Jeez, where do I start?

While I got my first computer (Apple //e) in high school in '83, I never used it in college (damn manual typewriter!). Late '80s I snagged the old Apple and started playing around with it, and getting online. (Well, before getting online I was actually using it for ham radio RTTY (radio teletype) which allowed me to talk to other hams all over the world with my keyboard -- I contacted over 120 different countries (and all US states) in the couple years I did that).

I started with Prodigy (we called it P* for shorthand). Back then the Big 3 were Prodigy, CompuServe, and then AOL. I was using a modem that ran 2400 or 9600 baud max (that's 2.4k/9.6k), which was pretty quick for the day. I also went on local BBS's (bulletin board systems; that's where the "BB" comes from here) that connected way down to 300 baud. Prodigy later sold me a whopping 14.4k modem for only $150! After 14.4k came 28.8k then 33.6k then 56k by the late 90's, and that's pretty much where dialup maxed out. (All those speeds were theoretical, never actually attained)

In the early '90s I had switched to AOL dialup. And it was a toll call. On top of the $25/month or whatever it was for AOL, my phone bill was another $100+.

By 1995 I was fed up and found a local ISP for dialup that was $20-25/month, but was a local call. I was one of their first 50 customers, and still am 'til this day (not for dialup). Soon after I started the Godfather site (July 1995) simply because I searched for one and never found one. There wasn't much of an internet back then, and what was there was pretty simple and basic -- and the site hasn't changed much the past 15 years.

By 1996 personal homepages started looking like this spoof I made in '97. (And it still cracks me up!! )

Anyway, thank God broadband came around in the '00s!! First Comcast, which was fine, but now FiOS is Da Chit!