Personal Archaeology
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." - Sir Winston Churchill
While my Substack has been quiet of late, I've been busy on a couple of fronts. A few that I'll share...
Several long-form posts are in the works and have been soaking up a lot of time. I want to get them right so I've been reading through quite a bit of research material. In the spirit of Michelangelo, but no where near the quality, they'll be ready when they're ready.
For reasons Substack can't determine, at least one of my posts has been sent out multiple times without my having scheduled it. This, too, is a work in progress so apologies if you've received duplicate posts (or do in the future.)
Winter has settled in for a spell where I live. Rolling snow storms limit outside activity so I've been busy purging some the StuffJunk that's accumulated over the years. This has lead to some discoveries of a more innocent time on the Internet. I've included a couple personal archaeological finds in this post.
The Launch of Windows 95
This ticket and this day are inextricably linked to Edie Brickell and New Bohemians' "Good Times." I'd managed to score two tickets for the event, one for me and one for a friend who later couldn't attend. I'd been hammering away for several years coding MSDOS and Windows 3.1 software and was wired in to what the new Windows platform (32-bit, no less!) promised. What I saw on the big screen that day was incredibly inspiring. It was software for the ugly PC that performed (remember, I was working in a DOS/Win31 world) and was beautiful. A whole new world of what was possible opened up and I was poised to be a part of making that happen.
Of all the music wrangled for Gates' "Really Big Shew," Brickell's stands out. The melody and the lyrics came at a time I really needed to hear them. My wife had been diagnosed with late stage breast cancer the previous December and there was a lot of uncertainty. This event and this song left me with a lasting sense that everything was going to be alright. Of course it wasn't, in the end. But I was able to tap into this feeling throughout the following 10 year ordeal and still do today, on occasion. Another significant piece of medicine music from the summer of 95 was Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's "Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World." At the time, I had no idea just how pivotal 1995 was going to be for my life's trajectory. Either tune takes me back to that melancholic summer of optimism and hope. The power of music!
The Internet Public Library
Before there was Google there were a number of fledgling search engines that weren't particularly good, in hindsight. A lot of work was required to find what was wanted or needed. A lot of my searching still happened at the command line on the naked Internet. Even so, the early search engines seemed amazing at the time. I remember purchasing a copy of Harley Hahn's "Internet Yellow Pages" from a local book store that claimed to contain all the businesses on the Internet and the links to find them. Such a thing seems amusing today, but it was just a step in the evolution of the World Wide Web.
There were also channels whereby an early Internet user could ask and actual person for help in finding information. The University of Michigan's Internet Public Library was one such source I tapped when I needed to find some Olympic competition results regarding Carl Lewis and the long jump. I wanted this for a presentation I was preparing on team performance and how small differences separate gold medal winners from everyone else on the field. In 1992, just one and a quarter inches separated Lewis (gold) from Powell (silver). As part of my presentation, I used a tape measure, stretched out to Greene's, then Powell's, then Lewis' distance. I used this demonstration to good effect many times in the following years.
A note about that long-dead email address, angel@rmi.net. A new-age-y church person needed my email address for some reason I've long since forgotten and didn't think I was allowed to have such an email address. "Angel!?! How did you get THAT address?" The fact it happens to be the English translation of my last name didn't inform her ignorance or assuage her indignation. This, it seems, was an early hint at the vacuous and uninformed outrage culture to come.
If you have any questions, need anything clarified, or have something else on your mind, please email me directly.
Photo by Jon Butterworth on Unsplash