In the late 90s, I had the good fortune of landing the www.sjoerd.org domain, and had a blog of sorts before blogs were even remotely on anyone's radar. It was a place where I just wrote whatever struck me as interesting, funny, annoying or any combination of these. I will probably mention sjoerd.org lovingly at times, perhaps even pine a bit here and there. This post should serve to give you a wee bit of background on where the heck the pining comes from.
By the way, STOP. Don't go there now -- some unmentionable ass-clown which I have the distinct misfortune of sharing my first name with has reserved the domain after I procrastinated just a wee bit too much and let my registration lapse. Hence the pining, and by the way... guess why I locked this particular domain name down for a decade.
I went .org because .com was already taken. And besides, I was not going to bother this guy, he's got a nice site going. If you truly want to see something infuriating (well, infuriating for me, that is; I can totally understand that you would care quite a bit less about a domain name that happens to be my name than yours truly and owner of said name would), go look at sjoerd.com.
No, I will not link to it. Are you nuts? I need to get this clown traffic like I need another hole in my head. However, through the magic that is the Windows Clipboard, I can show you what I am talking about without you ever actually having to go to this little abomination, this epitomy of not having a clue what to do, not having a single thing to say, and not a clue on how to say it if there was something.
Unfortunate indeed.
Even more fun? I contacted both of my namesakes, explaining my situation, explaining what I was trying to do, explaining that it would be such a sad and continuing case of squatting out of spite for them to not relinquish their hold on these domains they had not done anything with for such disgusting amounts of time. Well, that's about the gist of what I said, just imagine it being far, far more diplomatic than that. Of course they reacted in a caring, adult fashion: they both offered to sell me the domain. Without naming an amount.
Now, far be it from me to call ridicule upon people that would do such a thing.
Here's the paragon of ingenue, the veritable fountain of wisdom, wit and daily refreshing insights still sitting on sjoerd.com.
Here's the truly deserving heir apparent to the domain I lovingly held for years.
It has just occurred to me that I just about nuked any chance I ever had to obtain either domain.
Ah well.