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Do you remember when you first got online?


I don't know why I remember, but it was 1999. The good ol' dial-up days. ๐Ÿ™„ I decided it was time because my children seemed to need it for school stuff. I have a photo of a time when some good family friends of mine were gathered around my computer, amazed at what they saw.

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I bought my first computer in 1990, DOS based and had to load software via 5 1/4" discs. Went online a few years after that, about 92 or so. Dial-up modem access, and could only really access text-based Bulletin Board Systems. Used to chat on there and play a lot of interactive games. Didn't get on the WWW until I upgraded to a 486 in 1995 with Win 3.1.

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This has me remembering that we had a computer for a few years before we actually went online.

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I remember when spreadsheets was the cool thing on PCs. Early 1990s.

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Apparently, I was rather late to the online game, though finances played a part.

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PCs were out long before the internet.

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Yep, I seem to have forgotten that.

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VisiCalc!

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Sometime in the 1990s. I don't remember if it was at school or at home, but probably school. I was in elementary school at the time, no idea which grade, but probably on the lower end. I remember playing Oregon Trail and a few other games on the school computers, but we also used the internet for some stuff, though I don't remember what. Although I do recall the time we first used this brand new search engine called Google.

I didn't use the internet much for a few years. I would use my mom's eBay account to buy Dragon Ball Z action figures and stuff like that every once in a while. That was about it. I only really started using the internet a lot in 2003, after I moved away and started using email to stay in contact with my best friend/first girlfriend.

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I remember Oregon Trail. We inherited my mom's Apple computer - she got it because she was teaching then - and yep, Oregon Trail was about the only thing we did until we got dial-up access a few years later. I first encountered email at work. Back then I worked for Target Stores and we all called it T-Mail. It was all inter-company stuff, though.

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About 15 years ago
I wanted sat-maps of the areas I hunted and fished to have a plan for my outings

Then I discovered message boards...

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๐Ÿ˜Š๐Ÿ˜‰ I don't remember when I discovered message boards. I do remember AOL chat rooms, though.

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I never participated in those chat rooms
I'm a pretty boring square

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At one time I hung out in one that was about auto racing.

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Huh, I sort of assumed it was mostly sexy talk...car racing would have been fun to chat about

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Nah, I didn't need to go there. Racing was more fun.

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I hear you, sex is all a bit boring at some point

Did you ever race cars?
I have a few funny stories

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Yeah, sex, in spite of what many folks say, is not the be all and end all. There really is more to life. I'm not saying it's not important, though.

No, I never raced. But I loved going to the local ARCA races when I lived in Phoenix. We used to go nearly every weekend. Back then we could go down to the infield before the races started. So cool. Al Unser Jr used to race there.

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That sounds awesome!

There really is something about a badass dude strapped into a really fast machine

I feel that way every morning and afternoon on the Saw Mill River Parkway LOL!
That damned road seems designed to cause fatalities

Overall, I'm pretty tired of driving

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It was dirt track racing. Dang, we had a great time. Sprint cars were my favorite. Gordon Smiley raced there, too. He was a fan favorite at Manzy (Manzanita Raceway near Phoenix). He died in a crash at Indy during qualifying.

Yep, I get it - being tired of driving. It gets old fast.

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Oh no! You use a gun and kill defenseless animals! ๐Ÿ˜ You are aware you will now be hated and scorned by some on this site. Yesterday I had the occasion to meet a guy in the check out line at our local Cracker Barrel. Very tall guy who had the most beautiful pearl grip firearm holstered to his side. We have open carry here in Mississippi and heโ€™s the first one Iโ€™ve seen carry openly. His baseball style cap had Security across the top. I struck up a conversation with him...a most impressive type you would want by your side. I inquired if he had run into any resistance so far. โ€œA few times.โ€ he answered. One time he was asked to leave or the police would be called! His response? โ€œGo ahead and call them!โ€ They backed down.

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I genuinely enjoy fishing and hunting
I eat what I kill
Wild animals are difficult to track down and the chase is thrilling
There is great sport to be had in fishing and hunting

I suppose on the internet this brands me as a psychopath or something...LOL!


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Louisiana is open carry here as well.

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I wish we were open carry here in NY

Some days I could use a .38

It's really ugly in The Bronx

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Donโ€™t yaโ€™ll have to jump through hoops to get a CWP? I carry a 22 Magnum with Laser. FYI

https://www.usacarry.com/new_york_concealed_carry_permit_information.html

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Yeah
My buddy owns a building in the rough part of Yonkers, he needs to collect rent from some real tough costumers and he works days so can only collect in the evenings

Westchester County declined his request for a full carry permit!
Unbelievable but true

In NY only criminals have guns!!

