Three Things to Say
As I type this sentence my clock says its 5:00am… I’m sure it’ll be much later than that when this entry is finally done. So much for having a normal sleeping schedule :P. Oh well, on with the updates…
Updated Test All
I’ve updated TAAG’s “Test All” feature. It should now be much faster. In fact, based on some tests I ran, it should be 11 times faster than before. The old “Test All” feature worked by having Javascript and PHP continuously talk to each other during the text generation process. Now everything is done server side with PHP code. The downside to this is that all my Javascript text generation code had to be duplicated in PHP. This sucks for a number of reasons, but I couldn’t see away around it :/. With the exception of bug fixes, I think I’m pretty much done with this app. Well, no program is ever really “done”, but I think I’ve come to a decent stopping point.
Also, after doing some testing in Opera, I realized the color dialog script I was using doesn’t work in that browser, so now I’ve put up a little notice when you push that button (it’ll pop up only if you’re using Opera). I’m not sure if there’s a way around this, but I’ll try and find one. It makes me nuts that every browser is so different.
Thoughtful Programming and Forth
While searching the net for an old college friend’s / suite mate’s webpage, I discovered an old article he’d written on Thoughtful Programming and Forth. Though I didn’t agree with all of it, and I’m not about to start programming in Forth, I thought it was a well thought out piece. Since he used to have it on his web page, I emailed him (he’s now off in Canada working on a PhD in Math) and asked him if it’d be cool if I posted it up here. He told me he was fine with me posting it up, as long as I updated the email address and fixed a spelling error. So anyway, if you’re interested in learning a little about Thoughtful Programming and Forth, his article is worth a read:
Introduction to Thoughtful Programming and the Forth Philosophy By Michael Misamore
It’s a shame the rest of his webpage is gone, because he had some interesting content, but nothing lasts forever. Which leads me to my next topic…
RIP DarcFX
DarcFX.com, possibly the last of the great AOL programming websites, has closed down. This is probably for the best, since it hadn’t had any new content in years. In fact, I was actually a little shocked that the site lasted so long. For those of you who don’t know, DarcFX was known for being the site the succeeded KnK4Life.com after it closed down. KnK4Life was once the biggest resource for AOL add-on development. I’m talking thousands of unique visitors a day big. I mention its relevance here mostly because the site housed a couple of my programs and programming examples. It boosted my visibility a decent amount, and for that I’m thankful.
It’s a shame to see sites die, but unless they can evolve there’s really no point in having something that isn’t relevant anymore lying around. DarcFX was still giving me 5 or 6 referrals a month though, so I’d assume the site was still bringing in a decent amount of traffic. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the domain. KnK4Life.com is apparently available for purchase. I’m surprised some spam site hasn’t grabbed it up, though it’s been so long that the domain is probably worthless. DosFX.com is another site that seems to have died. Dos was probably the most well known AOL add-on developer. Bofen.com was once a major site, until it went down in disgrace. Now the domain is owned by some company that sells “premium domains”. That’s the sort of thing I would expect to see happen to a lot of these late 90’s / early 00’s AOL hacking / programming / software sites that brought in tons of visitors. It’d suck if that were the fate of this site, though at my current status, I don’t see that happening.
Other sites I remember from back in the day:
Magintta.com - This site never brought a lot of people in, but I remember her. It’s good to see it hasn’t disappeared. Though it doesn’t look like it’s been updated in a long time.
Pixelsex.com [currently NSFW] - Plastik’s old site. Originally this site was hosted at dosfx.com. Plastik had a cool site with lots of tutorials. Looks like it’s gone now.
TPA Software - This site seems to be alive and well, it’s been a long time since I last visited.
