Patrick D Ryall has been on the computers for as long as he can remember. Starting with gaming on a Commodore 64 in the 80s I was at the forefront of the technological progress all the way to the present day. I was never doing much at the front line. Just standing around. But I was there.

And so I was on the Internet back when it was still pretty small. Not like super-small, but pretty small. I can remember those days when it was actually hard to find information on a topic you were looking for. Last week I searched Google for “show about a kid in a coma” and I totally found what I was looking for! As easy as that! In the olden days it was not that easy. I feel like I spent years going through Yahoo categories.

But in the end I never used my connection to the Internet to its full potential. If I’d known ahead of time I’d end up trying to create a website with comics and crap, I would have started early and built a fanbase and stuff. Instead, my time on the Internet was spent just looking at stuff that interests me and interacting with people as little as possible. Much like life in general.

The first time I remember joining a forum and participating in conversations and stuff was a board devoted to Quest for Glory Five, while it was in development. Wikipedia tells me that the game came out in 1998, so I figure my time on those boards was 1997ish. When the game finally did come out (not as good as its predecessor it has to be said. QfG4 ruled!) I moved on and left that forum behind. But it was around that time that I was combining my interests in World War Two with Superheroes and I ended up finding a website about World War Two-era Superheroes. Though there I found a link to some comic book message boards where I participated in conversations and became a small part of an online community. To this day, though I don’t post often, I still make sure to check the boards regularly and keep in touch with several people there.

That held me for a few years. But eventually my desire to be online more grew! I teamed up with my peeps and we needed a website! I remember at some point we came into owning LittleChoy.com but I have no idea how. And we never did anything with it, really. Oh well. Then came the Adam West Batcave on Geocities. That lasted for a while, but it was not enough. On Tuesday June 4th 2002 Contains2.com was launched. The Official Nonsense Homepage. There we could write about whatever we wanted and make stupid drawings and all that stuff. And so that is what we did. For a couple years. Eventually Contains2 started to die and I couldn’t hold it together myself so I came to this site, the Book of PDR making my first post on Friday April 28th 2006. And since then I have been here. Very here.

I avoided the Myspace thing, and probably some other social networking things, but I did end up on Facebook around Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 where, for my profile, I described myself as follows: “I’m kind of a weird loser with an immature attitude and delusions of grandeur. I claim to hate humanity, but it’s only because I love them and want them to grow up. I have a high opinion of myself, but no self esteem. I’m a goody-two-shoes that refuses to play by the rules. And I’m also kinda dumb.” and I have not changed it since. While I don’t do that much with Facebook, I am still there and like it.

So what does it all show? Not much. I guess it just proves that my history on the Internet is not all that interesting. So… History Post Done!

A little known fact about PDR is that he was born and grew up. Here is some photographic evidence that this is so. I originally gathered this collection of photos on Contains2 and it seems that, with this being the PDR Museum and all, I should reintroduce it (In two cases I seem to have saved the thumbnails over the actual image, but until I stumble across the photos again, this will do).

So here it is, a roughly chronological photo history of PDR growing up:

Hey! I did the Google-my-name thing again when I got home from work and lo and behold, I win at Google! My Book of PDR is now the third result in Google for “Patrick D Ryall”. Now that may seem like a pretty weak win what with basically nobody ever going to search for my name on the Google except for me, but hey, at least when I do I get top billing.

And this brings me to a topic that I was thinking about at work tonight: Patrick D Ryall. Somehow this January has been a big month for PDR-related talk here on this website. This should come as no surprise because this is a website that has come into existence for, essentially, the sold purpose of being about me, PDR. But really, I hate talking about myself. Mostly, I bore me. I try to make this website be more by PDR than about PDR. I mean sure, there are plenty of posts about PDR up here because, hey, I gotta post something and sometimes thinking stuff up is hard, but it feels somehow like this last month has been more inward gazing than most. Early in the month I decided to document my grocery-buying of the day in all its glory. Then around the middle of the month I, quite unexpectedly, somehow stumbled into a sort of reminiscence of PDR times gone by. And then after that I began fighting for position on search engine results for my own name, more from boredom than anything, but it all adds up. Somehow January 2011 has become the most PDR-centric month on the most PDR-centric website ever!

In the cybernetic world of the Internet time and space seem even more linked than in our normal world. Though January 2011 will soon have rolled away down the hill that is linear time, all my posts from January 2011 will still be on the same spot in the Cyber-World. And so I shall take this little stop on the Internet Highway and build upon it the Museum of Patrick D Ryall.

If ever someone asks me, “What is Patrick D Ryall really all about?” I will be able to reply “Check out January 2011 on his website and you’ll know.” Probably I won’t reply that way, but I’ll be able to.

But just to make sure that the month really does offer all the information needed, I’m going to use up the rest of this post to link to a few older posts that are about PDR.

• PDR’s First Post on This Website
• Some of PDR’s Complaints About Currency-Based Society
• Several Statements PDR Stated
• A Look At Times PDR Has Been In Hospitals
• Some Thoughts On PDR’s Travels In China That One Time
• Some Names PDR Goes By
• PDR’s Thoughts On His Schooling.
• Random PDR Facts

Okay sure, I admit it, this is essentially just a ploy to find something I can post about so I can, as stated, break my previous posting record of 22 posts in May 2006. But it can also be a glorious celebration of myself! Why not? It can be two things! Besides, having an actual topic legitimately does make it easier to post. I should try that more often.

Inevitably the curtain falls
and the actors leave the stage.
Less assured is that they all
will learn to act their age.

So, I just decided I should write a poem for my post today and that was what came out. Not very good, but perhaps it is a sign that deep down I consider anyone who works in the theatre to be childish and immature. A shocking look at my psyche. And since the poem suggests that I feel that way subconsciously, I might as well feel that way overtly now as well. With that in mind, I will now, being of sound mind (or at least as sound as usual) make this declaration: Hey actors! Yeah, all you stage-walkin’ make believers! You are all infantile! Why don’t you just grow up? Friggin’ babies.

Or maybe I just subconsciously noticed that “age” and “stage” rhyme and worked from there. Who can say? I am not a professional at this!

I will probably stick to haikus for a while. That said, I’m running out of old Contains2 prose stories to reintroduce to the new site, so I will likely start resurrecting old poetry before long. That’ll be something.

In other news, I just re-Googled myself and my site is still not in the first page of results for “Patrick D Ryall” even though pretty much a day has passed. Now admittedly I don’t know much about how Google works, but I would have hoped that a day would be more than enough time for them to correct their grievous Patrick D Ryall-related error.

Fact: I’m trying to break the record for most posts in one month, so expect several more essentially pointless things like this over the course of the week.

If you are reading this, you are probably already aware that Patrick D Ryall has a website, but I Googled my own name (“Patrick D Ryall”) just now and noticed that this site isn’t in the first page of results. “That just ain’t right” I figured and I thought that maybe if the phrase “Patrick D Ryall” occurred more often on the site, where I usually use “PDR” it might help. I even put “Patrick D Ryall” in the name of this post, just to drive the point home, right?

So anyway, I, Patrick D Ryall, now have a little icon that should be appearing next to the URL when your on my site. It makes my site look a little bit more professional, which basically makes it a lie, but I am happy to have it there. So everyone should notice it and be happy.