June 2004

Things have sure changed in 10+ years of internet use..... Those of us who have been around since the Compuserve days can remember what it was like to have spam-free email. Weren't those the good ol' days? And when we migrated over to the IRCs and left the expensive per-hour charges of Cserve behind (those credit card bills were painful! Ouch!) there were no viruses or nasty worms to worry about. I can still recall the lag problems (it was heaven to upgrade to a 28.8 modem from my original 14.4 dinosaur!). My original web browser was Mosaic; Netscape had just come out and Explorer was still a glint in Bill Gates' eye. Remember Windows 3.1? We thought Win95 was the ultimate! The nasty people on IRC would blast us off-line with their little bombs, so we had to 'protect' ourselves with anti-bombware. Who needed Norton in those days??

For all its little speed bumps, the info superhighway was a relatively smooth ride in those days. I believe we were pioneers - talking to people all over the world and making friends (and enemies). What exactly were all the fights about? Silly stuff when I think about it now.... The alliances and the backstabbing. The romance and the fights. The deceptions. The brutal honesty. They could have made a tv series about us. Wait a minute, I think they did! Only they called it "Survivor" and it is blissfully low-tech....

Silly ramblings for a rainy, dark summer day in Texas. Hi to all my old friends and enemies and acquaintances and rivals... Stop by and reminisce about the good old days here and in the forum....

tess

Come say hello to some old friends at Virtually Drifting