Eight to ten years ago I maintained a personal web-site at my university. All faculty and students had web accounts available on some Unix servers, and I took advantage of this to learn HTML. My personal site contained a number of pages, ranging from personal/scholastic/professional news to pictures of my self/friends/family to my initial attempts at learning Java and Applets. Aspects of this site made up what was essentially a blog (though the term had not been used at that time).
When I graduated and left school I retained access to my old accounts, but after a few months my updates had become scarce. Eventually I stopped updating and told the department's sysadmin (who was a friend) that I didn't need the accounts anymore. Since then my presence on the internet has been limited to consumer and the occasional producer on various forums. Even this level of community participation was limited to technology sites like Slashdot and The Server Side.
Until I stumbled across JoeUser I had not considered maintaining a personal blog. The quality writing, diverse personalities, and community activity on JoeUser has convinced me to return to the personal aspect of the world-wide web. Like most people here (I believe) I do not plan on writing for mass consumption, but rather to gain the satisfaction that one can garner from expressing one's opinion and clearing one's mind.
So here goes!