What it's like hitting the front page - twice

~18 months ago, Gizmodo linked to[0] a page on my web site. It was then posted to Reddit, was shared several thousand times on Facebook, and also linked to by The Atlantic. (I'm not sure if it was ever linked to on HN or not or how to even check.)

I was at a customer's site that morning (one where cell phones are absolutely not permitted and I couldn't exactly pull up my personal e-mail) and my first hint that something was up was when I looked at my phone upon leaving for the day and seeing the absurd number of "new follower" e-mail messages from Twitter.

I knew something was up but didn't know what until I got home that evening and could get online. By then, the page had in the neighborhood of 145k page views and the worst was over. I thought it was cool as hell but the girlfriend, meh, not so much. I had already arrived home later than expected, making us late for dinner w/ friends, and she certainly did not share in my enthusiasm, to say the least.

When it was finally over, that page had received just north of 180k page views and made me a few hundred bucks thanks to the AdSense banner across the top of the page. It was certainly a neat experience.

[0]: http://gizmodo.com/5881627/have-you-ever-unlocked-any-of-the...

Sick post, brah-ski.

In all seriousness, great work here. I especially like the point you make about not fighting back. Too often the HN hivemind will try to take someone down just for submitting something opinionated ("Why would I learn PostgreSQL so late into my web development stream?!??!"). Let people say what they have to say and stay your ground.

Keep it up!