This is the blog of Rob 'Acidman' Smith, who passed away June 26, 2006. Acidman was a unique voice in the blogosphere; an extraordinary raconteur with a fascinating life from which to draw his stories, from his roots in a Kentucky coal-mining town through a career as a musician and as a journalist to his years managing the production of a sulphuric acid plant.
Whether writing about the best way to make boiled peanuts, his intense love and respect for his family and friends, commentary on the politics of the day, or blazingly honest revelations about his life's challenges, he had an extraordinary way of drawing the reader in and making them think. He singlehandedly created a massive community of readers, commenters, and friends from literally all over the world and was responsible for encouraging hundreds of people to take up blogging. For an idea of just how far-
Writing about why he blogged, Rob described it as: ...an exercise where I stuffed notes in bottles and threw them into a vast ocean where I hoped someone would find the bottle and read the note. But that's not really what I was doing. This blog was my lifeline that towed me to shore when I was totally shipwrecked. It kept me alive for more than two of the worst years I've lived in my life. I wasn't stuffing notes in bottles. I was standing on the shore and shouting frantically for rescue. People came. I WAS
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