Things I've written.

I found a stack of Windows 95 installation disks while cleaning out an IT closet at work today, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw them all out. So I’ve had one sitting on my desk for half the day, making me smirk every time I look at it.

It’s completely worthless. You can download Windows 95 from some random corner of the internet without much effort. Yet I held onto it like it’s some unearthed piece of antiquity.

Isn’t it interesting how we associate memories or feelings with things?

When I look at this CD, I think back to that old Windows 95 startup sound - the one I’d panic about going off because I was sneaking onto the computer and my Mom had left the volume on max. It brings back memories of Yahoo! Pager (yes, I’m old), ICQ, and IRC. Spending late nights in Yahoo! Chat rooms talking about Star Wars or playing trivia games with people from all over the country - or even the world.

The internet was so raw and untamed back then. Maybe it’s nostalgia speaking, but it felt like we were experiencing something grand. Finding cool new websites, clicking through a Webring that kept you jumping from Boba Fett fan pages into the late hours of dawn. Yes, dawn. Heh.

Then there were MUDs - basically Dungeons & Dragons meets chat rooms. Fully text-based RPG games, online, before that was really a thing. An early precursor to games like Lineage or eventually World of Warcraft. The internet was new, crazy, and unprotected, and every day was an adventure exploring it. Sometimes to my detriment. I’ve seen things.

Today’s internet feels highly curated. We’ve lost a lot of that organic community, and when you do find it, it’s often an echo chamber. Ads were there back then too, but they weren’t so aggressively targeted. There wasn’t the constant political, societal, or data-privacy anxiety about how much information is being collected and where it’s going.

It was freedom, as silly as that sounds.

So maybe I’ll keep this silly CD on my desk for a while. It takes me back. Can’t say I mind it.

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What’s your favorite memory of the early internet? Join the discussion on LinkedIn.

Every few years I get the itch to own my own space on the internet a little more intentionally. This time I actually did something about it.

This site is built with Astro, hosted on Cloudflare Pages, and connected to a GitHub repo. No WordPress, no Adobe Portfolio, no monthly subscription to something I half-use. Just files, Git, and a domain I already owned.

I’ll use this space to write about IT, document projects, share photos, and occasionally ramble about whatever I’m tinkering with. No schedule, no pressure.

If you’re reading this - hi. Hope you find something useful here.

AI is overblown - that much is true. Every company is scrambling to slap it on something, and most of what comes out is marketing slop. I get the frustration.

But here’s where I land on it: at its core, AI has this remarkable cantilever-like ability to help people punch above their weight. When I was researching self-hosting and website options, I’d occasionally see someone mention using AI in a comment thread. They’d get flamed immediately. And honestly? Fair. As of early 2026 the internet is drowning in AI-generated garbage - unoriginal at best, actively misleading at worst.

I know that. And I still used it to build this site.

Here’s the thing - I know very little about coding. I’ve built sites before using WordPress and Squarespace. WordPress always ended up slow and bloated, Squarespace felt expensive for how little I actually needed. After some research I found I could host a static personal site on Cloudflare Pages and GitHub for free. No catch - except I knew nothing about GitHub and barely enough CSS to get myself into trouble.

So I used Claude to vibe code (apparently that’s the term now) this entire site from scratch. A seasoned web developer would probably wince at the source code. I know it’s basic - but my needs are basic. Somewhere to jot down thoughts, put my resume online, and maybe have my ramblings be useful to someone. That last part is kind of the whole point of IT anyway.

So how does it actually work?

The site is built with Astro - a static site framework that spits out plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No database, no server, no monthly bill. The styling is handled by Tailwind CSS, and blog posts like this one are written in plain Markdown files that I just drop into a folder.

The whole thing lives on GitHub, and every time I push a change, Cloudflare Pages automatically rebuilds and deploys it to batchelor.it in about a minute. The contact form runs through Formspree which forwards messages to my email. Total monthly cost: zero dollars.

The photography gallery reads directly from a folder of images - to add a new photo I just drop a file in the right place and it appears automatically. Same with posts - write a Markdown file, save it, done.

Is it the most elegant codebase? Probably not. But it loads fast, it’s mine, and I can change anything about it without asking anyone’s permission or paying for a subscription. That’s honestly pretty cool.

If you’re curious about the specific tools - Astro, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub, and Formspree all have solid free tiers and decent documentation. Claude helped me wire it all together, but those are the building blocks.

Is it perfect? Not even close. But it’s a start, and honestly I’m pretty happy with how it turned out for someone who had to ask an AI what a git repository was when I first started on this little journey. If you’ve got thoughts, feedback, or just want to tell me the code is terrible - I’d love to hear it. The contact form works, I checked. Comments would be even better, but I haven’t figured that out yet - coming soon to a website near you.