Road Kill

The thing I missed most when Adele was indisposed was my Google. I didn't realize how often I read something or see something on the tube or hear a reference and require more information. Maybe I'll just be thinking about a place or a product and have a need to know more about something. Spoiled by the information age, I want that info within seconds. Hadn't realized that I google at least 2 dozen times per day. I love having the library of the world at my fingertips and I hadn't noticed how dependant I have become upon this massive web, this instant knowledge base that I can use whenever and however I wish. That revelation caused me to think about LBI, Life Before Internet.

I signed onto the web in fall of 1993. That computer was in color which totally amazed me. Before, I had only a black and white C Basic set up and I could never do much with it but word process and make forms but early in '93, DH bought me a new computer with something called MS DOS and Windows 3.x.

My amazing machine with all of its vivid colors and pretty interface didn't come with an internal modem. Believe it or not back then, modems were an option. When my mother inquired as to what I wanted for a birthday gift, I requested an external modem. She gave it to me two whole months early and I was very excited. It was a state of the art US Robotics 14.4 external and I hooked that puppy up and was checking out all the bulletin boards I had found listed in the newspaper. I also started reading ads for Compuserve, Prodigy and a new company called America Online. AOL's ads were slicker than the others so I requested a disk and installed AOL 1.0. I didn't even care that most of the time, our phone service prevented me from being online faster than 9600bps. Back then, static on a phone line was no reason for the phone company to pay a service call.

When I left AOL at version 3.0, I found a small local ISP. The guy ran the server out of his house and he personally came to my house to install Netscape since it would take too long to DL by modem. That was Aeronet.net which became Mercury.net which was sold to Atlantic.net. Time flies.

Now, the web and internet is so woven into my everyday life that I had to make lists of things I needed to know while Adele was out of service, things I needed to know at once but would not be able to research until later. How inconvenient. How spoiled I have become.

It's pretty quiet around here with W4D out of town this week. I should be working. I should at least be setting up more stuff on this puter but I am sleepy. I was successful in transferring my mail to the slave drive when we reinstalled Windows and I have 1298 unread emails in my various in-boxes. Have already weeded through and answered my customers who surely thought I had fallen off the face of the earth. I think I will delete all the unread mail. Betcha I can sort and delete at least 1200 pieces of unread mail in less than 10 minutes. Then I can go take a nap. When I wake up, perhaps I will drink martinis and eat junk food. This has been an exhausting 6 days. I feel like road kill.

Speaking of road kill, check out this critter that was stuck to the grate on the car. Part moth, part grasshopper, part bird, it measured almost 6 inches tall. I swear I heard a thump when it hit the car while crossing The Prairie and wondered if I had hit a rabbit or a bird.


Part bug, part bird, large enough to serve two