Most sites call this the “home page” or the “landing page.” I’ve called it the foreword, because that’s what it really is.
You should not judge a book by its cover. But the foreword is probably a good place to begin judging a book, as it is where books typically begin (does anybody read the Library of Congress catalog information before reading a book?) Some readers who skip over the forewords of books may skip over the foreword for this site (Forward through the foreword! Charge!), and if they do, I must apologize to them, for I am using the foreword to manage expectations about this site. Please, dear reader who won’t read this petition anyway, come backwards to the foreword!
I am not an expert in any area that this site could possibly go, so it doesn’t go very far in any one direction. As a result, it really doesn’t go anywhere. Don’t expect to find theories of the universe or religion or abstract mathematic concepts in here, because this is essentially an autobiographical site, and I am not an expert in those fields. Expect neither poetry nor short stories, either, for I am not an expert wordsmith. As for music, my ear is tin, so expect none of that, either. I am not an expert artist, so expectations of discussions of art or photography or sculpture or any sort of visual arts would also be unwarranted. I have two left feet and no sense of beat or rhythym, so dance as a subject contained herein should be ruled out, too. I am not a chef, so favorite recipes should be dropped from your list of “what to find on this site.” Likewise, I am not an actor, so you shouldn’t expect me to discuss time that I spent performing in front of people. I am not a political scientist, so commentary on politics or political systems or current events should not be on your list of expectations for this site, either.
I am, by profession, a computer programmer. (Why am I one by profession if I am not a professor? I suppose the semanticists can argue over that one.) Therefore you should expect this site to be boring like a computer program, full of detail and syntactic perfectedness so that my life’s story will compile in your brain and you will understand it perfectly in 1s and 0s. Yes, I suppose that is is a good expectation to have of this site. Expect it to be full of algorithms and discussions of their efficacy and situations in which to use them. Perfectly within my range of experience and expertise, and perfectly boring.
I suppose that the other thing I am an expert in is my own life. I am probably the world’s foremost expert on that one very specific and very peculiar subject, so you should probably expect some detail there. Expect anecdotes, stories, musings, random thoughts, and Oxford commas. Don’t expect it to be in a linear format, though – even though I live my life linearly, that is not how I recall it.
I suppose that a note about the domain name seems to be in order. I do think my skills, such as they are, are cool, but that is really for you to decide. But I find myself living alongside the Schuylkill (pronounced SCHOOL – kill) river, in south-eastern Pennsylvania in the United States. If one were to spoonerize the syllables in the name of the river, it becomes “Cool skill,” and so from that I came up with the name for the domain. I wanted to spell it “Kuylschill,” but was advised – rightly so – that no one else would be able to spell that. Since being able to spell a domain name is usually important on the internet, I settled, then, on the standard spellings, and you’re probably glad I did.
Now that I have set your expectations for this site low, let’s see if I can exceed them…