At long last, Rob!

I can finally call Rob by his name when referring to his online persona.

Something that only my very long-time readers know is that the blogosphere would have caught up with Rob eventually no matter what—the man is talented, smart, personable, and innovative—but when Rob first arrived in the blogosphere, the only person he knew online was yours truly. He emailed me to let me know that he had started blogging. I linked to his first efforts, and emailed Glenn Reynolds that there was a new kid in town, and he was one to watch.

There’s a new kid in town. And I know him, so I’m throwing him some link-love. Go have a look at The Truth Laid Bear, a man who is finding his blog voice. (And the fact that he has blackmail pictures of me has nothing to do with my recommendation, I swear.) He has some interesting things to say about Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan. Okay, and me, too. (But that has nothing to do with my having blackmail pictures of him, I swear.)

Glenn agreed with me. Rob’s star rose in the blogosphere quickly, and he wrote an article about BBSes that was published by Salon and widely disseminated before the bits were dry on his first blog.

I met Rob in 1986, when we were both BBSing at several sites in New Jersey. He was friends with a programmer that wrote BBS software and ran his own BBS that my friends had all found and liked. My friends talked me into buying a modem and the rest, as they say, is history.

Programming Guy was your typical unsocialized programmer whose only friends at that time were other programmers at work, and some really smart kids like Rob. (Side note about Programming Guy: He’s now happily married. My friends and I left a trail of socialized programming geeks behind us in the late 80s and 90s. We helped them see that there is life outside of computers.)

So although Rob was just a cub when we met, that was over 20 years ago, and he’s not a cub any longer. And I’m nearing a milestone birthday next month, which is as close as I will come to admitting my age online until the weekend of my bat mitzvah.

But back to the subject at hand: Rob took his opportunity and ran with it. He was smart enough to invent and develop the TTLB ecosystem, and then all of the great things that grew out of his contacts and ingenuity. And now he’s off and running with a new company, because the money people discovered what I knew years ago: Rob is a great and talented guy, and he’s going to go places.

It’s true that he has a blackmail photo of me and a man who is now in the CIA. (Come to think of it, the blackmail is on the CIA guy, not me.) But hey, who doesn’t have a picture of themselves from the 80s that could be misconstrued by the casual viewer? I lost contact with CIA guy. I’ll never lose contact with Rob. And now, he’s out in the open as a regular guy with a real name. No more pseudonyms!

I don’t really have any blackmail photos of Rob, but I have a great picture of me sitting between Rob and Citizen Smash at a restaurant near the Pentagon in January. That was the day I drove up to have lunch with Rob and Scott after hearing that Rob was in DC for the week. That’s also the day I met the CIO of Company in Northern Virginia, which started me on the path toward my current employment. So in a way, Rob is responsible for my landing my current job. He got me to get my butt up to Northern VA. And a couple of weeks after the meeting, Company landed a contract that needed a web person, fast—and there I was, with my mad web skilz going unused.

Which is a roundabout way of saying, all this, and he helped me get a job, too—without even realizing it. The man is talented and lucky.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Rob Neppell, my old friend. Glad to finally be able to call you by name in a post. Mazel tov on the new company, and continued good luck and prosperity. And nu, you could call me once in a while… I have to find out from Hot Air that you’re no longer using a pseudonym?

Okay, that’s enough guilt. I’m so proud of him.