Early Internet Archives | Page 2 of 2 | Tales from Digital Deliria by Carisa H-K.

Presto Chango!

Carisa H-K on January 20, 2021

Presto bounded past the Pet Registrars and into the subleased web production room. It was the center of his universe, where web-making magic happened. He filled the few hours in between classes with web grax and HTML.

He was the best coder in the place… he could do a little of everything and do it well. Like a magician… maybe that’s why the name stuck. But oh, how he HATED the nickname. Last week he asked his boss, coiner of the name, to stop calling him “Presto”. Boss refused with a dejected expression, explaining that only this endearing shorthand would suit the magic man in his shop.

Indeed, so many of his colleagues found him endearing. He was a young and driven dude, with a face to charm the hardest of hearts, a short and nimble frame, and an unusual penchant for 1940’s Swing music. An unlikely package of new and old school, when “new” was “in”.

The entire cramped room, of hot computers and oft-studious coworkers, loved his music. It often dueled in the air with Bone’s variety of tunes: from Blues to 80’s Dance.

The residence of these two sometime-“DJs” kept the startup web agency hopping. As long as the system sounds stayed piped down, the din didn’t bother their client down the hall. Stuck in the sublease for a few more weeks, they awaited the time when they could blast it all day long, as loud as they wanted.

But today was notably quieter, as Young Presto walked in with Walkman in tow. The cool throwback cat often carried cassette dubs of old Swing records in his backpack. The long play “CD Power” cassettes were his favorite… best quality sound, and one long-play tape in a Walkman could carry him all day: across treks from class to class, and to the web agency.

Suddenly his mind wandered from his Photoshop 3 and HTML. When did I last demagnetize my playhead? Maybe he subliminally picked up on the warbly horn section, because within seconds his Walkman jammed.

Ugh, he winced, quickly extracting the tape and grabbing a pencil to wind its innards back up. His mind wandered deep into tape player mechanics: I need to find my sandpaper and alcohol… need to clean the rubber wheels… too much slippage in running that tape… why didn’t I demagnetize it sooner?

With mild irritation, and fresh out of a tape player, he realized that new means awaited to satisfy his Swing urge. Technology faced rapid change in his world. Right there in front of him sat a high-tech computer next to a low-tech Walkman. His burgeoning career in web development set a clear life path: one non-existent mere years earlier. And a truth emerged — Walkman had no place.

Simultaneously however, his mind rebelled. Technology already messed up music, he thought. Sterile electronica, tainted by machines. And digital downloads sound AWFUL. Give me a good Gene Krupa drum, some live horns, and a warm LP sound and I’m good, Presto thought to himself.

But with Walkman decommissioned, and a beckoning high-speed connection at the office, Napster sneaked up on his screen. He bargained to himself in that moment: OK, but cassettes, records and CDs will still rule my music collection.

As day melted into night, connection even faster as the office emptied, Presto’s computer speakers filled the air with Swing. The darkened production room set the stage for night of web making.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Bone’s Great Code Cleanup

Carisa H-K on January 13, 2021

Bone arrived from a respectable digital consultancy, lured away by a rag-tag bunch of startup geeks.

His tall stride made him the most elevated person in the room. His hawk-like gaze down a chiseled nose meant business.

He came for battle, ready to bring the first-ever digital workspace collaboration tool to life in glorious PHP. He planned to convert T&E into something sexy, with an application well before its time in the late ‘90s.

His armaments included music of all eras, to keep the cramped production room hopping. Often dueling in the air with 1940s Swing from colleague Presto.

Bone understood his assignment, and stood ready to dive in.

But to his surprise, Day 1 slammed him with a different task: entanglement in a staff departure fiasco. The proverbial “review this other guy’s undocumented code and figure out how it works”. A favorite task of developers, before “code refactoring” became a way of life.

Ugh… better get out the AC/DC, he thought to himself, needing a caffeine jolt. Bone peered down his nose at the tangle of ASP code on his monitor.

Within moments, something caught his attention amid the green lines of the shopping cart system:

If Erica = A Bitch

What the hell is going on here?, Bone thought and winced as he scratched his head. And why did I take this job?

Knowing a little something about the departed programmer, Bone was unsurprised by his passive-aggressive animus toward an ex-girlfriend. But to find it in client code and subsequently have to clean it up? — oh boy.

Ok follow the trail, Bone. Sleuth this sucker.

If Erica = A Bitch, then pull library functions…

Ok, there’s a variable “Poop Cookies”…

Uhh… Poop Cookies? What?

Woah, there’s a giant set of if/then conditions in “Poop Cookies”…

Dig, Bone, dig. Get into this guy’s head.

If Erica is a Bitch, then the shopping cart is in a foreign currency…

Then, look at Poop Cookies to determine exchange rate and shipping defaults…

Almost there, Bone. Keep looking.

If Erica is not a Bitch, then it’s US Currency…

So ping USPS module for shipping info.

TaDah! Mystery unraveled, and all before the second cup of coffee. But eww, what an utterly gnarled mess on so many levels.

Now what?, Bone pondered, remembering a similar techie atrocity and the consequences if ever found by the client.

