I'm so fucking old that I took part in this more than once, and posted on rec.sport.basketball.pro many times. It mentions Alan Sepinwall here, and I knew he was the same guy that I keep seeing nowadays reviewing films. He was a funny enough guy, but GOD he wouldn't shut up about going to Penn. And he certainly wasn't as big of a deal as Roy "Pinhead" Navarre, the obsessed Shaq fan who was the HCP of the time. Anyone else have memories of those pre-graphics days? https://www.theringer.com/2020/11/12/21558640/the-internets-first-nba-draft-nerds
I used the Usenet a lot between 1988 and early 1994, in the early days on old VAX machines in the basement of the college - but I have to admit that I did not care much for the basketball groups. I was an ardent follower of the Usenet Oracle - which I believe is some of the best comic writing ever created by the human race. I believe some stuff from 1989 is archived here: https://internetoracle.org Granted, a lot of it is prime nerd humor.
THE HCP’s introduction to the internet....... had to have been the fall of 2000. A couple weeks before, ran into one of my boys from way back up playing hoops at Laurelhurst Park. Asked if I wanted a laptop for $50. Said it fell off the back of a truck and I was down. Recently finished college and thought it would be good to have. Not sure what for, but you couldn’t beat that price. It was a Compaq Presario if I’m not mistaken. Was on the couch with the now MRS HCP and we were watching Survivor. They said you could get on the “Web” and vote for who you thought was going to win...... and that was the first thing I did on a computer. Or probably 2nd if you counted playing the Oregon Trail in class back in middle school. And like I’ve said before, BBF was the first forum I ever went to and even looked at. Day before the draft when we took Martell. This is the only sports forum I belong to...... I peruse (first time I’ve ever typed that word) an Audi, Mac and college sports recruiting forum, but that’s it.
Does your head (and fingers) hurt from use of such a "big" word? Your first use of the internet.... was it still on dial-up at that time? I can't remember when we moved from dial-up to real internet. We got internet back in like Spring of 1997. Old AOL dial-up. Slow as shit. There was an AOL Blazers forum. That and the AOL SF Giants forums were the first forums I ever went on (S2 is the only forum I am a member of at this point).
I was a work-from-home pioneer, work supplied me with a 300 baud modem, similar to this one, which I used with my 128k mac. barfo
I remember everyone on rec.sport.bb.pro bitching about how it was going to be ruined by AOL and I didn't know what they were talking about.
Ha, I remember being on AOL back in the mid 90's. Still friends with about 7 people from then, tho I really only stay in regular contact with 3 of them. Whenever we used to meet up in public and people would be like "how'd you meet", we'd make up some story "we were both members of a cult"
I started with this ...saw Herbie Hancock use one on video ...got Master Tracks disk ...a midi chord..a Korg M1 workstation and I was on my way to ruining my eyesight staring at analog monitors!r eventually I upgraded to a desk top PC that was the size of a hotel fridge with a whopping 1.3 gigabyte drive, Floppy disk drive, scsi card and a zip drive with a CDRW built in! Also had a kick ass sound card and moved from Master Tracks to Cakewalk and Cool Edit Pro....
I started with 14.4k and to this day always remember the feeling of going on mIRC and talking to someone from Japan and as a 10-11 year old was utterly fascinated by the idea of this little machine being able to convey a message thousands of miles away. For gaming, does anyone remember MSN Zone? I played Rainbow six on there on a 56k modem... then when we got DSL it was such a difference. Lol. And then of course aol, icq, etc. Golden era of internet if you ask me.
Oooh lawdy dah! a 14.4 modem! My first one was a 9600 baud modem (that I paid an obscene amount of money for).