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But you have guns...

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shhh

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I don't remember the exact year but it was the late 90"s..Windows 95..
The first message boards I discovered were AOL and after that I was always on some forum or other..and even moderated on a few. As the 2000's progressed I discovered software that helped me with work...and with research..and downloading torrents (mostly books).
Never was that keen on most of the social media, though, even in its beginnings.

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1983: Saw the movie WarGames but that was Matthew Broderick communicating with other computers, not people. Didn't give it a second thought.

(Late 1980s?) Saw an author on a talk show talking about how he could send his son an "electronic letter." "E-mail" hadn't been coined yet. I totally didn't get it. Who cares?, I thought. I didn't get it that an e-mail wasn't like a conventional letter, but could be just conversation.

1993: Heard about this thing called AOL. Again, Who cares about something called chat rooms? I didn't get it.

1997: Went online for the first time and instantly got what "surfing" was all about. It was driven by the hyperlink. Netscape was the browser. Yahoo was the portal. AltaVista was the search engine.

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I remember Netscape and AltaVista, too. Good times. And how far we have come since then...

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PORN...PORN...PORNO!!!

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The Internet Is for Porn
https://youtu.be/KhCL5Ygzc24

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Late โ€˜90โ€™s. My husband worked with computers before DOS...Programmer/Analyst late โ€˜60โ€™s. He used Assembly Language.

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So you go way back. I was late to the party, I guess.

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Yeah, we do. I keep thinking about the saying, โ€œLife is like a roll of toilet paper...the more you use...the faster it goes!โ€

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It was 1998. My girlfriends dad had just got a new PC and dialup connection to go with it. My girlfriend and I went on it one night. Played some games, then tried out the internet. Didnt really know what we were doing but we found a chat room built in to the software provided by the dial up provider. Someone started speaking to us almost straight away. Long story short, the first time I used the internet the very first person I spoke to offered me money to have sex with my girlfriend on a webcam.

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Did that put you off? The offer of sex right off the bat?

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Nah. We found it hilarious. It got tedious real fast though, seemed like thats all that was going on in it. I think I remember looking up other things like early IMDb, but never really gave it a second thought after my limited experience with it. It was 2000/1 before I got my own internet connection, and by that point I knew a lot more about it. Still though, any chat room I entered with a username that didnt make it clear I was a dude, I got spammed with a/s/l requests and the occasional offer of a dick pic.

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Dick pics. LOL. Have we come a long way or not?

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Lol, yes. The dick pic market is booming. The internet is like being in the audience of an Oprah show. Only thereโ€™s no present of a car or money under your chair, just dick pics. You get a dick pic, and you get a dick pic, everybody gets a dick pic. Lol

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My neighbor Lewdy Judy probably enjoys them. ๐Ÿ˜

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everybody can enjoy a dick pic. One way or another, theyโ€™re funny. Either because of how they look, or because someone yet again thought sending a picture of that was somehow going to lead to separating the object of their desire from her underwear in quick fashion. That kind of desperation is always funny ๐Ÿ˜Š

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I, for one do not enjoy dick pics. There have been times Iโ€™ve misspelled a search and ended up seeing things I couldnโ€™t get off the computer fast enough! I clear my cache, my history, shut down & reboot! I donโ€™t want that garbage even leaving a footprint if I can help it. OMGosh! A skank and a horse!! Talk about a dic pic!๐Ÿฅด๐Ÿคข๐Ÿคฎ

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What the fuck were you searching for that you got a chick fucking a horse??? lol

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You donโ€™t know me as others do so Iโ€™ll let you know politely. I donโ€™t like profanity. Please donโ€™t use the f-bomb when replying to me as I find it offensive. And for sure donโ€™t take offense at my request.

To answer your question I donโ€™t recall what I was searching for as it was several years ago. People used to say donโ€™t worry about kids finding porn while on the internet as they had to give their age, pay a fee or whatever. I sure knocked a hole in that theory! All it takes is a misspelled word as I did. BTW, that wasnโ€™t what I saw.

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Dick pics in 2000/1?? I'm surprised. I do remember the ASL thing. Someone claiming to be a teen or early 20s posted ASL here and at first I thought it was a typo and he was asking about ESL ๐Ÿ˜„. I'd long forgotten about ASL.

There was one chat room I used to go to, but it was about a specific profession, so there was little to none of that stuff.

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