And so continued the Wild West coding practices of the early internet… hidden in digital bowels (literally)… pre-“Me Too”. No wonder we have code reviews, nowadays.

Time for a clean-up on aisle 9, Bone concluded.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments. What inane coding atrocity have you come across?

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Sure, I’ll Help With Your Pet

Carisa H-K on January 6, 2021

A faint elevator bing pokes through her computer focus. She can sense who is coming, without even looking. A bent woman, with a cane, a cardigan, a shawl for extra warmth, and a fistful of paperwork in an arthritic hand. She moves like a miniature on the horizon, toward her door, down an extraordinarily long hallway.

The woman makes her way with bluish upswept hair. Her floral skirt brushes her calves as she ambles and sways. A cream and mauve vision, juxtaposed against the burgundy walls and smoky berber carpet.

Moments pass, and now she knows the woman is passing through the fruity air freshener puff, that wafts invisibly out from under the bathroom door and into the hallway.

Several moments again pass, until crooked fingers rattle the bronze doorknob on her redwood-stained door. Swinging it open slowly, she brings the fruity air cloud with her, trapped in the numerous folds of her skirt, cardigan and shawl.

“Can you help me register my pet?”, she sweetly warbles.

“Yes ma’am,” her most professional voice coos in response. “I can help with your pet.”

You’d think finally making it from the apartment into an actual office building would be a boon for our startup digital agency.

But alas: “moving up” in our case meant “moving in” – to a sublease. We shared office space with our client, no less! A risky move to be sure, with potential to spin into a quick nightmare. But thankfully unlike other clients, they were our fans. And, they had us right where they wanted us: at their beck-and-call for challenging web projects.

This particular client registered pets across the city. And walk-ins were welcome.

We packed our bodies into every available space that winter – sales people working the phones in hallways, and a single production room at the back for developers. Inconveniently for me, a “Project” and “General” Manager of all trades, I took up a nook right near their front door.

Which meant that I became a defacto Pet Registration Guide, ushering people from all walks of life into the bowels of our client’s office for assistance.

Mostly, I received confused “Am I in the right place?” kinds of looks, as incomers peered at our web agency signage emblazoned on the adjacent wall. I found myself explaining “yes, yes” most of the day, whilst simultaneously guiding creatives in producing web designs.

Recognizing the customer’s confusion, our client soon placed a rightful “Pet Representative” by the front door. I moved into the production room: notoriously cited at one point for being a fire hazard, given the masses of designers and web developers packed into the space.

But I felt I had arrived: overlooking a beautiful treed Texas landscape, with no more responsibilities for watering plants (except for my own small cactus on a spacious window sill). Surrounded by up-and-coming talent, and fast friends: Bone, Presto, Sass, Beckums and Dame.

This experience created a powerful lesson learned: when it’s not your job, just help. Greet the occasion with professionalism, and treat every circumstance with graciousness. You can’t go wrong.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Meme-A-Thon: All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Carisa H-K on December 9, 2020

HEAR YE, HEAR YE: the King of Memes assumed the throne long ago. Hailed by early internet minions. Worshiped through viewership from 1998 onward. Recognized in many circles as the most prominent meme of all time: All Your Base Are Belong To Us.

What a pairing this King would make with the Queen of the early internet: the Rainbow Bar. OK, that’s a step too far into early internet fantasies…

But why was “All Your Base” so infectious? Let’s unpack it.

First, recall how you felt when you first saw the darkly decorated character, face half overtaken by robotics, and the sterile, computer-generated voice warbling its famous quote.

Maybe confused? Destabilized? A tad bit intimidated? To be sure, an innate sense of mystification clouded our minds. To deconstruct why it had this emotional impact, which in turn drove us to share the meme with fascination, you must look at the words.

All Your Base…

What is the Base? Does this refer to military bases?

Or is a Base simply a secure foundation?

…Are Belong…

Other worldly, as if an invader from another planet was trying to speak to us in our language. Here begins the intimidating feeling.

…To Us.

We’ve taken away your Base… your foundation… your security.

Wow… OK then.

“All Your Base” spinoffs = comic relief.

With such a dramatic statement, shaking our security to the core, it’s not difficult to understand the outpouring of humorous spin-off memes. Perhaps applying “All Your Base” to a Budweiser ad with ladies in swimsuits took the edge off!

But the original meme appealed to a sense of fear in all of us, and that amygdala impact drove our “sharing” behavior. What’s more, we connected culturally with the “All Your Base” sentiment. We instinctively understood it to refer to any circumstance outside of our control – situations in the hands of some unforgiving and often unseen power. However, the use of “are” and lack of plural on “bases” offered a hilarious and kitschy counterbalance to our “baser” interpretations (pun intended). We could not help but laugh in the end.

Beyond the cogent insight into how emotion drives our online behaviors, in actuality “All Your Base” was just All Meaningless. Simply a snippet of poorly translated English from a Japanese video game called Zero Wing. But, to such a great effect!

For the unindoctrinated or the nostalgic, here’s the original 2008 video including all the amusing spin-offs. One viewer aptly described it as “an elegant meme from a more civilized time”.

