Friday, May 13, 2005
Me Being Like New
When I first entered cyberspace I was 25 years old and I was using a 14400 modem. It was 1995 and I had just gotten my computer, I remember it was the brand new, top of the line Pentium 60 megahertz, with about a 10 gigabyte hard drive and 96 megs of ram, wow this baby was state of the art. When I brought it home, the Pentium 75’s were coming off of the truck, and so on and so on. So much for trying to be up on the latest thing. But that was all right. I finally was going to get on line like I had wanted to do for a while. I tried Prodigy, CompuServe, Delphi net, Pipeline and, while I am not sure if it was around then I did try, Juno and eventually Net Zero. Some of these ISP’s were good, and I did go back to them again once or twice. None of these were as good as AOL.
I had a copy of AOL 2.0 for windows and that service seemed the most user friendly and had the most features, and was the one I used the most, and the one I still use today. Though now I am using DSL to connect and MSN is my primary browser, I still have an AOL account that gets some use. Though AOL is, to me, by far, the best, I had cut my teeth on CompuServe.
I will admit I knew nothing of surfing, or chatting or anything about the Internet at that point, and was eager to learn. I am the type who will try to do something before he reads the manual. Then will go to it only if necessary. I installed the software properly and decided to delve into the more social aspects of the surfing and tried to chat. I didn’t know what I was doing, or thought that was the case. As in life, I was being ignored. I thought I was a real dullard for not being able to figure things out and that is when I was IM-ed by a young girl from Canada named Laura.
She was about 12 or 13 and was very helpful. She told me that I was probably just being ignored. She taught me how to go to other rooms, how to start rooms, and chat room short hand as in LMAO or ROTHL. She was a great guide and teacher, and it wasn’t until we had been chatting awhile that I realized damn, she is a very trusting soul and should be careful while surfing the Internet because she may come across a pervert or something. And it was then that I realized that maybe that may seem what I was since I was still chatting with her.
We still continued to chat for a while, with our emails and chats becoming less frequent until one day, well one day when neither of us saw one another again. I hoped that she had found something in the real world more worthy of her time, and I hope if she is still out there surfing she comes across this blog entry, and reads these words so I can properly thank her for teaching me the skills I know take for granted and that have become second nature to me.
If you are out there, I hope you are well and I want to thank you.
I had a copy of AOL 2.0 for windows and that service seemed the most user friendly and had the most features, and was the one I used the most, and the one I still use today. Though now I am using DSL to connect and MSN is my primary browser, I still have an AOL account that gets some use. Though AOL is, to me, by far, the best, I had cut my teeth on CompuServe.
I will admit I knew nothing of surfing, or chatting or anything about the Internet at that point, and was eager to learn. I am the type who will try to do something before he reads the manual. Then will go to it only if necessary. I installed the software properly and decided to delve into the more social aspects of the surfing and tried to chat. I didn’t know what I was doing, or thought that was the case. As in life, I was being ignored. I thought I was a real dullard for not being able to figure things out and that is when I was IM-ed by a young girl from Canada named Laura.
She was about 12 or 13 and was very helpful. She told me that I was probably just being ignored. She taught me how to go to other rooms, how to start rooms, and chat room short hand as in LMAO or ROTHL. She was a great guide and teacher, and it wasn’t until we had been chatting awhile that I realized damn, she is a very trusting soul and should be careful while surfing the Internet because she may come across a pervert or something. And it was then that I realized that maybe that may seem what I was since I was still chatting with her.
We still continued to chat for a while, with our emails and chats becoming less frequent until one day, well one day when neither of us saw one another again. I hoped that she had found something in the real world more worthy of her time, and I hope if she is still out there surfing she comes across this blog entry, and reads these words so I can properly thank her for teaching me the skills I know take for granted and that have become second nature to me.
If you are out there, I hope you are well and I want to thank you.
