Sad, right?  Unfortunately, that is all that remains of a once truly great website.

Of course, it didn’t always look like that.  The site started out when the internet was still in it’s infancy.  The original webpage had a simple Brady Bunch-esque 3×3 square design, and was basically a Donald Duck fansite, with a little bit of info about its webmaster mixed in.  The main draw was a feature called The Simpsons Challenge of the Day, where James would occasionally (rarely was it daily) post screenshots from The Simpsons, and you would send in a short description of the scene to James to get points.

I was undefeated.

At some point, James redesigned his site into a web-log, also known as a blog.  It was a bold move, but it worked.  Now James was free to share his thoughts on all manner of topics, to reminisce on past moments (usually James’ing them slightly in the process), or making flash cartoons for his engaged friends.  An extremely popular feature was the weekly musings from Daron’s Diary, which showed the inner workings of the mind of a clearly conflicted young man.  But with song parodies!

As the years passed, James’ writing became less frequent, and James himself acknowledged as much in a post from earlier this year, when he resolved to blog more in 2011.  Sadly, it was not meant to be.  After months and months of inactivity, the site is now officially no more.

The internet is a harsh place, where the “it” site can be suddenly replaced and forgotten about when something newer comes along.  (Remember friendster?)  Sadly, jamesbrief.com has gone the way of cdnow and geocities, relegated to an archive on a backup server somewhere in the cloud.

There is still a silver lining to this dark cloud, and that is the blog you’re reading right now.  Even though James is too busy “saving lives” to maintain his page, *I* remain firmly committed to entertain you with my occasionally moderately semi witty repartee.  I hope there is some solace in that.

And I suppose it is inevitable that someday James will bring back his site, I will let mine fade away, and that he will then write a post similar to this one. But until that day comes, James, I know I can count on you to help me keep this page running. (How else do you think that link at the bottom of the page got there?)

Site fixed. Bill is in the mail.