From The Mud Puddle

As the calendar seems to represent, today is March 4th. It represents the anniversary of the day that we brought the world wide web into our home eight years ago. March 4th is the day that we unlocked that superhighway and never looked back at "how things used to be" before... OK, almost never.

I remember when we were considering buying a new computer. I mean, we had one, but not one that would connect to the Internet. It was OLD. A friend donated it to us. We had to peddle it to get it to run it was so old. (OK, I made that last part up, but still, it was old and slow...so very slow. While it had been upgraded at some point with Windows 3.0 (yes you read that right) most of the programs we had for it ran completely on DOS if that tells you anything)

I remember having thoughts that we should at least wait to buy a new computer after January 1, 2000, to make sure we had electricity and all. (You guys remember y2k, dontcha?) I know we really didn't buy too much into the whole Y2K thing (who would admit to doing so at this point anyhow?)...but we did buy a few extra groceries and laughingly called it our Y2K supply under the counter. That's right, our Y2K supplies all fit under the counter. Had anything happened, we would have been good for a week and then we would have starved to death.

Anyhow, back to the computer anniversary thing...

So given that we still had power in 2000 and our lives had not been significantly altered with the new millennium, we bought a computer. Coincidentally, we bought this new computer and hooked up the the Internet the exact same weekend Bayley was "fixed". I remember weird things grouped together like that. I can see in my mind our first day with a new computer. At the same time I can see our first day with a new computer, hooked up the the Internet, I can see Bayley off to the side staring at his butt. There is no gentle way to say that. He was confused, we were confused-though for different reasons. It was the beginning of a new life for all of us here at our home.

We were amazed at where we could go while remaining in our own home. Previously, to search the Internet we had to go to the library. Now everything was right at our fingertips. We heard the soothing words, "you've got mail" for the first time. We were mesmerized.


There is more to this story, (as is true for most good tales, or is that tails or tells....just kidding, I know it is the first one...unless you are Bayley, then you might choose the second one) but for today, I just wanted to remember that moment we went from no world wide web to speeding down the superhighway of the Internet. Indeed....things have never been the same since.