mmm.txt Tue Sep 6 15:03:58 CDT 2011 It all seems so long ago. But the excitement of it in my gut is a memory whose recall exceeds anything I ever encounter on the internet anymore, or even in the last decade. It began with a "work from home" PC XT running God knows what level of DOS, a monochrome monitor with obvious cursor burn marks, and a 1200 baud modem (or was it bits per second? I'm not sure I ever knew the difference), in a bedroom of a rented duplex on Mackey Road in Highland, New York, in roughly 1987. I'm not even sure how I came to know of the first local BBS phone number. After all, it wasn't like you could just jump online and search. Probably from some "zine" about BBS's obtained from the surprisingly decent magazine rack at Barnes and Noble on Route 9 in the Town of Poughkeepsie (then located just between South Hills Mall and the new Galleria Mall - I think a pet supply store opened there after Barnes and Noble relocated north a few miles). As I recall, most of the BBS's of the Mid Hudson Valley were single phone line, running Genesis Deluxe (I had to search to help me remember that name). The only sysop name coming to mind is John Simon, based in Wappingers Falls. He was a wonderfully crazy guy who smoked cigars and whom I recall hosting a BBS get-together at a VFW in Wappingers Falls. I attended that, and one other such gathering, which took place at the Ground Round that was located on Route 9 about half a mile north of Spackenkill Road. Somewhere along the line I met "The Reverend F-Squared", with whom I chummed a little, and who insisted that I participate on a board called "TINY", which I believe lived on "the other side of the river", probably in Newburgh or Beacon, New York. TINY had at least two phone lines, and I *think* ran Phoenix. Whatever it was, I never really cared for the software relative to Genesis Deluxe. But of course to each their own. The Reverend F-Squared introduced me to several others. I'm only remembering the handles "Honey" and "Squire", though. (I don't remember anything about "Squire". But "Honey" was incredibly gifted in what might be called "sex chat". And of course when I finally met her she was utterly unattractive to me. But she was definitely a master of the genre.) I managed to scarf up a color monitor from work at some point, which of course made a huge difference (although in many ways I preferred the green monochrome... I'm remembering it being "sharper", for one thing). Somewhere along the line I learned of GE's "GEnie" online system, and I recall how disappointed other BBSers were when I started saying that I'd probably be heading more that direction, just because the audience was so much greater. I purchased an "Amstrad PC". It had a popout LCD screen, and two floppy drives. Probably 640 Meg of memory. I did GEnie while continuing the local BBS scene to some degree. And then someone started "mhv.net" (internet), which of course wound up being the beginning of the end of my local involvement. I don't think there was any way to connect to mhv.net via DOS, so I somehow wound up with floppies containing the Slackware linux distro, and installed it on a computer of my own (I'm remembering a 486 tower system). I say all that just to give temporal perspective on my online journey. As I said earlier, there was something intensely exciting about connecting to a local BBS and using a handle. I distinctly remember it coming down to being either "The Fool on the Hill" or "Mean Mister Mustard". I wound up favoring the latter, with its implication that I might become ornery in replies. Others quickly began calling me "M Cubed" or "M^3". I wound up carrying the "Mean Mister Mustard" handle into what became years of posting in USENET. There was the excitement of waiting for a line to be available, the excitement of whether or not the connect would be successful. It often wasn't, and of course that was quickly followed by the excitement of whether someone else had snuck in and gotten hold of the line while you were redialing. Then the excitement of whether there were any messages (or was mail?), of looking at new forums, of whether or not to chat with the sysop. I then lived in a place far from where I grew up, and of course couldn't afford long-distance to more remote BBSes. But none of my friends were anywhere near doing such things anyway. What I'm looking back at with amazement, now, is that to even discuss such things meant a long-distance phone call, or snail mail. That's all there was. So between neither old friends nor my (then) wife (also non-techie) having anything to do with said online world(s), there was also the excitement of being someone entirely new, in worlds where entirely new ways of interacting - and terminology to go with them - were still being invented. I wish I could remember more details. Wish I had those several DOS disks and backup disks and "data disks" (i.e. containing my own writing, or downloaded files) from that era. But although I probably transferred some of that to my 486 linux environment, I left that machine behind when I divorced, already running linux on a somewhat early laptop. So it's all gone. But here's to those intensely exciting days. For me, online has become predictable, and thus uninteresting. I want to say that back in BBS-only times only people with a brain could figure out how to play. Technology has (unfortunately, in my opinion) made it possible for any and every idiot to participate. Too bad. And never mind the obscene commercialization, so that my every move leads to gobs of advertising. - Mean Mister Mustard