In those few days after the birth when we were both extremely exhausted and stressed, we took turns reading the latest comments there out loud to each other and laughing. I'm not sure I was able to say thanks for that at the time, but thanks for that.