Members of King Meme’s Court

“All Your Base” was hugely popular, but in the Runner’s Up Circle of the earliest and most pervasive internet memes is Badger, Mushroom, Snake.

Well, there might be less to talk about on this one. There was just a Badger. A Mushroom. And a Snake.

The backstory, however, was that this was originally a Flash animation. It ran on an endless loop, which you can’t fully detect in the 3-minute YouTube video that remains today.

When the original Flash hit the web, there was something about its never-ending, incessant quality that kept us watching a long time.

We wondered: Will the loop change? What will happen when it “ends”? Is there another animation to be revealed?

So we watched, and watched, and watched… So long… We, the early web builders, kept it playing while we were working on web graphics, website coding, and emails.

And if it ran long enough, I’d say 2 hours in, the audio and animation would start to mis-sync. We’d hear about the snake before it appeared. Badgers would mash in with the mushrooms. That was all we got as a reward for our patience.

And then maybe the browser would just crash.

The lessons in all of this?

First, perhaps we can gain a little insight about engagement and stickiness from our internet ancients.

And speaking of ancients: In our old-school way, we like to talk about “What Grandma did before the internet existed”. But now, nostalgically we can say: “This is what Grandma did when the internet first started”! 🙂

P.S. – Honorable Mention in the King’s Court:

As a parting cherry on top, I bequeath my favorite meme to you, dear Reader. The first and best cat meme in memory. It’s significant, since we know how cat and dog memes persist on today’s internet like a Happy Plague.

Let’s crown her the Princess of Memes:

BABUSHKA CATS ARE IN UR BOX, BEIN OLD WIMMENS.

P.S.S. – Didn’t experience the oldest internet memes the first time around, but still curious? Let’s not forget the Dancing Babies, Bananas, and Hamsters: see this article for more!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments. What are your favorite early internet memes?

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Clinton-Style Entertainment

Carisa H-K on December 2, 2020

Gripping your chair arm, mouth all dry.

Feet shuffling in your seat, pupils wide.

Face flushed, scroll scroll scroll.

Titillations continue…

No, this is not some seedy porn site, nor a sordid online romance.

This is the President of the United States.

Most web workers of the 1990s “remember where they were” when the Clinton Investigation Report dropped. In our case, the story is set at the digital startup in the musty, old apartment.

For months in advance, news teased the forthcoming treasure trove of sleazy details about a once respected position: President. It was the very first time the world drove heavy demand for a piece of online content.

At a click of a button, the roughly 100-page, dense PDF instantly made its way to computers across the land.

Inside, tales of the sexual escapades of a sitting President with an Intern. Everyone in the office spent the afternoon pouring over it while sipping smoothies: the irresistible “train wreck” syndrome. And heck, it was just plain, juicy reading.

The Oval Office. The cigar. Hiding out under the desk. The rendezvous in the closet near the office. And above all, the Blue Dress.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but a milestone in digital history had arrived.

It was the first time human beings were destroyed online.

And, it destroyed the decorum around leadership and government as well.

It was pure and perfect fodder for all the Gen Xers working in digital at the time: the notoriously cynical and sarcastic. It played right into what we were looking for — more proof that our so-called leaders did not deserve reverence.

But the online landscape evolved quickly to attack not just the lofty. Now on a widespread basis, we continue to grapple with the online-people-destruction-machine today.

Consider this: you no longer need a 100-page report to invoke chaos on your fellow human being. You just need a few choice words on social media. It isn’t even that hard: no “investigation” needed. Let’s just call every social media post “mini-PDFs”.

Our culture now makes this commonplace online, across all walks of life and all levels of society. Tearing down, ridiculing, making a fool, censoring, and outright destruction of livelihoods, for beliefs deemed unpopular or undesirable.

If there’s something good to be said, perhaps the PDF served to dispel some myths in the process.

But it was the first of many destructive acts to come in the Digital Deliria.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this commentary.

Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments as well.

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Spiritual, In a Demonic Sense

Carisa H-K on November 17, 2020

A metaphysical practitioner of peace and love. A hippie guru legitimized by a foundation of past life recall. The halo-wearer of Aquarius-Age books in print.

Ironically, the man of many names actually lived his life as a passive aggressive (but mostly aggressive) madman. As evidenced this fine morning at our digital startup, by the sound of page after page rolling off the fax machine.

Oh, not again. I eyed the machine. My boss nervously poked his head around the corner, peering with wide pupils at the rattling appliance.

The fax machine: an apropos medium for a writer. We lived at the dawn of the internet, yet email just would not do. Paper sent over the wire provided tangibility, something you could not just ignore. Heck, the machine remained tied up for 45 minutes just receiving one of the kook’s epic diatribes. That made it even more intimidating. You could nearly detect the smell of pseudo-legalese fodder hanging in the air, as acerbic words spilled onto the pages.

It is amazing that “fax” still exists today, notably in our broken medical, insurance and financial sectors, despite our seemingly advanced technological state! But I digress… back to our client, the Faxing King of the 1990’s...

For context in a previous tale, this client drove employees to moments of “Digital Deliria” and drastic self-esteem retaining measures. But why?

