Fearless

In July of 1995, I finally got around to registering some domain names for myself. I didn’t even have my own servers, but I saw a sort of land grab taking shape and wanted to homestead. Among others, I grabbed phobia.com, merely because I thought hostnames like agora.phobia.com for mail services and arachne.phobia.com for that new web thing would be fun. (I didn’t think to reserve my own name until much later.)

I later moved my personal website from nyx.net to phobia.com, where it resided for nearly a decade before I decided to center my personal brand on the trademark I was born with. It will still take years to move away from “phobia”, if I ever manage to change every online account I left its footprint on.

Late October 2006 I sold it for a tidy sum to a fellow who is big in the “internet real estate” industry. There was some drama as I got larger offers after already agreeing to the sale, but I decided my integrity is worth a few grand, even if only escrow.com would have thought less of me. He turned around and sold it for nearly twice as much, but that appears to have been to a subsidiary for the IRS’s benefit.

I’ve not been made wealthy overnight, but it will sure help pay for the wedding.