There are 200,000 or so Sidneys in the world, so I’m pretty happy that I get to use sidney.com.
In April 2022 I reached out to sidney.com’s owner, Sidney Markowitz, to see if he was open to selling. It was good from the get-go that he was a real human with an email address, a retired software engineer/MIT grad now living in New Zealand. He told me he liked my writings at the time but wasn’t selling because the domain had sentimental value to him.
I thanked him and forgot about it for a while. A year later, it occurred to me that Sidney’s social world was probably distinct enough from mine that it might not hurt to share the domain. Plus, I mostly wanted it for this website, and he wanted it for email.
I proposed a shared arrangement to him and he responded positively. Sidney retains control over DNS records and set up the ones I needed for mail/website. He uses Sonic mail servers, so I ended up switching my ISP to Sonic and setting up a Sonic mailbox (I was interested in their gigabit upload speed anyway).
He ended up visiting Palo Alto to see some friends here. We met up for Oren’s Hummus on University Ave, where I enjoyed hearing about his time in Silicon Valley and takes on the world. I regret not taking a picture together.
I’m grateful to Sidney for all he’s done — completely for free, too. Also thank you to my landlord for allowing the fiber installation.