At his core, he was an author extraordinaire. A well-known and prolific writer of metaphysical books, that still remain as cornerstones of new age philosophy today. Ironic then, that a man in the business of being “fun loving and spiritual” was equally prolific in sending us 10-page faxes ripping us up and down.

Words of bitter criticism, hatred, blame, despair, depression – all flowered from the page in copious quantity. Manic adjectives flourished with little or no actual requests. The overflowing, demonic rants only served to destroy us.

We preferred to respond like normal human beings to these communiques. First: have a stiff drink. Then, place a return phone call. Mustering our calm, we’d carefully discuss the issues raised in the fax.

The only faxes we sent in return? Invoices. Approaching the machine with an invoice in-hand required a straightening of the spine, a deep breath, and stiff brace stance (for fear of what we might receive in return). We cringed and pressed “send”, innocently begging for sweet lifeblood to keep our digital startup going, and to meet payroll.

We were simply people who were willing to serve our client’s website needs, bending over backwards to make them happy.

But we, the far-from-perfect, seemingly rarely did for this man. It’s true: we often deserved a firm critique. We were all trying to just “figure out” how to build this new thing called the web. Fails were all-too-common. But this was an unwarranted level of abuse rarely seen – before or since!

How could a sometime self-help guru, of past life wisdom and spouter of meditative benefits, could at once live a very different mindset when dealing with actual people? The lunatic was nearly perfect in his hypocrisy.

What motivated him?: Wanting it all now, and expecting it to be perfect. But he was asking for expertise that no one had. His website was one of the first ecommerce sites ever built… to promote and sell his books. This far predated Amazon.com, when no one had ordered goods online ever before.

However like many maniacs, this man deserves a story, given so many bittersweet lessons learned:

First: Peddling the fantasy of dreams and deeper meanings in life is more prevalent and desired in this world than actually living them. Indeed: for most, it’s just about the hustle. And hustle he did: building on folks’ hopes for a deeper life roadmap, and serving it up on a platter through his books (without actually living his own gospel).
As such, matters of the spirit aren’t well-addressed by the preach of fallible human beings.
In addition: on earth, “not all is as it seems”.
And most importantly: when you’re down and “getting those faxes”, never give up! Thicken that skin to the nay-sayers… they’re all around, ready to tap your energy. Don’t give in to it. Keep moving forward.

I still value my life lessons from this madman. 🙂 And… he was the first, but not the last teacher!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please “like” if you did on social media @DigitalDeliria, share, and post your comments. What did you learn from your most unforgettable client/customer “interaction-gone-bad” moment?

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Clients Shouldn’t Use FTP (And Other Lessons Learned)

Carisa H-K on November 10, 2020

“You better take that down.”

What?

What does that mean?

It’s hard to understand, but one thing is pretty clear from the tone of the voice on the other end of the line. You do not want to hear this voice at the start of your day.

Take what down? Take it down from where? Did the intern inadvertently launch the website too early?

Your mind races, until your drying mouth finally croaks: “What?”

“On the FTP site,” the simmering voice continues.

Now with a palpitating heart, you begin looking.

Before this story continues, allow me to share some context. Imagine your worst client. The belittling one. The one that sends 12-page faxes tearing your company up and down. The passive-aggressive, but mostly aggressive. The never-happy one. The one that could drive employees to take extreme measures to retain their own sanity.

Yeah that one. The Assistant of said client is our morning caller. And this morning is about to go bad. Really bad.

Looking around the FTP site… what, oh what, could be so objectionable to receive this urgent call? And what could be so inflammatory that there’s only dead silence on the other end of the line while I search?

And then… I saw it.

A folder. An otherwise innocuous entity. An omnipresent defacto of computing. But, it was the folder’s name… oh lordy mercy, the name.

I start to sweat and heat rises in my cheeks. I begin to wonder, why is our client in our FTP site? File Transfer Protocol: a tool used heavily by web-techie-folks to move files from one server to another. Why, oh why… and HOW did our client get in there? And how did they happen to find this insolently-named folder?

Well, maybe insolent is an understatement.

Look, I’m not a prude to late 90’s web developer shenanigans. Including swearing in the code, protected by the overall lack of web technical knowledge in the general population. In the early days, putting a dirty message in the client’s website code was a common bit of fun. No harm done: the client would never see or even know it was there. Only other web developers could get in on the “inside joke”, earning you brownie macho points. No wonder we have “code reviews” nowadays…

Anyway… this was no such hidden transgression, buried deep in website bowels. This folder name took a cheeky practice to a whole new level. And its presence on an FTP site made it much more discoverable.

Today, the client and I had perhaps encountered the first example of wholly digital passive-aggressive behavior. Surely a precursor to the web-world we live in now.

Well, Tell Me Already !

OK. So, one might ask: how could an employee so eloquently equate the client’s very name with a sex act, and put it on display via an FTP folder name? Through a few twists and switches of letters and syllables, that a person’s name could become an entirely new and novel term for oral sex?

Well — I’ll leave that to your imagination for the sake privacy for those involved, but I’m happy to share offline over an adult beverage. However as a hint, the client’s name was Richard (which of course has an unfortunate short form).

