Five Years Of World Wide Wood

I just realized this morning that an important date had passed us by without fanfare. So here it is in belated form:

Five years ago, on February 8 2003, Rebecca announced the birth of the website that you’ve come to know and love, World Wide Wood. prwdot.org itself had been around since November of 2001. At first, prwdot.org was my personal homepage, and then after Rebecca and I got married on 10/26/2002 it became simply a placeholder that redirected the reader to either Rebecca’s website or my website. Since 02/08/2003, we’ve blogged her together on all manner of topics. Our two main goals are to inform our friends and family of the goings-on in our household, and to educate and inform people about the interests and issues that matter to us.

We hope that you, our readers, have enjoyed following us all of these years. For your entertainment, here is a link to an archive of the previous versions of prwdot.org, going back to November 2001. For even more fun, here’s links to archives of some of my even older websites, going back to 1999:

• http://www.axom.com/pwood
• http://www.axom.com/~pwood
• http://www.cs.gordon.edu/~pwood
• http://woburn.dyndns.org/
• http://cephas.dyndns.org
• http://peter-r-wood.com

Happy Five Years, and Happy Valentine’s Day!

Notes for our readers

If you are reading this post through a feed reader, you might not have noticed that I’ve got a log of interesting parenting links running down the right hand side of the page. Visit NPDITC and check it out. There’s also an RSS feed for it, if you like.

Speaking of RSS, I posted over at World Wide Wood about a terrific video that explains just what RSS is and why you should use it. Highly recommended viewing for everyone.

Finally, I’ve changed the settings on this blog so that you can leave a comment without having to register and log in to an account. Maybe it’s just that none of my posts have warranted a comment yet, but in any case, I’d like to make it a bit easier for everyone.

Thanks for visiting, and stay tuned for more actual parenting content!

And in this corner…

If you haven’t noticed, dads aren’t exactly the cat’s pajamas these days. From their portrayal on television, often as insensitive, clueless oafs, to the notable absence of fathering resources in print and online journals, dads are often treated as second-class citizens. This treatment is not totally undeserved - there are a lot of terribly misguided fathers out there, from the jerks who leave their wives and kids to the well-meaning dads who are nonetheless ignorant of their families’ needs. However, I don’t think that the dads are entirely to blame. Society and the media have done little to help shape up dads - probably because of the old adage that there’s more money to be made in prolonging the problem than there is in finding a solution. We’ve spent enough time complaining about dads; now we need to do something to help them. We need dads to have more positive role models, more resources, and a higher standard of living. I’d like to help do my part by filling this website with my thoughts, observations, research, and musings on the subject of being a better dad. I’ll also mix in posts about interesting or funny parenting news, gadgets, and life updates from my family. I hope that my readers will join me on this quest to improve the lives of dads, as well as moms, kids, and anybody else who finds the information useful or thought-provoking.

This website is dedicated to my loving and supportive wife Rebecca, who encouraged me to share my thoughts. This website is also dedicated to my beautiful daughter Catherine, on the occasion of her first birthday. Together, Rebecca and Catherine are my motivation for becoming a better father, husband, and person.