2001 was a year that called for much reflection. It wasn't just the bad ending, the 9.11 disaster, terrible as it was. It was the whole year, with big economic and political changes, sociological and climate changes... It seems that any subject you could get a PhD in was changing. It was a year for re-evaluating in almost every way.

This all caused me to do a bit of reflection, myself. What will I do if I get laid off again, if I can't find a job as a web developer? What's happening to our country? What is it about my life that I'm worried about preserving?

The conclusion this all led me to was as follows: if I were to create a shoebox diorama of my life, it wouldn't be me alone in there. It is the people I'm fortunate enough to know, the incredibly talented, diverse and interesting group of people I'm lucky enough to call my friends, that would be in there with me. That's what would make my life worth looking at. That's what makes it fun to live.

Almost immediately upon reaching this conclusion (which shouldn't have been such a revelation, but we do sometimes tend to overlook the obvious), I felt a need to pull them all together, in some sense. Many of my friends and loved ones don't know each other, and I wanted to show them off. I suppose I really just wanted to reach out and have some kind of deeper contact with them, and to give them contact with each other.

And so, I determined to put together a zine. I was reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius at the time, and figured if Dave Eggers could put together a zine with his friends, so could I. The main advantage I would have is that I wouldn't be trying to profit from it -- not monetarily anyhow.

That's pretty much how it all began. I sent out a mass e-mail, received an amazing response, and am ready to show my friends off to the world. I hope you find them as interesting as I do.