Welcome. Not sure how you got here, but I’m happy you’re here…otherwise I’m just talking to my self. I decided to start this site (I refuse to call it a blog–if anything it’s a journal) to consolidate all my disparate projects into one place. I love forums with all the inspirations and helpful information that they contain, but I haven’t found one broad enough to cover all my vehicular interests, not to mention all my other interests too. This gives me one place to post all my stuff, and lets face it, most of the forums are going the way of the do-do thanks to Facebook groups. FB groups are the only reason I haven’t killed my account yet, but they’re absolutely terrible at archiving anything useful enough to qualify as a technical article because the search functionality is pretty much hot garbage. But that’s where all the people are so most of the forums are wasting away.

I harbor no delusions that this site will ever hold a candle to the vast troves of information already floating around on the webs, but that’s not really the point. I just want somewhere to showcase what I’m working on, regardless of whether anyone else actually gets anything out of it. For the time being, most of what gets posted will almost certainly be about my jHeap because it’s what’s currently in the garage. It needs the most work of all my projects, so I suppose that’s where it belongs. It’s in the process of going under the knife in pursuit of actual. functional. brakes. More to come on that soon. When tax return season gets here, I’ll tentatively be upgrading and rebuilding my current desktop computer and teaching myself CAD as part of the project. The plan is to re-purpose its guts to upgrade our media server that’s housed in a late ‘40s tube radio cabinet. That will probably be the first couple projects that fall under benchClutter, but who knows, I may end up buying more car parts instead.

In case you’re curious, I chose the name “Rotting Steel” because I seem to have a predilection toward old rusting hulks that are gradually returning to the earth. Older vehicles have been places and seen things that have left indelible marks on them that draw me in and make me want to become a part of their story–they don’t belong to me, I  belong to them. One of the things I desperately need to gain some experience in is body work so I can keep them around for at least a little while longer. rottingSteel is stylized the way it is as an homage to camel case often used in naming variables in computer programming because I’ll always be a nerd at heart. It’s also the best way I could come up with to attempt to tie old junkers and computers together.

I’m certainly no expert when it comes to anything I’ll be doing here (including running a website). I have a bad habit of getting interested in something, but not ever actually getting started attempting to do it because I want it to come out absolutely perfect the very first time. I am well aware that life rarely works that way, so I never even begin. I know the only way to learn more is to try more, and hopefully knowing (or imagining) someone is out there waiting for an update might just keep me motivated enough to get to work on whatever my current project happens to be while still dreaming about the next.

Here goes nothing. -_-