Underdog of Perfection is the personal blog of Scott Anderson, a.k.a. me, a freelance web developer and independent musician based in the great city of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Is this a business blog?

Like I just said, no. Room 34 / room34 is an all-encompassing identity, both personal and professional, that I’ve embraced over the years for my presence online, because Scott Anderson is such a common name that there were 3 of us in my small-town high school, and back when there were phone books, the one for Minneapolis listed an entire column and a half of people with my name.

When I went out on my own as a freelancer, it made sense to use Room 34 as my business name. Room 34 Creative Services, to be thorough. But just because my business — a sole proprietorship, at that — is Room 34, doesn’t mean everything I do called “Room 34” is business. And even if it is business, it’s still just me, personally. Get it?

Since starting it in 2002, I have made precisely $0 on this blog. I have no intention of monetizing it, and to my knowledge it has not, ever, led to any work for my freelance business.

Why does any of this matter? Oh, believe me, it does. I can’t really get into all of the details, but yes, it does have to do with why you’ll see this placeholder image on all of my older posts:

OK, so what the heck does “Underdog of Perfection” mean?

Good question. I’m not completely sure myself. My site has had its share of strange titles over the years… for a while it was known as “Transcontinental Pachyderm Express” for no good reason other than that the phrase once spontaneously popped into my head and I liked the sound of it so much, I just had to use it for something.

For a while it was known as “Can of Worms.” This was also the title of my weekly column in the college newspaper. But it’s a fairly narrow concept. While I have at times retained this title for the category of blog posts dealing with politics or other controversial issues, it just doesn’t fit the whole.

For most of the time that I’ve been using WordPress, my blog was very accurately (though not very creatively) entitled “Blather: A Blog by Scott Anderson.” It certainly is blather. It is a blog. And it is by Scott Anderson, a.k.a. me. But that wasn’t much of an identity.

And so now we have “Underdog of Perfection.” But why? you still ask. Well, I’m a recovering perfectionist (yes, it’s a chronic affliction), and I’ve always rooted for the underdog. Perfection is an inherently unattainable goal (much like a limit in calculus), yet we geeks still relentlessly strive for it. But since there’s no way we’ll ever actually achieve it, we’re all underdogs of perfection. The logo for this blog is a stylized asterisk, because… well… that just seems like the most fitting punctuation mark for me… besides ellipses… of course.

So there’s your ridiculously long and roundabout answer.