(no subject)

[xiphias]

Hmm. People are going about seeing if they can find the earliest USENET postings of theirs that Google has.

The earliest I found for me was Oct 17, 1992. Given that most folks on my f-list have found stuff they wrote from the eighties or earlier, I'm a net-newbie, but I knew that. It's here, a sort of "hi" introductory post on alt.horror.cthulhu.

You'll notice, of course, that I had the name "Xiphias Gladius" back then -- I'd been using it for three or four years by that point. You'll also note that the PIP news-posting software didn't have a text editor that allowed you to back up to edit previous lines.

So, youngsters: if you think us old-timers are giving you a hard time about your lack of capitalization, poor grammar, or poor spelling, remember, WE did all that stuff at least REASONABLY correctly, without a backspace key. (Well, fine. I had a backspace key -- but once I hit the end of the line and hit return -- yeah, we didn't have word-wrap on that machine, either -- it was All Over.)

Comments

I was online in email groups much earlier than on Usenet

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

The earliest thing I'm finding archived is from '96, and I'm sure I was on USENET earlier than that. I was on email lists starting in 92 at least, which is when The Fabulous Kiwi Bird appeared.

Awk!

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

It's got to be earlier than that, because my first list was on BITNET. Maybe it was the late 80's.

[ron_newman]

what's PIP? I thought people always used standard editors like vi or emacs to compose their usenet articles back then.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

PIP was a deeply, deeply overloaded Vax-box, designed as a single-user terminal, on which all Brandeis undergraduates were given an account. It had Internet access.

The editor on the news-posting software wasn't anything I could recognize. I SUPPOSE it could have been some form of lobotomized vi or something. It's possible that you COULD go up a line, and I just never learned how. Um, that's surprisingly easy to fail to do on vi. . .

[gingicat]

It was rather like EDLIN in DOS.

[griffinick.livejournal.com]

Though my parents at the time had a prodigy account (remember those???), and it sucked so much that I used to say that pip was prodigy's wet dream. Can't believe I still remember my old Brandeis username on pip....

I think my earliest archives date from '92 or even '93 (there were a LOT from '93). And some even had my name listed as "Land Embankment". :)

[florafloraflora.livejournal.com]

Mine is from 1990, but no way I'm telling what it is. Totally mortifying and not just in one of the standard ways either.

[theletterelle.livejournal.com]

Even Stephen is right!^H^H^H^H^H^Ha tool!

[geekosaur]

Interesting. It used to find messages from me dating to 1985, but they seem to have mostly vanished.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

oh Godzilla...I forgot all about the word-wrap problem.

My first posting should be around the same time as yours, although I suspect it's on something a lot more embarrassing than a.h.c--possibly something really really pretentious on alt.pagan. I'll go back and look when I'm not at work.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

Pretentious and embarrassing is what I expect I'd find if I looked for myself too. That's why I don't want to know--and why I'm glad I have a really common name.

[griffinick.livejournal.com]

Ooh...I posted on alt.pagan altogether too much for my own good (and the archives on google are there to remind and embarrass me). And some on rec.org.sca.

Though do you remember Aaron's rant post on local.devilbunnies from the end of 1993 (I think)? I think Cos has it archived on his webpage.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

The famous 'core dump', yes. He posted it after I'd left for Christmas break, and when I came back to school Diana wouldn't let me read it. I forgot all about it until maybe two years ago when I was going through Cos's archives and found it--by which point, of course, nothing in it was news to me. :)

[griffinick.livejournal.com]

No, no new news, but certainly a good laugh.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I can't find anything before November 1993, and only a sparse selection of what I remember posting from 1993 to 1996. The stories embarrass me now, but the personal connections are just great. Everyone looks so young! I spent last weekend with Stephen (and we were mistaken for tourists at an sm club by everyone but Jahwar. It's funny how the image slips over the years.)

I'm glad you posted about your family. I'm glad I finally met your parents this summer. I never thought I would, when I wrote nice things about them so long ago.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

The earliest reference to an account of mine is from 1990, in a vote ack for rec.arts.disney.

the first post I actually made was this one, from July 10, 1992. (I was using a friend's university account, as I couldn't get one of my own at the time. "Peter Gambit" was an Top Secret RPG character I used briefly as a net-name.)

[ookpik.livejournal.com]

Looks like my earliest is November 1993 too. Not horrendously embarrassing, but primary interests and views have certainly shifted a bit.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Two words for you my friend: Accidental Aspic.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Damn it! Somewhere, out on the web, there's a term paper I did on Laurie Anderson. I put it up on an FTP site and found reference to it a few years ago but now, there's all this David Gilmour/Laurie Anderson links and I can't find it. Back then, I had some delphi login. Will have to check my email at home; I've saved it all.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Heh. My earliest posts predate the Google archives (more appropriately, predate the Henry Spencer archives, as that's where the early posts come from in the Google ones).

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Not looking, don't want to know. But you having the same net handle all this time meant that when I ran into you on LJ I realized you were the same Xiphias Gladius that I met on asb back in fall of 1993. :)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It's one of the reasons I've had the same name since I was fifteen or sixteen or so -- it's more memorable than "Ian Osmond".

[temima.livejournal.com]

My oldest post was October 25, 1994, when I first attended UMass Boston. I don't want to link to it because I feel weird and uncomfortable for some reason.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

My own personal September 1990 posting is somewhere in there if you know the address to use.

I remember PIP. Certain other people who used pip would know my old address. (Several certain other peoples, in fact.)