And I knew who did it, too. Gotta give the gal credit: she was a Creative, after all. But… Oh My.

She was the one you wouldn’t expect. The one who gave up a job at a “proper dot com” to come work with us rag-tags in our shabby, scrappy digital startup in an apartment. The one that everyone looked up to as a result. And the one who equally was distraught by her decision to enter into this world of ridiculous working conditions and clients with flame-throwing mouths.

“We will address that right away.” Click.

My next challenge had arrived: How do I tactfully yet forcefully convey to the Designer that this was not acceptable? That she’s been found out… not by her boss… but by the client himself?

I mustered all my grace, all my calm, all my stormy force. I called her name. (In that apartment, voices quite easily carried from my “office” squished next to the front door, to the “bull pen” in the adjacent family room.)

Enter said Designer into my desk area.

“Uh, you better take that down,” I said simply, pointing to the offensive file folder on my screen. “The client called me.” I put on my best stony face.

Within a second, I watched the color completely drain from her face. Followed by a sweeping beet red flush over her cheeks. A bead of sweat formed at her hairline. I’ve never since witnessed such a remarkable transformation in someone within seconds.

I felt horrible. I empathized with her. She was utterly ripped and ridiculed by this customer only late yesterday. We, the far-from-perfect, often deserved a firm critique. We were all trying to just “figure out” how to build this new thing called the web, and fails were common. But the level of abuse that she and others regularly endured from this client was unwarranted.

She turned away, acutely embarrassed, and within seconds the folder name returned to the client’s actual name.

Gotta admit now, the whole episode was pretty traumatic yet amusing… one of those “sear-into-brain-forever” moments.

What are the lessons learned?:

Don’t swear in the code.
Don’t mock your client’s name via objectionable FTP folder names.
And, face the business challenge with professionalism and tact, even if others around you do not!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Merlin’s Down and Other Adventures (Or Nonsense?)

Carisa H-K on November 4, 2020

Merlin crouched on the closet floor atop worn, tan carpeting. Wires climbed up the wall like vines around him, and along the surrounding floor. The closet door, stripped earlier from its hinges, sat propped against a nearby wall… as if impossible to contain the supreme entity within.

Merlin sat grinding on problems that mortal humans could not solve.

Merlin could not sweat. His fan ran constantly. Another fan blew on him from outside the closet, to little cooling avail.

A nearby window illuminated part of Merlin’s complex wiring, adding more heat.

The light revealed Merlin’s power, but also his ramshackle. His fan kicked up to highest gear and then a signal (or lack thereof?) jolted through the wires on the floor…

“Merlin’s Down!” a voice shouts, like the beginning of a desperate war.

As the mighty warrior falls, the destructive wave begins. Zapping through the wires and each and every computer connected to Merlin.

Programmer #2, the next closest to Merlin, shouts the words again: “Merlin’s Down!”

Down the line, others scramble to save their work.

Then, all too quick… too quick to save… the 3^rd and 4^th employees holler: “Merlin’s Down!”

Coders 5 & 6 simply groan.

The 7th & 8^th, designers who were last in the line, shout with glee: “Alright! – I saved before it went down again!”

They made it in time… this time.

It all happened in a 12 x 12 foot room. A bull pen of computers and sweaty employees crammed into an unlikely place. Where everyone baked and seared and spat out frustration in the Texas summer heat like sizzling pork belly on a cookie sheet.

Merlin… an all-powerful wizard.

Merlin… also an overheating file server at a digital startup in an apartment.

Why give such a grand name to this rickety computer, that kept crashing every 20-30 minutes? One that was assembled manually on a college student budget with parts from Fry’s Electronics? One that fell victim to its own heat, the heat of the other computers in the work room, the heat of the sweaty programmers, and an AC that could not keep up with the rest of the heat encroaching from the outside?

A misnomer. Or an ironic strive toward our loftier goals.

Such was startup life, a website “sweat” shop (literally) that operated out of a musty family room. The working environment was utter nonsense. Who would stay in a place such as this?

A bunch of young people. Of entrepreneurs just in there “figuring it out”. We were the ones to approach if you needed a website.

And unfortunately for us, websites were low value at that time. Something that warranted an extremely limited investment, where no amount of sales technique could coax otherwise. “I pay only $400 for my brochure, so why would I pay any more for my brochureware website?”

But some of our clients – the ones with an early greater vision of ecommerce and web applications – they paid the bills.

However, Accounts Receivable was slacking that first summer. When all we had was Merlin, a file server in a hot closet. It held all our wares… our product… our websites.

Life was only about pushing forward for another day at our late ‘90s startup. And once Merlin was back up, the scrappy website coding and designing could continue.

The lesson learned? Keep going. Save early. SAVE OFTEN.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please share your memories below if your career was born at a scrappy digital startup too!

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Morning at a Digital Startup (It’s Not What You Expected)

Carisa H-K on October 14, 2020

The carport offered shady relief for my classy Cutlass Supreme. The Texas heat would otherwise transform my ride into an oven. Between the T-Tops and black paint, I had already lost one cassette to “summer melt”: Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits.

It was the summer of my first job as a newly-minted college graduate. After locking the car door, I fiddled for another key. This would let me into our “office” before anyone else arrived.

