7. If You Blog It They Will Come. This year showed me some of the power of my writing. After 60 Minutes covered the CIA spy plane in March, I wrote about the plane’s connection to North Carolina. Two months later, I got a call from a reporter from the New York Times who wanted to see what else I knew. While I wasn’t a source for the article that came out later, it did make me realize that what I write here could gain attention, and quickly.

I got another reminder of that when my former neighbor Ronnie Williams became mayor of Garner. Ronnie found my post via Google and stopped by to say hello. Behold the power of Google!

Google itself was the topic of a series of posts when bloggers discovered them visiting the Triangle. I posted a few more articles before the story appeared in the papers. Soon after it appeared Google was setting up a sales office and not hiring any useful employees! (Disclaimer: I work in sales, too, so nyah.)

[Update 18 Sep 2017: I have chosen to remove any discussion of the murder case here as things have run their course.]

The year 2005 has given me more confidence in my writing. It has shown that blogs can be worthy news sources, especially given their timely nature. Y’all really do read the stuff I write up here. Thanks for allowing me to entertain and inform you. Sometimes even accurately!