2010 is grinding to the end...at dial up speed...

With a day and a half left to the year, I've been given a reminder of what "slow" means. With all the uploading and downloading that we've been doing this month, our quota has been maxed out and the internet is now crawling along at dial up speed.

Maybe someone up there might have read my previous two posts and is trying to help me slow time down a little. Everyone knows that the internet is one of the biggest time sinks around. Its taking me so long to get anywhere that I have no desire to spend anymore time on here than whats needed to get this post out.

All the time waiting for pages to load got me thinking of my very fist encounters with the internet.

The absolute first time was in the year I started university and was assigned my first email account. Do you all remember the black screens with green fonts? I did nothing with it until I made a friend on a flight and he gave me his email address. That was 19 years ago and we're still friends. (LB, if you're reading this, you need to email me more!)

After the email account was the discovery of IRC - the original IM vehicle. Still in green font on a black background. I think my nick was "Endlessly" and I used to chat with some stranger called "Forever".

So the emailing and IRC-ing only happened on campus until a friend gave me 14.4kbps external dial-up modem as a present. It wasn't because I was ungrateful or anything but I remember having a daily wish for a 28.8kbps modem :D

Once I got internet at home, my addiction really took off and must have made my brain less efficient because I can't remember precisely when I started using my multiple email and IM-ing accounts. Emails got out of control sometime in my second year of working when I was responding to what seemed like hundreds of useless emails a day. My weekends were spent clearing my Inbox because I had to see ZERO new emails there before I could ever shut down my laptop.

These days, I spend most of the weekday daylight hours offline and usually only come online for my internet fix after both boys are in bed. And thats how I waste my nights away :D

Except for tonight of course. Instead, I'll go spend some more sociable time with my family - watching TV.