This was an important role. Opening up shop was a responsibility I was used to after working at a video store years earlier. And now, I could apply this skill to the coolest of jobs: a startup digital agency.

I unlocked the door, employees went in, and websites came out.

But this was no gleaming, prestigious office downtown. Our digs were not “sexy” in the least. But the scrappy notion of starting a “tech shop in an apartment” was the stuff of lore and excitement for us. It was “morning” in more ways than one at our digital startup. We were going to make a big mark… building the early internet and changing the entire world in the process.

But today, unlocking the door and passing through the apartment threshold, you had to first get past the wall of musty odor. The old stucco exterior must’ve seeped the outdoors in. In the darkened space, my desk was crammed near the front door. Another desk sat opposite, in what should’ve been the dining room. A tiny, barrel-shaped kitchen lay ahead, and what would become our “production room” was at the back.

My boss, an ADHD poster child, would be in various states of distracted readiness upon my arrival. From time to time a bathrobe was seen, but shorts and t-shirts were the casual norm. Often, a smoothie blender whirred away. Thankfully I never arrived so early that he was still brushing his teeth. Today he was nowhere to be found.

Instead, something more than the cramped quarters, musty smell and casual boss caught my attention. There was something strange in the middle of the carpeted floor: a red can of RAID bug spray, with its overturned cap next to it.

Why is that there?, I thought. I’d never seen anything like this out-of-place anomaly before. Pondering that, I quietly went about my morning routine.

Days started with decidedly non-digital activities, like watering the plants. To be honest, it was my favorite part of the day: retrieving a watering can from the kitchen and pulling the plants outside for a good drink. If I didn’t do this first thing in the morning, the busy day took over and plants were ignored.

Taking a moment to stand in the balmy sun, letting the water drain onto the concrete step before bringing the plants back in, was pure refreshment. And a welcome respite for my nose, otherwise perpetually twitching with pent-up apartment mold sneezes.

Some days were so slammed that I forgot the plants outside. Realizing my folly later in the day, I would rush to collect them. By then, the wet dirt dried to a desert and leaves drooped in the baking sun.

Today I did my job properly and brought them back into the apartment. Still no sign of my boss, I turned my attention to the RAID can again. Befuddled, I thought it would at least make sense to put the cap and can away before others arrived. Innocently I approached and scooped up the cap. To my horror, there was a gigantic roach under there! I staggered back, expecting it to lurch at me. Thankfully, it stayed on its back, unmoving, legs folded up into the air.

Suddenly I could imagine the scene the night before… the chaos that lead to this critter being trapped and ushered to its death, and the post-battle exhaustion that left the evidence behind.

With this, I learned one of my greatest life lessons (especially for living in the South). If you have a can with a cap… keep that cap. They come in handy as bug trappers. Spray the bug, follow as it runs, and trap him under the cap. Scoop him up later with the cap to dispose. No squish, no mess, very little chase.

Not the first lesson you’d expect from the cool digital startup world, but one of the best.

And certainly not the last. The ring of incoming client calls jolted my thoughts and my workday began.

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Grandma’s Reaction to My First Job (and Other Digital Startup Woes)

Carisa H-K on October 9, 2020

The morning sun flickered across the gleaming Texas skyscrapers, sprinkling glitter across my eyes. Highway momentum marked the start of a milestone day. The customary humidity of early summer hung in the air, hinting at the heat to come.

I was off to my official first day of work as a young professional — and a newly minted graduate of a prestigious school. Granted, my selection of a Creative major was not the most obvious bankable choice. However, I was lucky enough to snag a full time position after working part time at the same company through my final years at university.

The hire was immediate. I had no celebratory break to take a breath and explore my freedom after achieving the degree. Rather, the job started so soon that my Grandmother and Father were still in town after attending my graduation.

On this day, they and my Mother decided to mark the occasion by driving me to my first day at work.

Granted, I had been to work many times before during my part-time work pre-graduation. So to me it seemed more of a continuation than a milestone. However, on this day my parents beamed from the front seat with excited pride to drive me… as if it was as thrilling as my first day at Kindergarten. I was a little embarrassed.

On we flew through the balmy air, as I gave directions from the back seat. Next to me, my Grandmother marveled out of the window at the light flickering off the high-rises. She looked on with similar anticipation to see my first place of real work. After years of encouraging me that I had the power to do anything I wanted with my life… to achieve more than she ever had opportunity to do as a woman in rural America… this was momentous.

We swept through the sparkling downtown and kept moving. With each turn, business districts turned into tree-lined lanes. Next, we passed warehouses and aging gas stations. Those then turned into a dense residential apartment district in the cheaper side of town.

Pulling into one of the lots, we were greeted by lines of car ports, and a run-down, low-ceilinged apartment built with 1970’s flair (or lack thereof).

“This is it!”, I announced cheerfully. But I noticed the smile drain from my Grandmother’s face.

Wrinkled lips pursed slightly. She blurted, “Is this it?”, mirroring my words with an incredulous tinge. Meanwhile, craning to see whether the building was any taller than 2 stories.

