Roots -- 72750,1412
Today, I put my oldest computer to bed. It was purchased in October 1996, and was running Windows 98. Technically, it was retired about 18 months ago, but it sat in a room waiting for data harvesting for all that time. Tonight I did that, and the harvest was good.
Once I had what I needed, I started destroying personal data, thinking I might donate it, but the big recipients don't seem interested in a machine over 5 years old. So I will locate a responsible recycling program and have it destroyed in a "green" fashion. The hard drive will suffer a rough end to ensure it can't be read, because the more data I destroyed, the more I found in "ini" files and registry entries (tax programs and financial programs I've used over the years).
Along the way, I found this...
Good ol' CompuServe. My entry into the world outside my home computer. This was my first account, started in 1983 on a 300bd modem and an Atari 130XE computer.
My first online experience dates back to 1982, when I was 15 years old. I was visiting a pen-pal, Holly, in upstate New York. Her dad took me into the office one day and set me off on CompuServe CB while he worked. "This is other people typing to me? Incredible!!!"
No one seemed interested in speaking to me, though. An old friend-of-the-family had stopped by recently and was telling us about his actual CB radio experiences. I was using his handle, which -- though I did not know it then -- was rather offensive. I learned that day, though, how offensive it was, as I CB'ed in the presence of Holly's dad. I sent a formal letter of apology for that, and he replied that he hadn't noticed. Kind of funny looking back, but terrifying at the time.
Later, on my own account, I made many friends, although I have a hard time remembering who they were. Daddio was from Long Island, my old haunts. I never learned where VirtualVixen originated, but she was on my channel all the time, too (the number of which, btw, I fail to recall -- 13 maybe?). Later on, I remember Peaches, who was pregnant and deathly afraid of giving birth. My name was EeeTee (all other variants were taken, and it was my pen-pals in upstate New York who gave me the nick "E.T." in the first place, so I chose to adapt and spell it the way E.T. said it). In time, a number of these folks migrated to IRC channels dedicated to the old CB channels. Eventually, I lost touch.
As the years went by, my number, "72750, 1412", proved to be very low. A 5-digit first part meant instant respect (i.e. - you were "mature" and not liable to spend the whole time trying to "hotchat" everyone on the channel). I maintained my low numbered CompuServe account until the advent of CompuServe2000. I had to convert the account to reactivate after a brief stint with AOL, and I ended up with a high 6-digit number -- a true sign of being a newbie. But that was alright. The web was alive, and really all CompuServe was for was getting to it. The number no longer mattered.
Looking today, I expected to see CompuServe gone. Last I saw, it was under AOL's reign. But, it's still there. Netscape is running it now. I wonder just how many people it hosts, if they still call it CB instead of "chat rooms", and what Daddio is up to today.
Once I had what I needed, I started destroying personal data, thinking I might donate it, but the big recipients don't seem interested in a machine over 5 years old. So I will locate a responsible recycling program and have it destroyed in a "green" fashion. The hard drive will suffer a rough end to ensure it can't be read, because the more data I destroyed, the more I found in "ini" files and registry entries (tax programs and financial programs I've used over the years).
Along the way, I found this...
Good ol' CompuServe. My entry into the world outside my home computer. This was my first account, started in 1983 on a 300bd modem and an Atari 130XE computer.
My first online experience dates back to 1982, when I was 15 years old. I was visiting a pen-pal, Holly, in upstate New York. Her dad took me into the office one day and set me off on CompuServe CB while he worked. "This is other people typing to me? Incredible!!!"
No one seemed interested in speaking to me, though. An old friend-of-the-family had stopped by recently and was telling us about his actual CB radio experiences. I was using his handle, which -- though I did not know it then -- was rather offensive. I learned that day, though, how offensive it was, as I CB'ed in the presence of Holly's dad. I sent a formal letter of apology for that, and he replied that he hadn't noticed. Kind of funny looking back, but terrifying at the time.
Later, on my own account, I made many friends, although I have a hard time remembering who they were. Daddio was from Long Island, my old haunts. I never learned where VirtualVixen originated, but she was on my channel all the time, too (the number of which, btw, I fail to recall -- 13 maybe?). Later on, I remember Peaches, who was pregnant and deathly afraid of giving birth. My name was EeeTee (all other variants were taken, and it was my pen-pals in upstate New York who gave me the nick "E.T." in the first place, so I chose to adapt and spell it the way E.T. said it). In time, a number of these folks migrated to IRC channels dedicated to the old CB channels. Eventually, I lost touch.
As the years went by, my number, "72750, 1412", proved to be very low. A 5-digit first part meant instant respect (i.e. - you were "mature" and not liable to spend the whole time trying to "hotchat" everyone on the channel). I maintained my low numbered CompuServe account until the advent of CompuServe2000. I had to convert the account to reactivate after a brief stint with AOL, and I ended up with a high 6-digit number -- a true sign of being a newbie. But that was alright. The web was alive, and really all CompuServe was for was getting to it. The number no longer mattered.
Looking today, I expected to see CompuServe gone. Last I saw, it was under AOL's reign. But, it's still there. Netscape is running it now. I wonder just how many people it hosts, if they still call it CB instead of "chat rooms", and what Daddio is up to today.
posted by Eric at 20:56
6 Comments:
I didn't realize you had such a long history of being a loser geek. I thought it was just a recent development.
LOL....I had compuserve for the longest time!!
oh and HI!!!
Hehe oh that takes me back ... I don't really remember exactly which year I got my Compuserve account, but it must have been around 1991. My number was 100022,1733 ... not a cool 5-digit number like yours, but cool enough for European standards. I think users here in Germany were still numbered in the hundreds. My first phone bill after I got my account nearly made me go bankrupt - I had to dial-in long distance, in addition to the $22 per hour that Compuserve charged in those days. What a relief it was when OzCIS came out! My favourite activity on CIS was the forums, and OzCIS allowed me to hit my forums with one or two passes, download the current threads, mark the ones I wanted to read and then do all my actual reading and writing offline. I wonder if we ever ran into each other on CIS ... but I don't remember.
Oh yes, good old times indeed! I have been on Compuserve for a short time somewhere around 1993/94 and was then "converted" to AOL, to which I was hooked for a couple of years. I remember very well how new and exciting all this Internet stuff felt when I first read "newsgroups" on Compuserve back then.
A couple of days ago I have been doing some data "harvesting" myself, looking through old files from that time and found a couple of pictures from people I met on a certain AOL chatroom. Made me a little sad that I lost contact to all of them, but I guess that's just the way life goes.
I remember my Compuserve account, too! I don't know why, but it just stuck with me... 75330,3310 was me! :D
Ah, CIS is where where I cut my online teeth too, after just random BBS'ing for a while. Had to be the mid-80's, I suppose. I had two numbers: 71121,3xxx and 75300,2xxx -- the latter 'cuz I ended up a sysop on the old GRAPHICS forums for a number of years. I just googled the latter ID number and sure enough, I still have forum messages floating around the 'net with my RL name on them! (Hence the xxx :-) Man, now I feel really old. Again!
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