Ten Years on the Net!

Well, right around now is my ten year getting-on-the-net anniversary. Wow, it feels like it was only yesterday, piggy-backing on the FIU-FAU LAT net and jacking into cybernet.cse.fau.edu, an open-access Internet BBS that existed at the time.

Some Internet related things that I dealt with back in the early days (1994-1996)...

• alt.tv.animaniacs (Hellooooooo Usenet!)
• alt.fan.lion-king (Hakuna Ma-what-a?)
• cybernet.cse.fau.edu, Cybernet BBS (Anyone got a WAFFLE-iron?)
• CyberGate, AIX (first UNIX system I ever use), that larry@gate.net account
• (305)348-1196 (old FIU 9600 baud dialin to a DECserver)
• TIN (who needs a GUI to read news???)
• Trying to convince my high school to get Internet access because it was "educational" (though I just wanted it so I could goof off on the net during lunch)
• wakko.gil.net (Jeff, thanks for the free access!)
• sarabi.gil.net (I had a real hostname when most people didn't even have real access!)
• FurryMUCK (still there! 10 years as of 4/7/2005!)
• Zorin the Squirrel
• CU-SeeMe (Hi Milva!)
• PointCast (How utterly useless. But I still had fun with it!)
• FurToonia (Hello Kaja, Selane, Shakeera, if you're still out there!)
• FluffMUCK (Hello Inkypaws, Rieshal, Paws, and others.. StH TinyPlot, Mban, Town Hall meetings, speaking staff, flying phonebooths, etc. etc. etc.)
• Windows 3.1 and Trumpet Winsock (shudder)
• EWAN (a telnet client for Windows... the only decent one at the time)
• Netscape 1.1N (Holy crap! HTML is COOL!)
• Linux (kernel 1.2.8 was the first I ever booted! Yeah I came in a bit late, SO WHAT? }:) )
• As a Linux newbie, figuring out how to get PPP to work under Linux (pulled an all-nighter, success was the greatest feeling in the world!)
• ICQ (5327238 -- nice small UIN!)
• My First Router (386DX/33 running Linux in 5MB of RAM off a 20MB MFM disk, fun!)
• Doing all of this at 14.4kbps
• solix.fiu.edu, serss0.fiu.edu, xlab1.fiu.edu, (305)348-3282, those darn SPARCClassics in PC-415, the cheap VT220 clones in the terminal lab, SERVAX...
• Running Linux on a Floppy on open student lab 486s so I could telnet out
• Getting a job at FIU, vixen.cs.fiu.edu, SCS, getting paid to be a geek, learning how this Internet stuff actually WORKS...
• Getting banned from the EIC lab (Engineering) at FIU for swiping an IP address so I could get on the Internet. The irony is I was hired for the SCS department only months later and ended up dismantling that lab since we took over the building. :)
• ...

Well, that's enough for now. I'll add more as I think of it over the next few days. It's been a good run, and here's hoping for another ten years of cool stuff!