Ok, this place clearly was not the high-rise, gleaming office building she had envisioned. This wasn’t a proper office at all. I was going to work at someone’s apartment??

This was not her expectation. Her disappointment, and nearly dismay, was apparent. I saw her worry rise, as if wondering whether this was even a safe place for me. Immediately I was self-conscious, though my parents still had smiling pride on their faces. Just to have a full-time job immediately after graduation — well, this was a feat not many could claim.

But for Grandma… how could she possibly understand that I was entering the forefront of digital? That this environment… the proverbial “technology start up in an apartment”… was the way so many thought leaders started their empires and soon built their fortunes?

That was sexy. And I was going to do the same. But it went beyond that… we were going to CHANGE THE WORLD through the internet. We, the web builders, had visions of how the internet would become more than rainbow bars and patterned backgrounds… how we and it would change society itself. For better, no less.

This was the 90s. The new world of the digital startup had begun. We were on the threshold of greatness!

But this place… it was not sexy. AT ALL. From the tile roof and burnt orange stucco walls, to the streaky mold stains near the foundation, and the leaning car ports to protect against the Texas-sized hail. Not sexy enough for Grandma.

But yet I swallowed my awkward pride and left the car to head to my adventure. And with a wave over my shoulder, that was it… the beginning of my Digital Deliria. A world of hot summers and floundering file servers, to scooters whizzing ‘round concrete floors, and in-office zen gardens. A burgeoning existence my Grandmother would never live to understand.

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Belly Up to The Rainbow Bar (and no, they don’t serve alcohol)

Carisa H-K on September 24, 2020

Dorm life. For most, it began with a rowdy party. For me, it began with an Ethernet card.

Picture move-in day: sweat dripping from my upswept hair. Innumerable, laden trips up the stairs to my third story dorm room. AC failing as August heat sears Texas.

As early evening arrived, box contents found their way to drawers and closets. But the work was not yet done.

A happy-go-lucky face arrived at my door, with a hearty knock and welcome: “Hi! Do you have your Ethernet set up yet?”

“Uh, no… but I do have the card,” I replied.

“Here, let me help you then!”

My new neighbor Taylor and his buddy from down the hall whisked in the room. With ear-to-ear smiles, they proceeded to slap that Ethernet card into my computer like it was nothing. My father, a studious caretaker of technology in my childhood home, watched in anxious near-horror as the Aptiva’s metal cover was stripped off and tossed aside. In short order, techie innards were manipulated by adept hands. And in minutes, with Ethernet card in tow, the machine booted.

And there we were… my first taste of lightning-fast internet speeds.

WOOOOOOOOO!

It felt like a holler from the mountaintop, as your roller coaster car slipped off the peak. This was the way the Internet SHOULD be! Nothing like the AOL dial-up tortoise at home.

This was University Ethernet. But surfing ‘till my heart’s content was still in the years to come.

World “Wild” Web

The early web was a wild, untamed, and non-uniform landscape. Unlike AOL’s user-friendly gateway into the Internet experience, here you could choose your own search engines and find yourself in a diverse pile of unfiltered junk and treasure.

Yes, search engines (plural). In this bygone era, no fewer than ~10 options graced your mouse… each with its own advantages. Yahoo worked well to deliver neatly categorized results. Ask Jeeves delivered fairly helpful answers to search terms phrased as questions.

But to be quite honest… there really were too many options. I challenge anyone to really identify the differentiating characteristics of Altavista, Magellan, Lycos and HotBot, for example. (Post a comment if you can enlighten me.)

What was really wonderful about a world without Google?: the ability to use multiple search engines with multiple different results, to really find what you’re looking for. And arguably, find unbiased, unfiltered, and unmanipulated results.

What Was the Early Internet Like?

But what really did you find online, in the earliest days? Well, the World Wide Web was very different than what we have today.

Imagine… strolling along the foggy Thames, or poking around a foggy San Francisco wharf, yet having a root planted on the grey, cratered moon.

This was the feeling of the endless sea of patterned grey found on the internet, with text more or less visible on top of it. Foggy, bleak, evocative of another planet entirely – rooted in the limitation of connection speeds. The only variation?: some grey had dots, and some grey resembled slate. But, still grey. (For an example of this, see image at the top of this page.)

In fairness, sometimes you’d find a black background. Or maybe a yellow parchment — as if the web developer thought it made good sense to make the web look like a Dead Sea scroll. And if your day was really exciting, you’d come across a ridiculous eye-frying bright green. But somehow grey was the most common “look and feel” for the early web. And plain white? – not snazzy enough.

Why must my website background look like it was found in an Egyptian tomb?

The point was, that you could infinitely “panel” your site using one small, textured-looking block. Adding some “presence” while still allowing the lean-and-mean site to load FAST. (Most of us still had dial-up, remember?) But the result was like poorly installed flooring: you started to see endless repeating patterns. Scroll too fast, and a dizzy nausea started to sweep your brain.

What about pictures? Well, there were not many. Those that existed had a “pointillist” feel, where pixel variety was manipulated down to fewer colors to load faster.

The Queen of Early “Interwebs” Design

In short: the effervescent and ever-present Rainbow Bar.

