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Why I Rebuilt an Old Website Without Redesigning It
A small business brochure site came to me working fine and nearly unusable on a phone. I replaced everything underneath it and changed nothing anyone could see.
Field Notes.
Intelligence, AI, web systems, and local tech history. How things actually work, with the sources attached.
A series
Tri-Cities Tech History
The region's technology story, built from registries, nodelists, archives, and the people who were there. Every source credited.
See the whole series-
Part 1 · The domains
Who Was Online First in the Tri-Cities: The Fifteen Oldest Domains, Verified
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Part 2 · The boards
Before the Web: The Tri-Cities Called Each Other First
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Part 3 · In progress
The dial-up ISPs
Were you there? Corrections and memories welcome.
The archive
Every Field Note, newest first.
Intelligence, AI, web systems, digital strategy, and occasional opinions on how things actually work.
RSS feedSeptember 2026
Why I Rebuilt an Old Website Without Redesigning It
A small business brochure site came to me working fine and nearly unusable on a phone. I replaced everything underneath it and changed nothing anyone could see.
Web & Technology
Local News Needs More Ways In
McClatchy cut more than 90 journalists last week. I pulled the robots.txt files from seven newspaper sites, including the two I ran for thirteen years, and found four owners with four different answers to who gets in. Then I wrote down what I would do with those settings if the papers had them back.
OSINT & Research
Before the Web: The Tri-Cities Called Each Other First
Before anyone here sold internet access, the Tri-Cities was already online. It just wasn’t the internet. It was home computers in bedrooms across Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol, answering the phone for each other. I pulled every weekly FidoNet list from 1988 to 1998, and then the sysops started writing in. The first board was on an Atari in 1983. The last one hung on until 2004.
OSINT & Research
Updated
Who Was Online First in the Tri-Cities: The Fifteen Oldest Domains, Verified
I pulled the registration date of every domain I could tie to a Tri-Cities organization and sorted the list. The oldest belongs to a Kingsport graphics shop in February 1993. Eastman was second. The third belongs to a teenager’s bulletin board. Updated in October with accounts from the people who built the first ISPs.
OSINT & Research
Updated
August 2026
What Happens When AI Has No Local News to Read
Three AI tools handed me the same wrong statistic about Johnson City. Tracing it back took me somewhere I did not expect: the local paper was not the problem, and the site with no reporters is now the easiest one for a machine to read.
AI & Automation
July 2026
The Day the Internet Stopped Being a Library
A man in Kingsport needed a lawyer and asked ChatGPT instead of Google. After 20 years building websites through every era of the web, here's what that phone call means.
Web & Technology
Thirteen Years Behind the CMS of Local News
I ran the websites for Northeast Tennessee's newspapers from 2012 to 2025. Everyone writes about what happened to local news in the newsroom. This is what it looked like from the server side.
Field Notes
June 2026
What the Internet Thinks Bristol Is
Two cities, two states, one main street. A sourced OSINT audit of what the internet and AI get wrong about Bristol, TN and VA, and what is genuinely good.
OSINT & Research
What the Internet Thinks Johnson City Is
The one the rankings keep crowning the best of the Tri-Cities. I checked whether the local favorite holds up. The part that broke was not the part anyone expects.
OSINT & Research
What the Internet Thinks Kingsport Is
I pointed my own tradecraft at my own city, asked five AI systems the same question, then checked every number against a primary source. The internet's Kingsport is confident, tidy, and wrong in the places that matter.
OSINT & Research
Your AI Prompts Are Evidence Now
AI prompts are now discoverable evidence. An expert was ordered to produce hers, and a CEO's ChatGPT logs were quoted in court. What it means for your work.
AI & Automation
The Internet Got Bigger. Trust Got Smaller.
AI made content nearly free, so the web filled up and trust got scarce. Why specific, human detail is now the one thing that earns trust back.
Digital Strategy
May 2026
Thinking Next to a Machine
I use AI every day for work. The strangest thing it has done is make me clearer about what my own judgment actually is.
AI & Automation
How I Actually Use AI, Not How I Tell Clients to Use It
Most AI content makes it sound like the future arrives in one perfect prompt. My actual use of AI is a lot less glamorous: messy filings, broken code, bad OCR, skeptical clients, ugly spreadsheets, and a lot of human verification.
AI & Automation
What a retired detective taught me about teaching AI
A retired detective and published author sat through a class and a half before he told me he'd written AI off completely. Then he told me what changed his mind.
Field Notes
The Weird Advantage of Being a Generalist
The advice is always to specialize. Pick a lane. Become the expert. There are good reasons for that. Depth is real, and you can't fake it.
Field Notes
I've Been Building Websites Long Enough to Know Most Problems Are Not Design Problems
When someone calls and says they need a redesign, I ask what's wrong with the current site. About eight times out of ten, the answer has nothing to do with design.
Web & Technology
Screenshots Are Not Evidence
A screenshot proves one thing: that someone, somewhere, at some point, made an image that looked like that. It does not prove the post was real. It does not prove the account belongs to who the file name says it does
OSINT & Research
AI Is Not Magic. It's Infrastructure.
The most useful way to think about AI right now is to compare it to electricity. Electricity was a marvel when it arrived. People paid to watch lights turn on. Within a generation, nobody noticed it anymore; they just flipped a switch. The marvel had become infrastructure.
AI & Automation
The Difference Between Searching and Investigating
Anyone can search. Type a name into Google, hit enter, scroll. That's not investigation, that's reading. Hypothesis. A searcher types what they hope to find. An investigator works on a question and lets the evidence answer.
OSINT & Research