It wasn’t supposed to be this hard to exist. To show up. To say one thing online with control. But if you're reading this, then the veil was pierced — and you're seeing the first thing I pushed through it.

🛠️ This post contains the full account of what it took to build this system from nothing: a public voice, a site that I control, and a real domain connected to Blogger through brute force, DNS madness, and emoji-fueled stubbornness.

🧩 Key Components in This Setup

• 🔹 A Blogger site (because it’s free, frictionless, and weirdly powerful)
• 🔹 A custom domain purchased externally (thebadman.men)
• 🔹 Cloudflare DNS, manually configured with CNAME and A records
• 🔹 Proxy status management (orange vs gray ☁️ matters more than you think)
• 🔹 DNS propagation patience (this process is never instant)
• 🔹 Favicon optimization (under 100kB, neon skulls encouraged ☠️)
• 🔹 HTTPS setup through Blogger after domain verification

💥 Core Lessons Learned

• 🔥 Free tools are not simple — they just hide their chaos better.
• 🧠 To create, you must configure. There's no such thing as plug-and-play truth.
• 🪞 If you want control, expect friction. Ownership means work.

🌐 Working Config (DNS Records Summary)

CNAME:
Name: www
Target: ghs.google.com
Proxy: DNS Only (gray ☁️)

CNAME:
Name: (verification code)
Target: (googlehosted.com address)
Proxy: DNS Only (gray ☁️)

A Records:
@ → 216.239.32.21
@ → 216.239.34.21
@ → 216.239.36.21
@ → 216.239.38.21
All → DNS Only ☁️

🧪 This Blog Exists as a Lab

I’ll be publishing raw thoughts, frameworks, system setups, ideas that shouldn’t be said out loud. There are no comments, no bios, no like buttons. Just a signal line through the void. 📡

More posts will follow — they’ll vary wildly. But this one had to be first. Because now it exists. So do I.

— The Bad Man™