1. When did you first connect (“go online”), and how?
Hmm. That would be… [does math] somewhere around 1991 I think. Maybe 1990. South Dakota wasn’t really the hub of internet savvy in those days, so access was through the University and was mostly just checking email and printing stuff off of mailing lists until one of us found Battletech MUSE and our grades steadily went to hell.

2. What was your first communications program?
ProComm for DOS. Dialed into USD’s server and log into the VAX server. A few months later someone introduced me to the wonder of the Unix server and some mail program called “pine” and I was home. :) I still have a few emails saved from that era.

3. When did you first chat over the internet, and how?
That would be Battletech MUSE, which was more random virtual gunfire interspersed with chatting. In retrospect, I’ve never just logged onto something for the purposes of simply talking — it’s always been combined with some online game or another. The only exception to that was the three months when I moved to Denver and Jackie hadn’t come out here yet. We wrote a little chat client that you could log into with a telnet client and talk over.

4. What chat type program(s) do you use now?
As previously stated, none. (Though sometimes I wish Jackie had something set up from our respective work machines.)

5. Who was your first service provider?
The University of South Dakota. Thus, free. The first one I paid for was in Colorado — dimensional.com.

6. Did you ever use AOL?
Nope. On two much-regretted occaissions, I tried to set it up for people as their internet service, since they were novices. I’ve rarely regretted something more.

7. Do you admit using AOL in public?
See above.

8. Who is your current ISP?
QwestDSL. My website is hosted by the always-sterling hostingmatters.com.

9. What was the first computer that you used to access the ‘net?
An IBM 286, with a 20 meg HDD, 1 meg of memory, and 3.5” floppy; the monitor and motherboard were all in one case. I installed the 2400 baud modem after I got to college and found out it was sometimes handy, and a 2 meg memory simm upgrade myself (my first tech work). The original machine cost us 1700 bucks, but only because I got a discount for being a full-time college student.

I upgraded when I found out I simply couldn’t get Windows to run on the hardware I had.

10. What computer do you use to access the ‘net today?
P4, 2.56ghz, 60gig HDD, CD-R, DVD, 256 megs of ram. Without the rebate and with a monitor, it would have run just about the same as my first machine. I’ve found that, regardless of what year it is, a “very good” desktop machine runs about 1600-1700 bucks.

11. What was your first ‘net handle?
Umm. dtesterm, probably. For email.

12. Did you use any other handles for any length of time? If so, what were they?
On Btech it was ‘Jansen’ for reasons that escape me and somewhat later I defaulted to “Jared” on most online sites, which was the name I gave clients when I started working on a HelpDesk (Doyce took too long to explain). My current email name and the domain to go with it didn’t come about until I got to Colorado.

13. What ‘net handle do you normally use now?
You’re looking at it.