Woo hoo! I finally got it! My own domain!

Well, I’ve had my own domain for a long time now, but I finally got the one I’ve been trying to get for about 15 years.

It might not seem like a big deal, and it often only amounts to bragging rights, but getting a web domain made up of simply your first and last name is like scoring some prime real-estate.

With the thousands of people in the world that have the same name, it’s quite likely that someone more internet savvy it going to come along and beat you to the punch, and snatch your prime real estate out from under you.

For me, it was Mr. Scott T. Norman. 

I don’t know this guy from Adam, but I hated him for “taking MY domain name” from me before it was mine.

And, to make matters worse, this guy was the furthest from representing anything about me. He liked dinosaurs, he was kind of geeky looking, a devout Christian who loved Cryptozoology, and had a sloppily amateurish website.

He was making me look bad.

I had to get MY domain out of this guys hands!

Every year at the beginning of March, when the domain ownership was set to expire, I would get online and monitor it’s status, ready to snatch it up as soon as he forgot to reregister it. like a greedy buyer hawking his bid on Ebay.

And, every year, Scott T. Norman would reregister ScottNorman.com.

There was no way in my mind that this amateur going to keep this up. I was gonna stick to him until he slipped.

Then, in March 2008, during my annual check-in and disappointment, I read that Mr. Norman had died.

That kind of threw me for a loop. And I felt very sad for the loss.

I didn’t know anything about this guy except that he was “the competition”. But, I found a number of articles written about him, and how well respected he was. I even found a very beautiful tribute to Scott T. Norman online.

I suddenly felt the need to honor this man somehow. So, I copied all the files from his website off the server, and promised myself that I would maintain it in a special folder on ScottNorman.com when it became mine the following year.

Because, clearly, I wasn’t going to have any competition for the website any longer.

Boy was I wrong.

In February 2009, I logged on to GoDaddy.com and paid in advance to get the domain. But, I didn’t read the fine print. I had to be online the day it went on sale to bid against other people who were vying for the domain. I dropped the ball, and some bulk domain buyer STOLE MY DOMAIN! AGAIN, I was robbed!

This site hurt even more, because it wasn’t even about any REAL Scott Norman. It was a fake shopping site put up to squat long-term, and make the domain more expensive in the future.

My annual ritual of disappointment began again, with an even more formidable opponent.

So, after two years of this new competition, I gave up.

I decided to buy ScottVNorman.com instead, and went about rebranding myself and my website. I never thought about my coveted ScottNorman.com again.

Until this week.

Apparently, the bulk domain buyer/squatter wasn’t getting any demands for ScottNorman.com, and decided not to reregister. GoDaddy had kept my payment all these years, and when the domain became free last year, MY bid was the only one in play.

I’ve owned my coveted domain for an entire year and had NO idea!

Until a couple days ago when they requested payment to renew it next month.

So, patience wins out, and I have my silly bragging rights, and cool domain name.

AND, in the spirit of keeping unspoken promises to strangers you can never know, I have put up Scott T. Norman’s Website on a special folder on my server. I hope that’s cool with everyone who knows him.

And now that I have this cool domain name, ahead of all those OTHER Scott Norman’s who want their own domain name, I have to wonder…

Which one of them is going to be hawking ME every year now?!?! :-O

~Scott