this is so much simpler!
I was trying to come up with a name for this thing and it was just, too much. I went through all of the usernames that I've had and it was crazy!
First I was xzheliix@ucdavis. That's when my dad got me a free account of my very own when I was, like, 13. I remember when I used to go to Astronomy classes at Sacramento City College and see flyers for The Compass Rose, Davis' own little BBS, in the lobby. And I was so star-struck by the whole internet thing, because I had seen Jumpin' Jack Flash and it all looked so exciting! which was also the exact reason that my mother did NOT want me on the internet.
Wiser minds prevailed, or at least ones less concerned with safety, and I got my own shell account and learned all about newsgroups and newsreaders and fucking gophering and ftp and email and MicroMUSE....
Here's what I don't remember: did I get the BBS account at the same time? I suspect that I needed an email address to do that, and that's what happened, or something.
The Compass Rose was awesome, and here's why: it's the only BBS I had ever been on. Man, it was hard to navigate. I mean, at least for a 14-year-old in the dawning of the internet days. (I know I just said 13. I got older, okay?) But if you had the right program, everything would be in color, omigod, and there were commands to send people roses... in ascii, yes, ascii roses... that could be in different colors... and you'd just sit around in the chatroom talking to people and trying to guess who you already knew when they happened to mention that they went to the high school, and oh! it's megan! I know megan! Oh my god, I have such a crush on her but I don't know it because I'm only in junior high and it will be another couple of years before I even think about declaring a sexuality!
I can't be totally sure about this, but I want to say that my screen name on there was ArthurDent because I was really into HHG and I really identified with him as the seemingly normal person in the midst of bizarre chaos. It could have been Timelady, though. It could be that I was already Timelady and that I just really liked the woman who was ArthurDent, not least because I was already really impressed by gender-bending.
And there were games you could play, and a file library, but mostly I just hung out in the chat room and learned to play with things there.
Oh my god, and then we got AOL. I swan. There never was such a thing as AOL before or since, it was so weird. Because back in the day, it was a fucking BBS and it used to make me so fucking mad that they wouldn't just admit that. All their ads were promoting them as being the internet, and they damn weren't.
As the internet, they sucked. As an internet service provider, they weren't so darn great either, what with all the hangups and the punt beasties and the busy signals and whathaveyou. But as a BBS, omg, I loved it so damn much. Because they had all these great areas for everything, they had file libraries full of just crazy random stuff you could download whenever you wanted, they had freeware up the wazoo, they had... they had online roleplaying games for Doctor Who and the X-Files! (And Vampire, I think, which is totally unnecessary and I don't know why you would play that... not like Doctor Who.... *ahem* *cough*)
I was definitely Timelady on there, and I had that username for fucking ever and aye, well into my first year of college. Eventually something happened, my parents got rid of it and stopped paying the bills and no one ever told me, I think it was after their divorce. It was a casualty of the divorce, basically, and of nobody caring about it that much anymore. I was really the only one who ever did, and I used to spend HOURS on there in high school, every couple of nights, simming away... because of course they couldn't call it a roleplaying game, they had to call it a SIM, because they were WEIRD... and running X-files games, and moderating the conversations and the plots and then hanging out for hours afterward and my mother just thought I was so obsessed (me? never!) and that it was so unhealthy and they used to ground me from it or refuse to let me use it at the drop of a hat. Somehow I still spent almost my whole high school career online, though, I mean at least when I wasn't working in the library or going to school or in some play or another. It's funny because the theater, the high school, and the library are all within about two feet of each other in Davis and I can totally drive by and point one finger to show where I spent my entire high school career. Because it sure wasn't going to be at home, is what I figured.
I guess I was danica@mills, but I didn't want to be. I wanted to be Oakling here, and I am pretty sure I was Oakling somewhere else by then too. But they said that I couldn't be because somebody had that name already (and I think it turned out to be someone who was no longer here, which made me mad) and so I was just plain old danica@mills. I populated the web so damn hard by then that that address still gets a huge amount of spam, according to the tech guys here. Ha ha!
There's already a danica at livejournal, damn her and her stuffed poop animals. No I'm not being all sour grapes about it, they really are poop. Poo people, I think she calls them. It's a little weird, not that I'm one to talk. There's a Timelady too, who looks pretty cool. I thought about being tardis_girl, but I don't want to limit myself. I'm trying not to become my own stereotype. And oakling has been taken over by those bratlings who use it for everything2.com, and it would just be too much to take it back for here. And I did want my name to be in it, for clarity's sake. I don't want to have to explain to someone who I am every five seconds just because we have so many damn JOURNALS.
So danica-stars... which I meant to be danica_stars, and then I forgot to fix it, which I think is much prettier... it is. At least for now.
Hi there!
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