So I get this cryptic email a few days ago asking me to “enable” comments on this site. Like I can just “do” that. Like it’s “so” simple or something.

I get a lot of weird requests for stuff, so this one didn’t phase me too much.

Then, the very next day, another person drops me the word that there are others in the community that think I have a secret agenda by not allowing comments. Apparently, name-calling has been involved. Not very nice name-calling.

Now I’m forced to defend myself.

When I first started this site back in 1985, I still had to use punch-cards to compile each post. Each time I decided to make an entry, I ended up with a stack of punch-cards about three inches thick that I would have to run through an old UNIVAC 1107 that my parents let me keep in the garage. It was a cumbersome process, but it was the way things worked back in the day.

As computer technology advanced, I migrated the site to one of the many Usenet groups that were around back in 1992. This site used to exist at alt.binaries.east-cross, and it existed there for the next decade or so. Traffic was fine, but I began receiving complaints about people not wanting to manually convert ASCII to binary. I wanted to please the public, so I changed again.

This time I took a more traditional approach. The internet bubble had burst and domain names such as tieclasp.com and pimentoloaf.com that once sold for millions of dollars were being dumped on eBay for mere hundreds. So for a little over $700, I was able to win a bidding war and secure the name east-cross.com. It seemed a little pricey at the time, but compared to the electricity it cost to run the UNIVAC 1107, it seemed like a reasonable trade-off.

It didn’t take long to realize that it wasn’t a reasonable trade-off. As a result of rising costs, I was forced to sell my first internet venture, the now-defunct Green Grocer online grocery store, to internet supermarket juggernaut Pea Pod.

This did not coagulate the bleeding of cash, so I was forced to cut back on the hosting service for the site. I found a company to host the site that charged only $0.17 per month or $2.04 a year. As part of the deal, I was given zero SQL databases meaning I could not run the popular “blogger” software that’s all the rage among the young kids nowadays. As a result, the entire site was simple HTML. It was not possible to incorporate comments. There was no secret conspiracy.

Anyway. A lot of people claim that it’s impossible for a company to provide hosting services for so little money and still remain in business. Well, they’re right. Over the summer, my hosting company went out of business forcing me to switch to a much more expensive hosting company. The good news, however, is my monthly payments of $1.66 now allow me to have an unlimited number of SQL databases. Said another way, you can comment to your heart’s delight.

Knock yourself out kids. You’ve earned this.