There You Have It, 10 Years Of SyFy Portal

A few years ago, I had a tiny brush with death. It was nothing immediate, but I had a medical condition that, if left untreated, could've resulted in me going to bed one night and never hitting the snooze button in the morning. It's something that really shakes you up, and makes you realize how precious life is, and to make every minute you have on the planet mean something.

But still, I don't want it to go by too fast, and as Aug. 13, 2008 approached, I kind of felt that way.

That's because today is a special day. Exactly 10 years ago today, I launched what would become SyFy Portal for the very first time. It's a story I've told a million times before, even in this space, so I don't want to bore you with a history lesson. But 10 years ... that's a long time.

If you've seen "Rent," then you know one of the key songs talks about 525,600 minutes. But that is just one year. I have to sit there and multiple that by 10, which means if someone wrote a musical on SyFy Portal, it would have to be 5,256,000 minutes. Or 3,650 days, not including leap years. Or 520 weeks. Or 120 months.

Yes, I know, enough with the numbers already, but I'm just not the kind of person that does things long-term. Really, before SyFy Portal, the only two other things I did long term was live in the same house throughout most of my childhood (for 17 years to be exact), and breathing. That's it.

But here we are, 10 years later, and SyFy Portal is not only still around but it's thriving. And it's been a blast.

When I started the site as Syfyman's World on Aug, 13, 1998, only like five people visited, and one of them was my dad. The others included my best friend at the time, Matt Bianco, who had started a fan site for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as well as a friend of mine I knew through the AOL Star Trek area, Ian Cullen, who now owns Sci-Fi Pulse.

While I was still new to the Internet, I had big plans for myself. The site, which would become SyFy World after a few days, was something that would launch me into doing a full-fledged television Web site, but I wanted to go from being a novice to an expert first.

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