Hey tOdd,
First internet experience? I
guess it was around 1994(ish) and I had a bad-@ss 14baud modem. My
coolio fave band was The Tragically Hip, so that was the first site
I tried to hit on my first dial-up to the internet. When their home
page took 30 minutes to load, I decided the internet was not yet
ready for me. No kidding, it was at least two years before I
bothered to get back online. Now I'm a programmer/web dev guy. Go
figure.
Your site is in my all-time top 5. It is just a comfortable place
to hang out for a few minutes each day. Thanks for all the oddness.
Larry
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My first internet
experience was while working at an import food company
[manufacturers of imported olive oil and other fine gourmet
foods]. My computer—and I use the term loosely—was a Mainframe
36. We had a fax machine but we also used what was called a
‘Telex’ machine. We would send messages to our European
vendors-- you could type in very short messages into the machine
and send them over an alternate phone line with a moderate
amount of success. This was somehow faster than faxing to
Europe; apparently the lines back then were dicey and if the
phone company of a certain country went on strike, the entire
country was ‘closed’ until the matter got resolved. Telex was a
few steps below the transmissions that happened during the movie
“Jumping Jack Flash” if you can visualize that.
In later jobs I
would read posts on what I think was called trumpet news and got
to realize just how many freaks were out there.
Not sure who was
first to tell me that you could actually BUY stuff online. Buy
stuff? Instead of deal with snooty shop
clerks? Ah…the joys.
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My first "Internet" memories
are of the ArpaNet, which was before the World-Wide-Web (AKA -
what is now known as the Internet). There were no graphic
interfaces, no browsers. There was Telnet, Gopher, IRC,
USENET and a host of other tools that you had to actually learn
something about to use. E-mail existed but it was much more
limited - maybe 10,000 people on the whole planet had an e-mail
address. For a geek like me it was nirvana. I could talk to
other like minded people around the world for the cost of a
local phone call. Of course, any good geek back then could make
free calls to most anywhere anyhow as the phone sysem was much
less complex and quite easy to hack. But this was different -
this was legal and it allowed you access to similarly
technically minded individuals from all over. Meeting new people
with similar interests was as easy as finding a new server to
visit. Viruses didn't exist. Security was mostly a non-concern.
We were almost all "hackers" ( I really hate that word!) and
malicious attacks were nearly unheard of - hacking was done to
demonstrate skills and share knowledge. It was beautiful - a
geek utopia. Then, one day, the Web came and Netscape close on
it's heels. The Web was simultaneously an amazing advancement
and a crushing blow for my private little universe. No longer
would the net be the exclusive playground of the technically
adept. The influx of the great un-tech masses was almost
painful. At the time it felt like they were giving drivers
licenses to 5 year olds. Of course, I could never have
predicted what it would become - how vast and powerful - and
it's completely due to the fact that it was opened up to the
universe. It has certainly worked out well enough in the long
run... but I will always miss the "Old Days" and the glow of
nothing but text across my monochorme display.
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Hi tOdd,
I just saw a post about
a BBS and it reminded me of the coolest job I had. I worked
at a "dot-com" before there was such a thing (in mainstream
lingo anyway), circa 1987. The computer system that hosted
the BBS was a DEC VAXcluster. While the system's patrons
had simple text instant messaging, the employees had access
to "system level" tools such as the very cool (and yet to be
truly duplicated) VAX Phone.
What was so cool about
VAX Phone? Well, the screen (on a VT100 terminal) would
divide in two sections (or more if you had a "conference"
going) and you could see the other person's typing as they
typed each character. Unlike the IMs of today where you
compose (and proof?) the message first and then click send,
once typed, unless you were very fast with the delete key,
your mistakes shone through to the remote caller.
So, I'm on the "phone"
with a colleague and we were discussing a recent company
boondoggle ski trip to Vermont. There were 3 classes of
people that attended the boondoggle; those that skied, those
that partied and then those that had the stamina to do
both. I was a skier and crashed before the party really got
going each evening, so she was filling me in on the
shenanigans that I had missed.
The story was about a
lovely young female employee (whom, if you looked up
"voluptuous" in the dictionary, you'd see her picture) and
how wasted and wild she became one evening. (They could
hardly keep her from ripping off her own clothes
apparently.)
I started to type that
this would give me reason to be both a skier and a partier
at the next -- and I intended to type b-o-o-n-d-o-g-g-l-e.
Instead, I had typed something else. (Replace "n" in "boon"
with the letter next to it on the keyboard.)
Instead of trying to
back up and delete the word, I just left it there,
paused, hit <Return> a few times and typed "(whoops,
Freudian typo!)"
The response was
"%^&(@Kdao8id32;oij2 <pause> <a few blank lines> (whoops, I
just fell off my chair laughing!)"
-- Rob
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