Trip down dork!memory lane

[castalie]

Yesterday krazykipper asked about our fandom history and it made me think of my Internet Journey. With capital letters, yes. I remembered how I bought my first modem when I was eighteen and how said modem was actually one of the first things I bought with the salary I got from my First Real Official Job. My little 56k modem. Sharp blue. With that screeching 'I Iz Going On-Line Nao Kthxbai' noise. I had to put a pillow on it sometimes so that I wouldn't wake everyone in the house

I called it Mallorie, Mallo for short. The reasoning being that 'she' - the modem happened to be female - brought me to all kinds of different worlds via the net so, therefore, it was called Mallorie after Quinn Mallory from Sliders. I always have lame awesome reasons to call my stuff the way I do, see? \o/

Oh! And one day Mallo fell down and the button that needed to be switched on in order to get on-line sorta broke so in order to fix it I put a big red ribbon on it and tied it with a severe knot around the modem. Poor Mallo, she sorta looked ridiculous like that, but she was such a trooper because she kept logging me in, anyway.

And no DSL at the time, of course, just a twenty-hour contract. Omg twenty-hours a month! So okay I didn't have time-consuming LJ to play with at the time, but I swear I feel like hyperventilating when I think of the short time I had back then.

Fast forward a few years when I discovered LJ... I still didn't have broadhand at the time, so in order not to kill my net time when I wanted to answer comments - in other words, in order to protect my bank account - I would get on-line, check my mails, log out, reply to each comment off-line, get back on-line and post them all.

Seriously, so much hassle for something that is so incredibly easy that I take it for granted now, you know?

Comments

[hakeer.livejournal.com]

Oh god, the pre-DSL days! I used to follow a couple high-traffic newsgroups, so every time I came online I downloaded all the messages, then went offline to read them, replied to some, came back online to post them-- and everyone had already moved on to another topic. Good times! ;P

[castalie.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I feel your pain, that must have been frustrating ;-) Though, yeah, good ole times when it felt like we sorta 'worked' for it, you know? lol

[luthien82]

Oh God that makes me unimaginably glad that I discovered the interent for me when I was already living with people who valued flatrates (the first one being an ISDN connection and me and my sister had a flatrate from 4PM till 6AM and on the weekend, and the second one with my boyfriend who had DSL and a flatrate round the clock). I mean, it was torture when I visited my parents who only had a modem (which they gave to me as a birthday present for my 18th birthday, by the way) where you had to pay for each minute you spent online but I did it exactly the way you did so as to keep the phone bill down :)

Awww, good times :D

[castalie.livejournal.com]

I feel so old when I talk about pre-DSL Days, I swear! Like, 'Back In My Days, we had those little 56k modems'

where you had to pay for each minute you spent online but I did it exactly the way you did so as to keep the phone bill down :)

That was painful, all right!

But I feel all nostalgic, anyway. Like you said 'good times'. Not that I would like to go back to it, dude, but, you know, it was our First Times... it's always very sweet :-)

[krazykipper.livejournal.com]

The days of writing e-mails offline?

Seems unheard of now doesn't it. *clings to internet*

Dad got his first computer in 1981, and he still uses it. It's so cute. ;p

[castalie.livejournal.com]

Seriously, you tend to forget that you ever proceeded that way once *clings to DSL like crazy*

Dad got his first computer in 1981, and he still uses it. It's so cute. ;p

Aww that's too cute for words!

[krazykipper.livejournal.com]

It's such a nasty thought isn't it??

Yeah...it's got less than 1GB of memory. And he had to install a 3 1/2" floppy disk drive into it too. He has a new comp, but the old one is sweet.

[castalie.livejournal.com]

It's such a nasty thought isn't it??

Well, as memories go, it's fun, but I'm not sure I'd survive going back to that time lol

[sockich.livejournal.com]

Oh god, those days. I get goose bumps just thinking about it. *clings to the internets*

I would get on-line, check my mails, log out, reply to each comment off-line, get back on-line and post them all.

Lol, I used to read fic like that. Find as many as I could as fast as I could, copy&paste like crazy, go off-line and read.

I have no idea how I could do it, these days I have to have at least 6 different tabs opened, doing 6 different things at a time, before I can really enjoy a fic. ...what, I never said I was normal. ;)

[castalie.livejournal.com]

Lol, I used to read fic like that. Find as many as I could as fast as I could, copy&paste like crazy, go off-line and read.

Omg I did that too! Or I'd open as many pages as possible and follow as many links as possible and then read them off-line.

As for saving those fics, I couldn't save as html at the time so it was copy/paste them a lot too.

I have no idea how I could do it, these days I have to have at least 6 different tabs opened, doing 6 different things at a time, before I can really enjoy a fic. .

Lol I do that sometimes too :-)