Eleven years ago, I rolled out of bed, and hit the Sync button on my hand-me-down Palm Pilot's docking cradle before getting dressed each morning. By the time I left for school, AvantGo's work was done, and I knew that between every class I'd be happily reading cleverly compressed copies of Slashdot.
Today, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, the founder and editor-in-chief of that preeminent tech news aggregator since its inception in 1997 (as "Chips & Dips," but that was before my time) announced that he's resigning. He's not sure what he'll be doing quite yet, but he seems to be parting on very amicable terms, and Slashdot will continue without him.
It never occurred to me that a commander of folded Mexican cuisine could shape the landscape of online tech journalism, the field where I wound up. However, the way the Slashdot community curates and comments on content, boiling it down to the important essences and only picking "Stuff that Matters" day in and day out, is partially to thank for the work my colleagues and most respected competitors do at sites like the one you're reading now. The humor departments, under the byline, also didn't hurt, and we always secretly hope that we'll have a "Slashdot effect" (directing an unmanageable amount of web traffic) on the subjects of our stories. To borrow today's Slashdot headline, with no remorse, "So long, CmdrTaco, and thanks for all the posts."