When you saw your first one, it was like a glorious sun piercing through the grey landscape. Some pulsed with animated color. Others were just… static rainbows. A Rainbow Bar was just that… an image of a rainbow, but in a straight, flat line.

But why? In the Rainbow Bar age, navigation was not a thing. So Rainbow Bars served as an ever-useful page separator, adding a visual “break” between one type of infinitely scrolling content and another.

And no: in 1997, the Rainbow Bar was not an LGBTQ statement. It was just something “cool looking” that loaded fast. One of many ways to bring pizzazz to your site. Add a Dancing Baby, and you had it made.

A Career Begins

Bellying up to The Rainbow Bar is where it all began for me, and maybe you too. Specifically, the unmet market need for user experience design drove an entire generation of college grads to careers in the web. We, soon-to-be designers and developers, would spend YEARS working on it… until we “arrived” at the friendly websites we have today.

It all started small, taking my old school creativity (including life drawing, no less), and designing web graphics. We tackled shockingly “new” concepts like “navigation” and the earliest of “banner ads”. (Yes! – those pesky things started back then.) Bridging from art to design to digital, this was heady and exciting stuff. And an unlikely, yet natural, career path for a Creator.

It just happened: All on that old Aptiva, in that tiny dorm room, thanks to my old pal and his Ethernet card.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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When Computers Talked: The Dawn of AOL

Carisa H-K on September 16, 2020

The Digital Deliria began with the sound of computers talking. A call and response song as natural and old as time. Like two birds echoing from corresponding hilltops to make a connection.

The digital bird speech sounded aggressive to human ears, yet somehow irresistible to listen:

Beep, boap, beep, boap, beep, beep, beep (The Call)

Zinnnnnggggg pulse, pulse, ahhhhhhhh (The Response)

Guuuurrrgle zing (The cooing bird, pleased to receive the response)

Zong, Zwerg, ZWERG! (The excitement builds to…)

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH……

White noise. A static, where the call and response joins to one connection. Where noise is actually signal. Computers finally in coitus.

Then, the world opened up. The pixel wind of the Information Superhighway began blowing back your hair. It was all new, and it was called the Internet.

Once you fostered computer coitus, you too were one with the web. At once unfamiliar, yet so sublime. Something within the white noise signal clicked subconsciously in our brains – that unlike a uselessly garbled TV channel, this static instead meant delivery of something much more. Infinite information and connectedness.

And just like that, a whole generation was hooked.

How Did It Start?

Venture back with the sounds of dial-up.

In a word: AOL. America Online… a world where “always on” was not “always so”. The ability to check email or text messages immediately at all times of day? Never. This stuff required patience.

Patience began by following the curly, stretched telephone cord from the kitchen to the bedroom. That’s where you’d find the person to boot off the phone line.

Alas: it was only when humans were cooperative, that the internet connection process could begin. Was there an hour-long phone conversation to finish first? – you betcha. (Conversations! What a concept.)

But once the phone boot-off feat was accomplished… we could enjoy the dial-up screech and crackle.

Why Were We Hooked?

In short, a crafty user experience that created Pavlov’s dog-like responses in its users.

For example, “You’ve got mail!” might well translate to “Someone loves and is thinking about you!”.

The mails you received back then were mostly forwarded chains of random jokes. But so what? People “shared” crap via email before they “shared” crap on Facebook. But it was their crap, and our crap, and it was crap among friends – so it had great value.

Then there were the chat messages (aka “AIM” – AOL Instant Messenger). This was the dawn of LOL’s, BRB’s and emoticons, before text messages existed. As soon as you were on the Superhighway, welcoming “bing bing bings” from friends in the digital woodwork greeted you.

With every bing, you got happier and happier to not talk to people by phone anymore. Fast, fast, zippity, zippity, energy, energy – that was the feeling of early chat rooms and instant messages. An addicting recognition, as folks saw their friends come online and proceeded to message them immediately. Ghosting was not a thing.

You had GREAT friends if they sent you ASCII texts or emails: mind-blowing full pictures concocted solely from keyboard characters. But man, it was hard to get them to come through without skewing in odd ways during copy-paste! Why was it that your goofiest friends always sent you the cock-eyed ones, giving you pause to ask: “What the heck was that”?

We, the Pavlov’s dogs, were oh-so-rewarded by these new sounds and sights – all from the comfort of our pressboard desks and vinyl chairs. Many things in AOL were the precursors to the addictive social media “like”. It made us Digital Delirious!

The excitement and motion of “journeying out” felt tangible on the Information Superhighway. (Jeez, where do we ever hear that term anymore these days? OK, let’s put it to bed here and now.) But despite this unstoppable sense of forward momentum, the Internet was oh-so-SLOW. The only thing that held us back from a full-on addiction?: the cursed dial-up speeds!

That and sleepy time. Tired from our evening web adventures, we had to disconnect.

When you went offline, there was no parting farewell of digital bird speech. Just a friendly “Goodbye” ‘till next time.

But once that initial connection was made, we’d soon never go offline again.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please share if you did, to help brighten someone else’s! And, we’d love to hear your AOL memories – please post your comments!

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