I know there were a lot more than this, but these are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Anyway, I should probably get bed now…
Posted in General News, Software
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January 6th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
It’s been a number of years since some of the original “proggie” sites were both around and active, but I too remember a number of them. Unfortunately my memory as far as some of the domain names go isn’t too wonderful. While I can remember some of the websites such as Phat’s Free Progz, Toad2000, KnK, and Methodus Toolz I still remember many of the websites by their look and the content they provided. There was one by the name of Synergy, which I distinctly remember as both being one of the first websites I ever came across that utilized CSS to change the default color of the scrollbars, and as hosting Visual Basic 1, 2, and 3 (which I downloaded).
There was also later websites such as moo2.net, aimlabs.net, aimwarfare.net, splisks, cyber-crimes, and a large number of others that have since faded into obscurity. It’s good to see some people still exist though.
January 6th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Yeah, there are a lot of sites I used to visit where I can sort of picture them, but I can’t remember their name. I think I remember the domain names because I always thought it was the coolest thing to have your own domain as opposed to just having a geocities or xoom site.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I don’t remember going to add-on sites very much. Just the “secret” add-on boards, Hider.com and after that, dos’s site. I think after I graduated high-school I stopped going on AOL altogether.
I’m not surprised that AOL sites are gone or dead. I don’t even think they offer client software anymore.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I believe they actually do though I can’t say I would think they have too many customers who use their AOL software. Most people that still remain in the AOScene are more focused on AOL Instant Messenger these days, but everything is done remotely through Winsock. There aren’t too many uses for Windows API and AOL Instant Messenger any longer, and the controls used by AIM are now basically web browsers. seven still makes actively makes programs for AOL and AIM though.
AOL was probably one of the biggest reasons most people got into programming in the middle to late 90s. I remember sitting in chatrooms on AOL 4.0, watching people scroll, send faded text, send macros, and perform other tasks really quickly. I knew that was something I wanted to do (well the programming part that was), and I was actually a tad bit upset after I realized how simply some things were done. I’ll still cite Toad 1.3 and Toad2000 Beta as being one of the biggest reasons I began programming in the first place, and I had both programs up until late 2004 when my harddrive crashed.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:30 am
Hider.com! I totally forgot about that place! Sad to see it isn’t around anymore :/. The “secret” boards were great too.
AwesomeAndrew - I had the same kind of experience when I was introduced to AOL. Though when I tell people at work how I got into programming, I always get weird looks. No one seems to know what I’m talking about.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Yeah, I don’t generally talk about why I initially got into programming when it comes up in conversation offline. I think I usually just come up with the excuse of being “fascinated” by creating my own applications.
January 10th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Knk, Plastik, Dos, pre, DarcFX, Syber
I am too another one of those AOL proggie makers. Of course, I never became as advanced or did I continue to pursue it like pat here did, but I use to love these sites. That’s how I came across Pat’s and although some have changed like Pat’s I find in comforting that people haven’t forgotten these things.
When I entered an AOL Chat room I think version 4.0? First years of the colors right? I seen these “AFK” bots, etc. I was like I want one of those! Then curiosity got the best of me and I bought VB6 (remember the VB6 private chatroom?)
I built the AFK bots, the 8-ball bot’s etc, the battle bots - remember the Pokemon one that was very popular? lol, I’m embarrassed I still remember it. or how everyone hacked it to give themselves the cheat board, so everyone made their name 9 letters long. Amusing.
Thanks for the memories Pat! This is why I still visit you!
January 10th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Haha, no problem. I like looking back on this stuff every so often.
Syber was hilarious, I used to always enjoy the rants/essays he’d write. It looks like he has a couple posted at thezoneirc.com, but I remember him having a lot more than that. I remember pre too, but my memory of him is kind of hazy.
I remember the VB6 chat room, and all the crazy bots people would make. The scrambler game and AFK bot are the ones I remember those though.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Remember when AOL became so clearly aware of both the fact that such a wide array of these programs were available, and that many of their users were running so rampant with them in public chatrooms that they even attempted to create their own shareware to counteract them? I remember being in one of the public chatrooms on AOL 5.0, which were monitored at the time by CATwatch (anyone else remember these guys and the other official administrators), scrolling a giant middle-finger macro, being booted from the room, kicked offline, and having two seperate ToS emails sent to every single account I owned. The first email was one complaining that I sent too many lines of text to the chatroom too quickly, and the second was that I was using an unofficial and unsupported third-party program, which then instructed me to download “AOL Powertools” if I wanted to be able to do everything I could already do without violating their terms of service.
