1024 Words: 1000 Posts

This is, according to the blogging system here on DevCentral, my 1000th post. I actually can’t create a word cloud that spans the more than 5 years I’ve been blogging for F5, but generating one from the most recent posts I’ve written seems to be fairly representative of all 1000 posts. Application. load balancing. Solutions. Security. Infrastructure. Services. Architecture.

I’ve actually dedicated quite a bit of mindshare toward what my 1000th post should be about. Should it be about me?  A “top X” post? A post on a highly contentious subject? Something full of snark? Lord knows I’ve written enough of those in the past five years. Something groundbreaking? Something new? Perhaps I should wax more personal – I rarely offer anything but glimpses into the “Lori behind the posts” after all? You can blame my Midwest fly-over state upbringing for that.

I’ve had posts featured on Slashdot, shared around the world, translated and cited and quoted and refuted and blasted and praised. Sometimes all at the same time.

But I didn’t do that – you did.

After so many posts, it seems obvious that reaching 1000 from my perspective isn’t really about how much I write, but how much you read. Because really, if you weren’t reading, well, there’d be no reason to write one post, let alone 1000 posts.

So rather than write yet another post (contentious or not) or offer up a list of posts I think you should read (or re-read as the case may be), I’m just going to say “Thank you” – for reading, for sharing, for commenting, for however you may have used one post or a hundred. If it weren’t for you, there’d be no reason to write another post and hit 1001.