And indeed, it was odd. Not bad odd, just unusual. The late 1990's were a very exciting time, primarily because of the vast amount of pornography becoming available to the average American home. Yes, this was the heyday of Napster, Kazaa, Usenet, IRC, and all other manner of digital gloryholes where America's throbbing e-knob went to be e-polished. But before any of these existed, there was an awesome program called Hotline which combined all of the features of the conveniently-named products above. It was a client-server based piece of software that included forums, chat, instant messaging, and file sharing.
I managed to get a hold of Hotline somehow, probably off of one of the Mac Addict CDs my friend Chris used to get. However it happened, Hotline was my gateway to the wild wild web (SEE WHAT I DID THERE). And sure, many of the servers were full of various contraband files. But it did have nice communities where people actually talked, traded legal files, and used the Internet for the higher purposes that Al Gore had in mind.
My server of choice was run by a guy named Erik the Red. It was a low-key and friendly place with a few game demos and assorted shareware. Erik was basically a good guy with some free server space. Meanwhile, I was a whiny kid with no money and an abundance of free time, and a burning desire to play Myth. I was surely whining on his server about having no money for this computer I wanted real bad when, to my surprise, he asked me what kind of work experience I had (being 12 years old, the answer was a resounding "NONE WHATSOEVER.) Out of the goodness of his Viking heart, he gave me some text transcription work. I was taking addresses off of a scanned mailing list and putting them into an Excel spreadsheet. Yes, I was helping to modernize the nefarious business of direct-mail advertising. But I wanted a computer real bad, so screw you!
Were this deal made with anyone other than Erik the Red, I would not have gotten paid. But Erik was good to his word. Not long after I'd completed the work, I got a check for a few hundred dollars. We could easily afford a new computer now!
And what kind of computer did I choose?
I managed to get a hold of Hotline somehow, probably off of one of the Mac Addict CDs my friend Chris used to get. However it happened, Hotline was my gateway to the wild wild web (SEE WHAT I DID THERE). And sure, many of the servers were full of various contraband files. But it did have nice communities where people actually talked, traded legal files, and used the Internet for the higher purposes that Al Gore had in mind.
My server of choice was run by a guy named Erik the Red. It was a low-key and friendly place with a few game demos and assorted shareware. Erik was basically a good guy with some free server space. Meanwhile, I was a whiny kid with no money and an abundance of free time, and a burning desire to play Myth. I was surely whining on his server about having no money for this computer I wanted real bad when, to my surprise, he asked me what kind of work experience I had (being 12 years old, the answer was a resounding "NONE WHATSOEVER.) Out of the goodness of his Viking heart, he gave me some text transcription work. I was taking addresses off of a scanned mailing list and putting them into an Excel spreadsheet. Yes, I was helping to modernize the nefarious business of direct-mail advertising. But I wanted a computer real bad, so screw you!
Were this deal made with anyone other than Erik the Red, I would not have gotten paid. But Erik was good to his word. Not long after I'd completed the work, I got a check for a few hundred dollars. We could easily afford a new computer now!
And what kind of computer did I choose?
Abusing my college-bound sister's education discount, we got the Apple Power Macintosh G3 All-in-One. It had a blazing 233 mhz G3 processor, a whopping 32 megabytes of RAM, a vivid 15" monitor, and it weighed a hernia-inducing sixty pounds. I loved everything about it. I even loved how it smelled; it had a porous, translucent mesh on the top for heat dissipation, and I literally remember putting my face on it and huffing its fumes of plasticky, electronicky newness.
And on it, I played Myth. And I was never the same.