I remember downloading it to see how it worked, and it was just horrible. Nevermind the fact that they wanted an additional $30 to unlock all of the features and allow unlimited use. It had a fader, and that was about it. Nothing anywhere near what “amateurs” were creating. I mean the original program that started it all, AOHell, was written by a 17 year old at the time in Visual Basic so it wasn’t like there was an organized and collective team working on these applications like AOL had been.
I don’t know why I remember all of this to be honest. I’m sure with a little bit of thinking I could continue talking about every single issue I had with AOL back in the day.
January 12th, 2008 at 4:32 am
I think I only went as high as AOL 4.0, but I remember CATwatch. I also have a vague memory of Powertools, though I mostly just remember being unimpressed. The guy who developed Fate X was even younger - in 1999 he was 16, so at the time of the first Fate’s release he was probably 13 or 14. It’d be interesting to know what happened to all these people.
January 17th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Ah.. I remember those days.. I too was fascinated with creating my own programs. I still remember the first time I used dos32.bas to send a line of text into a chat room. I then made an afk/scroller program but I can remember the name of it.. it got hosted on coltpro.net or something like that.. I also remember being absolutely amazed at bk’s lethal fragment 3. And I also thought I could die a happy boy if one of my progs got on freeprogz.com lol.. I also remember using pat’s api spy (which was the bomb) … I still do a little vb programming.. but have moved on to php development now..
January 17th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Nevermind how I found this place. DarcFX is still around and the victim of me recently being useless with linux and ruining his entire site. All the stuff still exists though.
Uh… what else. Too much to list here. As Patorjk pointed out, some of my personal stuff was lost, but a few of the old guys still kick it on the IRC network Darc and I setup years ago. I won’t plug it here out of respect for this site, but you can find it if you want… it’s where he said my rants are. I talk to Dos every day, and Pre pretty regularly as well. Dos has a family and all that so you know… times change. However (again sorry for the plug) a few of us geezers are always BSing on the IRC network about the good old days, and it would be awesome if some of you guys popped in sometime.
Hey Patorjk… how is it that your name… on your site… in the comments section of your blog… shows up as a misspelled word? Shame on you broseph.
Holla!
-Syber
January 17th, 2008 at 2:03 am
haha i remember going to your site like 9 years ago to download msvb4.dll or whatever it was and you had some funky rainbow faded bg image. i remember the ao scene, it was lame! but i did remember ccoms being cool. and prophecy 3 was like a fucking major production. anyway im out! great job over the years pat!
January 17th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Josh - Thanks :). I do a lot of PHP stuff now too, though the more I work with it the more annoyed I am at it. I keep telling myself I’ll learn Ruby, but I’ve already promised myself I’d learn a whole bunch of other languages first.
Syber - lol, I guess it’s good to know it’s not really gone. I would have been fine with you linking to http://thezoneirc.com/ , however, thanks for the respect.
Also, I’m not sure why my name would show up as misspelled, it doesn’t seem too in IE. However, if you’re using FF you can add it to your dictionary by right clicking :).
freaka - Thanks man. And about the rainbow bg - you must be remembering the very first incarnation of this site (around 1998). I was still learning HTML then and for some reason I thought it would be cool to have a different image for the background on every page.
January 18th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
FYI, dosfx.com has not been updated in 4 years, but it is far from dead. The site is still an active source of income for me and last month received almost 700,000 hits. I’ve reinvented the site a few times since those AOL days, getting further away from the topic of AOL add-ons each time. I plan to do the same again in the near future.
