30 Years

The things that happened in the 30 years I’m around on this ball o' mud, in roughly chronological order:

• The fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Cold War
• The end of border checks within Europe
• Two expansions of the European Union
• The Internet moving from curiosity to being ubiquitous, and grander than anything cyber-prefixed could ever have been
• 9/11
• The Euro
• Germany’s first involvement in military action as a combatant since WW2 in the Bosnia War
• Mobile phones becoming as ubiquitous as the Internet, if not more so
• The rise and fall of EPOC/Palm
• 9 versions of the Windows OS (From 3.11 to NT to Windows 7)
• Linux becoming less picky about who its friends are (thanks, Canonical!)
• The rise of the Chinese Dragon
• Making friends all over the world (Hi, folks!)
• Live shows on the internet that I watch every day (Hi, TWiT.TV!)

A happy birthday indeed.