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H O E I history and meaning
The name of this domain has caused a few raised eyebrows over the years. People want to know what the H-O-E-I stands for when I share my email address or the URL to one of my pages. It was supposed to stand for Hank Osborne Enterprises Inc. I originally wanted the domain name HOE.com but it was already taken. The HOE would have stood for the same thing but without the incorporated part since I did not want to fork over the cash to incorporate at the time. Oops…Maybe I should not say HOE since it is pronounced like “ho”. That is part of what Imus said that ended up getting him fired this past week. I guess if Imus can’t say ho then neither can anyone else. I guess Santa will have to change his spill to BEEP BEEP BEEP, Merry Christmas. I digress. The domain name HOEI.com should be pronounced “ho-EE”.
The original idea was that my home-based computer consulting business would grow into an empire of geeks running around servicing every home and small business computer need in the southeast. You know, something like the techie folks driving around in those cute little black and white VW Beatles that look like cop cars. I did have a good little one-man tech support business running back in the day. I had to do work on the side since I was only making about $11.50 per hour on my full-time job with the state of SC as a NT systems administrator/nighttime DEC VAX operator. I am obviously not rolling in the dough as a result of that bright idea, although I did have a chance at one point. I got scared. Oh the missed gambles…I mean opportunities.
The domain name HOEI.COM has belonged to me since 1999 and will probably be passed down to one of my boys in another 100 years or so. I plan to live until I retire at 130 like Moses. My wife will outlive me by at least 10 years I am sure. You get the picture. Anyway, I have tried to come up with other cool ways to express the acronym in my domain name.
Here are a few:
Home of Everything Interesting
Home Office Electronic Intelligence
Home of Everything Inspirational, Inspiring, etc…
The name Hoei is actually the name of a pretty popular bird cage manufacturer from what I gather. I get emails every so often from people who want to buy a birdcage from me. Sorry folks, but I know very little about birds or cages. I think there is or was a company with the same name that built CD duplication machines. I had a short fantasy about one of these companies wanting to buy this domain for a few million dollars. That idea hasn’t worked out very well either.
The domain name has become very useful over the past few years. It has become the launching platform for a handful of blogs. The Land of Ozz is my personal blog where I try to focus most of my posts on faith, family, and fun. Caden’s Page is a family/support blog highlighting the victories with my son Caden who was diagnosed with a chromosome micro-deletion called 22q11.2, Di George Syndrome, or VCFS. Riley’s Page is a place to blog about my oldest son Riley. Tech Land is a tech blog used to offload general techie related stuff from a large category on The Land of Ozz. Grill’n Time is a place where I post my experiences with cooking. Tech Land and Grill’n Time actually are running under the domain of hankosborne.com which is pointed to the same static IP as HOEI.com.
I have come to a point with HOEI.com where I have more traffic than I ever really intended to have. I find it the traffic continuing to grow ever so gradually. This is partly due to the fact that I play with different strategies to get traffic. I will share more on this subject later, but don’t expect to hear much from me that can’t get from folks like Darren Rowse. Darren is the owner/operator of Problogger.net. I am a frequent visitor of his site and have even dreamed of blogging professionally as a result of reading his site and others that he highlights. Yeah, that is dream number three with no manifestation as of yet. However, this dream is far from dead.
I have recently had several inquires for website building, blogging consulting, and at least one solicitation for advertising on HOEI.com. I have also toyed with the idea of running a “Start Blogging Today” seminar. I may still do this, but it is definitely not a priority pet project just yet.
I will conclude with a little tidbit of history on the word Hoei. I have some Internet research to make sure that there was not some ancient Greek goddess of sin or worse yet a cult named Hoei. What I found was mostly through Wikipedia. Hoei is a Dutch name for Huy which is a little town in Belgian. One of the most significant facts about Huy (Hoei) is that the First Crusade was launched from that local area. According to Wikipedia, “the First Crusade was a major turning point in the expansion of Western power, and was the only crusade to capture Jerusalem.” How’s that for the background of a domain name? Can ebay® or GoogleTM come up with this good of stuff about their domain names?
