I want to know, when you first gained access to the internet, what was the first site/place/thing you found absolutely enthralling and couldn’t pull yourself away from (besides the free porn).
If you can provide a link to it, great, but if not, we’ll understand.
I have two, which I’ll be posting tomorrow.
I was online pre-Internet, on various BBSes, where I was drawn to political discussions and gun talk. Once I got on the Internet, in about 1992, I became a huge fan of rec.guns. I wouldn’t go there on a dare now.
AOHELL was my first fascination. I was 12 when it came out; didnt have a clue what I was doing I just knew it was cool:/
Al Harral (Varmint Al)’s website: http://www.varmintal.com
I first encountered his site about 1996 or 1997.
Here’s a local California guy, writing about his hobbies (varmint hunting, precision shooting, ham and packet radio) who just happens to be a retired Hero of the Cold War (Lawrence Livermore Lab weapons engineer), with nifty sidebars on stress analysis of rifle chambers (with kewl graphics), travel essays on his outdoor adventures, encouragement of young varmint hunters, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
I still find new kewl stuff every time I go back. (His page on the .17 rimfires is still excellent.)
Basically, reading his site gave me a life goal. Retirement to me is all about having the time and space to indulge your hobbies and interests. Al’s an example of somebody with an active mind doing just that. When I grow up to retire, I wanna be like Al!
Team Fortress servers, in particular, the map 2fort4.
My Clanmates and I were consistantly in the Top 100 players outta almost half a million players online at the time. And that was when a 350 ping on dial-up was a good day. Teamwork and Tactics beats a LPB (Low-Ping Bastard) anytime.
We must have spent MONTHS of our total lifespans playing that game. And now that my Baby Bro is gone, I wouldn’t trade those months for anything. We were a hell of a team. You couldn’t find two more sneaky, underhanded, bend you over a barrel, cut-throat, pirate bastards anywhere. If he could see how FPS (First Person Shooter) games have evolved, he’d have a yard-long hard-on.
Good Times…
Stick Figure Death Theatre
I’m with Kyle on this one, played around with BBSs before the net thing took off, the first site I found which stuck in my mind was Badmovies.org, a serving marine with a penchant for b-movies, how could you ask for anything more?
…I became a huge fan of rec.guns. I wouldn’t go there on a dare now.
Rec.guns is fine, thanks to the moderator.
talk.politics.guns is a cesspit.
Flags of the World (flagspot.net, yeah, I’m a closet vexilologist)
AOL chat rooms were like crack to me
I”ll let you know when I’m done with the porn
I spent a good amount of time at stickdeath.com. The guy had some funny stuff and even evolved into a few stick games like “crackhouse cleanup” and “SWAT – Stick Weapons and Tactics”. Dumb fun.
Correction: It was “SWAT – Sticks with Ass-Kickin’ Tactics”.
Hum… September 91. The community collage got a T1 and I was all over it… Text based browsing and all that command line goodness. Then came along Mosaic in 94 and everything has changed since then.
I did do BBSes back before the Internet… There were quite the number of racy ones for a 16 year old (circa 1985 or so) nothing beats 1200 baud…