I remember Compuserve! I never used it, but I know some friends in high school had Compuserve email accounts, and they were all long, complicated, random strings of letters and numbers, like en5lxjcb99sl20f@compuserve.com. I don't know why.

Liese, what does "fatou_dust" refer to? I've always wondered!

The first modem I bought for my first PC back in '90 was this completely generic model (even the manual didn't reveal who made it). This was the first time I had to crack open a computer to install something, so it was very exciting.

The modem worked... when cold. After a bit of use it would no longer dial the correct number. So I exchanged it for a good one.

I remember being so nervous because I was no longer just a guy in my room with a computer, but was now using my 'puter for communicating with others. (I guess I was worried about doing something wrong.) Anyway, it seemed that a computer with a modem was a completely different beast than one without.

Nowadays, a computer without internet access seems weird.

In 1984 I was working at a research institute that shared a VAX statistical system with several other research institutes. On the VAX you could send a primitive kind of 48 character IM to other people who were logged on at the same time.

One night I got a message from User243 of another institute: "You the tall psychologist with a red beard?" Yes. "Beer-Francos-9:00, blonde in blue"

We spent most of the evening talking about how, if we ended up together (we did not), there would be a story in the New York Times romance section, because who ever heard of people meeting over a computer. Insane!

Things change.

The internet is being very good and also bad at giving me 200M information. But it looks like at least 4 people ran faster than Usain in the first heat, although no one in his heat--but both Jamaicans who qualified were faster than him. I hope he has his head on straight and his feet set to fleet.

My sister is reminding me that PT cousin says Usain is annoying in person, but...I don't really care. I don't have to spend time with him--I think he gives good image, plays the cocky man-boy pretty well, because he turns on the respect often enough that people know he's serious. He's not getting dinged the way Daley Thompson or Carl Lewis did, when they were on top of their worlds. In person, I'd only need a couple hours of his time and really no requirement for conversation at all.

This NDA project is driving me nuts. I can't walk over to people's desk to talk about stuff, or call them. It's a weird sort of restriction when you *have* to email, or when you're being deliberately vague over the phone. Like, I don't want to talk about security either, where people can hear. Makes me feel weird.

Rick, that would've be awesome.

I remember being on Prodigy bulletin boards back in...1993 or so? Sophomore or junior year of high school. And I remember my friends who graduated a year ahead of me in 94 getting email at their colleges, but I still sent them actual letters, until the next year when I was at college and had an email address (back in the day of telnetting and talk!).

I remember thinking it was okay to share information via fingering, and then thinking it was insane to put all that out there, and now...Facebook and Foursquare. So, cycles.

share information via fingering

I do not understand this statement. And the mental picture it is giving me is causing me to raise my eyebrows.

(i only got online in 1998 or so)

Vital Olympic news: Australia finally has more gold medals than New Zealand! >[link]

share information via fingering

'finger' was a Unix command that would give you info on the person you fingered. That info came from a file that people would set up on their network--what was that file called?

eta:

The program would supply information such as whether a user is currently logged-on, e-mail address, full name etc. As well as standard user information, finger displays the contents of the .project and .plan files in the user's home directory.

Ah yes, I had a .plan file on some network somewhere in the past.

In Unix, you could "finger" a user, if you knew what server they had their account on. This is the first example I found:

finger skywalker@moe.cc.emory.edu

Luke Skywalker (skywalke) is not presently logged in.
Last seen at moe on Mon Jul 23 05:13:06 2001 from larry.cc.emory.edu
Mail forwarded to skywalke@mail.service.emory.edu.
Project: Save the galaxy!
Plan:
*Star-hopping Friday night with Han
*Appointment with Yoda Monday at 3:15pm

The information given would vary, but it could be a lot of detail, including when you'd last been on or read your mail, or whatever. Stalkeriffic.