Real McCoy - Another Night

Oh jeez. I ran across this song in my playlist today. Memories of my BBS days flooded back. Not just hanging out on BBSes, but all the real-world social atmosphere that came with it.

Playing Tradewars. Going to Ren Fest or Tippins (rest in Peace) to meet with people. Late nights in 16-color text-only teleconference. Driving out to Independence to hang out with my favorite Sysop. Arguing on the forums with Frogman, who's now one of my best friends. Turning Poet's little Geo Metro sideways between Kestra's basketball goal and the front porch, stranding him. Giant Pixie Sticks. Bowling. You don't even understand. You'd would have needed to be there. This is part of my mid-teenage past that permanently changed the course of my life. It may also explain my terribly eclectic and slightly disturbing social flair.

Orbital - Out There (Intro)

I was a naughty, naughty boy in the late 90's. I'd just purchased this album, and was in the middle of tinkering with an old AIX UNIX server at school that we used for student e-mail and homework storage. In order to get an e-mail account, you had to verify your identity, then you could choose a user name. Well, I accidentally crash the database while tinkering. When it crashed, it exported all of the data it had to the hard drive. For a brief, fleeting moment I had access to every student's first name, last name, SSN and Date of birth. On top of that, I had all of the student e-mail usernames, passwords, and what SSN (and therefore, person's real name) that the account belonged to. Never fear, I did not use the information for evil deeds, but it was kind of fun to watch it unfold.

I was friends (and eventually room mates) with the sysadmin of the server. I notified him of the problem and he cleaned up the files before anyone found them. He would later fix the glitch that allowed the crash to happen, too.

Underworld - Cowgirl

This is the first track I ever listened to on my NEC Versa 4050C. It was a used laptop that was new to me. It replaced my HP 300LX as my main classroom note-taking, BBS/UNIX Dialup terminal and Internet workstation. Yes, my 300LX was my main machine for a few months. But that's not what we're talking about.

I had just picked it up from a local used computer place (Oh, Computer Garage, how I miss thee...) and was sitting in my car, waiting for my wife to come out from her office on her lunch break. Except she was my girlfriend at the time. The NEC still works well to this day, but at a mere 90 MHz, it's pretty sluggish. It has great runtime on the battery, and it often gets used for Wardriving.