What better time to start a web site and blog than the birth of our first child, Kerrigan John Sneed, on Sunday, the 6th of November, 2005, at 2:41 am?

It is a time of new beginnings, a time to pause, take stock and reflect. A time of change, bringing life and hope and a promise of good things to come.

I leapt into the world of blogging almost a year ago, only to quickly retreat when things sped up and I became incredibly busy. My work as a C# programmer at Disney continued at a somewhat steady pace, but the growth of our church group, Koinonia John the Baptist (www.koinoniajb-usa.org), ramped up with the arrival of our present pastor, Claudio Antecini. Then my wife Zuzana and I got pregnant in February and we started preparing for natural childbirth using the Bradley method ( www.bradleybirth.com).

Now that we’ve given birth both to Koinonia and to our son, it’s as though I’ve ascended a steep mountain and am ready to take in the grand vista. It is at this point that I wish to take some time to ponder the journey, to reflect on the path I’ve trodden, and to see what lessons may be learned, which I can share with others, mainly by means of this blog.

But I do not simply wish to indulge in self-reflection, as fascinating and instructive as that might be – or not. 🙂 I want this blog to be a vehicle by which I can tell others about the exciting and marvelous things taking place in my world, most especially the arrival of Kerrigan and the joy he will being into our lives.

Blogging has firmly established itself as a new paradigm of communication. Without taking the place of personal emails, it allows a person to convey news and opinions to a broad audience, in the manner of an online diary, in the form of a “web log,” or “blog” for short. The neat thing about blogs is not only the publication of your intimate thoughts, but that they can be consumed through blog readers, also known as RSS readers, news feeds, or aggregators ( www.rssreader.com), which allow you to subscribe to various blogs and alert you to a posting as soon as it becomes available. For example, I use a news reader to get the latest stories on National Public Radio (www.npr.org).

If reading this has at all piqued your interest in blogging, feel free to give it a whirl. You can set up your own blog free of charge at www.blogger.com.