I never had an AOL email address! I had email through work and never needed anything else because the company was so small no one was spying on it. I think my first personal email was [myname]@yahoo which I still have.
'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
Natter 70: Hookers and Blow
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
I was on USENET in '87 or '88, but I don't think I grasped the enormity of what was going on--despite it being somewhere authors were hanging out, and stuff. Once I graduated, it got frustrating. Our AS/400 at work was on an all-IBM network, which...limited fun, but I did get nookie out of it. And when I came to the US in '93, I found FidoNet, and it was on, baby, ON. And then AOL/Prodigy/Juno/whatevs...that very special time where everyone had their own website with a guestbook, and then Friendster and...I can't believe there are kids on Tumblr younger than my Internet addiction. My Internet addiction can drink and vote.
Also, I think I will be going through my backlog of emails for at least a week. Yikes.
Delete 'em. Add a note to your signature that says "I was out of the office, resend anything you still need a reponse to" and delete the whole backlog.
Juno! I remember that now! Juno might have been my first personal email, come to think of it.
I remember getting AOL on my first computer (a Mac Performa) and then having to ban a roommate from using it because he racked up so many minutes of long distance phone charges that he couldn't make rent.
The yahoo I still use as my primary email address is the one I got in 1995, when I needed a personal account.
Delete 'em. Add a note to your signature that says "I was out of the office, resend anything you still need a reponse to" and delete the whole backlog.
Yeah, I'm deleting most of them -- I had an autoreply set up so that anyone emailing me about book pitches got directed to a coworker. But I do need to get back up to speed on what books are coming out this fall/winter, and reading through publicist emails and industry newsletters is one of the best ways for me to do that. But yeah, almost none of them are going to get a response at this point.
I first went online in 1995 on MindSpring (now merged with Earthlink) back when the servers were in the founder's condo in midtown. When something went wrong, he'd call you.
I remember getting AOL on my first computer (a Mac Performa) and then having to ban a roommate from using it because he racked up so many minutes of long distance phone charges that he couldn't make rent.
Heh. After I moved to Minneapolis in '91, I was low on money and ended up locked out of my WELL account due to being behind on my bill. At least there was a way to avoid long-distance charges.
I think I sent one or two emails to addresses outside of the WELL while I was on it.
I had friends on the WELL, but I could never afford it. Those e-mail addresses to easy to remember, at least.