Today is my 12th anniversary at OnMilwaukee.com. So, forgive me if I've written a version of this post before. Who can remember? In the dozen years I've been in this chair, OnMilwaukee.com has posted nearly 30,000 articles, briefs and blogs, a good few of them mine.

When I arrived there were six of us, not counting interns. A month before there were just four and a few months before that only the three founders were sailing the then-wobbly ship. Now we're nearly 20.

What seems crazy – and poignant – to me is that when I was pondering applying, I feared that this whole Internet thing might prove short-lived and I'd be left at sea.

Maybe, I thought, I should just keep my not terribly cushy, but very comfortable office job creating print ads, newsletters, signage, a web site and working on author events at Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop. It didn't pay enough, but the people were great, I believed in what we were doing and, hey, bookshops aren't going anywhere, are they?

Now, of course, Schwartz Bookshops are no more (much to my disappointment) and OnMilwaukee.com has just come off its best year since the onset of the recession (during which we laid off no one and cut no one's pay).

On July 3, 2000, only Andy Tarnoff was in the office. I brought a dozen doughnuts, thinking there'd be an office full of hungry OnMilwaukee.comrades. I think we slowly ate our way through them, but I hope I'm wrong about that.

At some point, my wife called and asked how the new job was going. "Andy just walked by in shorts, with no shoes on, kicking a beach ball," I told her.

Things are a little more formal around here now, but, I'm happy to say, just a little more formal.