Geeky Baldisms

In many ways, I'm a computing kid. I grew up in the 60's and 70's, when computers were in the process of becoming a major part of human society. But you needed to be a mathematician in those days (at least that's what I thought) to enter the field. And math and I don't get along.

So I entered into the electrician field after graduating from high school back in the polyester-clad days of 1977.

I worked construction for ten years, then landed a job as an industrial electrician. I really thought I had found my niche.

That all changed in 1993, when I sprang for my first PC. After spending two months playing games, I began tearing it apart to see how it worked.

Seven years later, I landed a job as a geek at the facility where I was serving as an electrician.

Fullfillment at last!

My first online experience was placing a phone call through my 2400 baud modem to a buddy who was much geekier than me. We chatted via Procomm Plus for a few minutes.

First lesson learned, taught to me tactfully: DON'T TYPE IN ALL CAPS. It means you're shouting.

My next online experiences consisted of dialing into local BBS's.

It was like a glorious fireball streaking across the worldwide web's sky. It was so bright and beautiful that you knew it wouldn't live long. It was Mirsky's Worst of the Web.

My web surfing experiences began in 1995. One of my earliest finds was Mirsky's Worst. According to the Wikipedia entry,

Mirsky's Worst Of The Web (WOTW) was devoted to showcasing what Mirsky considered "the worst web sites ever". WOTW was the first well-trafficked site to feature "bad" web sites for entertainment purposes. His commentary was short on constructive criticism and long on insulting the web site layout, content and graphics, and sometimes the web designers themselves.

What I remember was gut-hurting hilarity. The sites were bad to the extreme, and Mirsky's commentary was like rich whipped cream on top of a perfect dessert.

Here are a few recollections that I have:

A site that sold horse sausage, complete with lots of gory photos of horses being turned INTO sausage.

A software sales site created by a man (I'll never forget the name, Martin Fung) for whom English was a second, or possibly third language. The site had obscenities innocently dropped into its sales pitches, and a cartoon image of a pool of urine.

A web page at a major university's web site (unfortunately I can't recall which one) touting the convenient locations of nearby liquor stores.

It was the summer of 1994. I had managed to install a 2400-baud modem in my PC running DOS 6.22 (no easy task in itself, ever heard of a DMA interrupt?) and was feeling my oats. I plugged the 3 1/2" floppy containing AOL 2.0 into the slot and began the install.

The software found my modem and dialed an 800 number. About a half-hour later, I was a full-fledged AOL member with my very first email address (renderland@aol.com, go ahead and harvest that one, spambots ;-).

AOL ran quickly enough over the old modem, but when I upgraded to a 14,400 later that year, it absolutely screamed. I soon began accumulating many free hours by referring friends. I didn't feel a bit guilty doing so, because it was worth every penny I paid for it (around 25 bucks a month).

I picked up quite a few gigs as a fledgling penman via the Writer's Area. There were the freebies at first, followed by gigs that paid modest fees.

When I wanted to kill a little extra free time, I searched through the profiles. In those freewheeling days, people would post lots of information about themselves, AND answer polite emails! Thus I exchanged correspondence with the great columnist Mike Royko and Dodger reliever (formerly Cardinal) Todd Worrell, among others.

When I got Windows 95, I also surfed the web via a direct dial-up. The web was a vast, uncharted territory, according to AOL. They couldn't be held responsible for any virii contained in files that you obtained from archie searches, one of the few internet services that they offered then. Pretty scary stuff.