That's right — this old website has been around since 2006.
It started as a humble database of free software for my teacher friends. I use the term "database" loosely, since everything was static HTML pages.
It also served as a home for AppleScripts, the most popular of which mass-converted AppleWorks documents to Microsoft Word — the hot new thing on Mac OS X at the time.
Then the district implemented PowerSchool, which had just been acquired by Apple and would run on an Xserve. (Yes, Apple made servers at one point kids.)
So why not start giving away some of the customizations we built? Not to brag, but back then this site was the #1 result when you searched "PowerSchool customizations" — on both Google and AltaVista.
At some point my wife thought it would be cool to digitize our recipes. I was teaching myself PHP at the time and it sounded like a neat project.
That's pretty much the history. Thanks for indulging an old ed-techie.
Origin Story: The Name
When I first joined a school district, I was the "everything that plugs in" guy. They set up a helpdesk email that was easy to remember: tech@thedistrict.org.
Shortly after starting, I was helping out in a classroom when the teacher looked up and said, "How ironic that your last name is Tech and you went into this line of work."
Hence Nick Tech.
The .org is just because .com and .net were both taken in 2006. Those were pretty much your choices back when the internet was fun.