According to its title page, my first web page, http://users.aol.com/gregoraya/, was last "updated" in July 1996. However, I believe that there was one draft and that there were never any updates. I stole the repeated background images from another website that specifically offered such graphics. I went to digits.com to get a free counter for the site, which I promptly set to a ridiculously high number of site views: 123456. July 1996 was the summer before my freshman year of high school. I did not work during the summers until 1998 so I had lots of free time to devote to learning HTML and website design (no matter how hideous the page looks by today's standards). Click here to see the page (this opens up a new window). Note that the links on the page were current as of 1996, so they probably do not work now. Likewise, my AltaVista search engine frontend does not work. For me, examining this site is interesting not only to see what I thought was neat when I was 14, but also due to historical reasons (e.g., back in 1996 AltaVista was a great search engine; now, in 2004, does anyone really use anything other than Google?). Also, seeing how web pages change over the years is exciting (e.g., frames used to be all the rage; now their use is discouraged).

In 1997, during the height of my obsession with Pearl Jam, I created a page listing the band members and all of the albums (that I knew of) on which they performed. I publicized this site, presumably on the Pearl Jam forum on AOL and alt.music.pearl-jam. I was trying to collect all of the Pearl Jam members' side projects, and I wanted this site to be a definitive list. I also wanted people to write me and tell me of items that I didn't know about (not only so that I could have an updated list, but also so that I could buy the records and have a complete record collection). Several people did contribute, but the site was short lived (files were changed from June 30 to July 8). I forgot about the site for years, finding it again when searching my AOL directory in 2004. Seeing this in 2004, a couple additional band members should be on the list; also, there are many more albums to include. My desire to collect everything on the list has faded, and I only have about 80% of the albums listed on the website. Click here to see the page (this opens up a new window).