I haven’t forgotten AOL or the people there. Although I’ve pretty much ditched all chat rooms, including IRC, I still stay in contact with several people I met on AOL. I still talk to Syber and pre daily. I’ve recently signed onto my old AIM screen name and have found about a third of my buddy list is still active with people like KnK, membertwo, and others.
As for life now, here is a quick update. I’m still married; moved to Omaha, work for a travel agency as a web developer using .NET, daughter is 13 today (son 10 last month), live in a big house, drive a Caddy, and train in Muay Thai after work every day. Life is pretty good, but busy.
I do have plans to do something with dosfx.com again, but I do not have those plans ironed out yet. I’m working on a few other sites and hope to get those out of the way first before I get back to this.
Thanks for the article Patorjk. You’ve always been cool.
- dos
January 18th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Sorry about bofen.com for those of you who liked that site too.
He had it coming though.
- dos
January 18th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
But I liked bofen!
I just wanted to say that I am still alive. I haven’t gone anywhere near AOL/AIM in years. I, like dos, have not entered a chat room in quite some time.
I’m still programming though. I worked for awhile at Virgin Digital and wrote the portable device support code that was built into that application. Virgin Digital was then joined with Roxio and has finally shut down that service to push Napster. That was interesting.
I am now creating applications for the USA and friendly nations, mostly military and aerospace applications. A lot of which I can’t talk about.
I’m not married…yet. Dos and I speak daily. We have dabbled in some other areas, like game development. We have an idea for a project and we are kind of fleshing out those ideas right now, so stay tuned!
January 19th, 2008 at 2:25 am
dos - it’s good to know you’re doing so well and that the site hasn’t been forgotten about. One day I hope to have a wife and kids, I’m starting to get to the age where most of my friends are married (at the New Years Eve party I went to this past month half the people were married, it was kind of strange).
I check your site out every once in a while just to see if there’s anything new. Glad to hear it’s still bringing in visitors and generating income. I only said that it looked like it had died since it hadn’t been updated in so long. As for chat rooms, I don’t think I’ve been in one in years, it weird to think that was the first thing I used to do after I got on my computer (after checking my email).
pre - I’ve got the same type of job. The stuff I do is pretty cool, but I can never talk about it so that part kind of sucks. Also, I had no idea Napster still existed, though maybe I’m out of the loop.
Your mystery project with dos sounds interesting, I’ll keep my eye out for it.
Thank you both for stopping by! It was cool to get an update and I’m sure the people who read this (who remember the AOL days) will be glad to know you guys are doing so well.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:37 am
Wow Pat, I was thinking about your old VB forums the other day and thought I would pop by to see what’s what, and what do you know…you’re still here! That’s awesome bro. Yeah, TPA is still around and profitable enough to make it worth my while (12 years I’ve been doing this. 12 years. It doesn’t seem that long.) Obviously enough peeps are still using AOL chat and passing the link around. You don’t hear me complaining.
It also made me smile to see some of the old names and sites mentioned again. God that was another era, wasn’t it? I wonder where most of those guys disappeared to. I stop by thezone irc every now and then, but it’s pure idle (some things never change eh? ).
As for me, besides doing the software thing decided to earn my CCE (computer forensics) so that I have something to fall back on when (not if) the software thing goes south. I did some moderating for MS for a while after meeting some people higher up in their food chain. Learned a *lot* of things I would have never learned on my own.
I like that a lot of your apps are web based now Pat…I think that’s awesome. You always impressed me with your projects and how well they were done. I always told myself if I ever needed another programmer, I would have asked you first, as I always thought you really knew your stuff.
Anyway, pop by sometime. I have my usual site, plus I put it on myspace (myspace.com/tpasoftware) and we can do the old “add friends” thing.
Glad to see you are doing well in life.
Cheers,
- Kevin Provance
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:11 am
hey Kev,
Thanks for the compliments. It was cool to see you were still in business. It’s crazy that it’s been 12 years. Those days don’t seem as far away to me either.
Microsoft is an interesting company. I had a student when I was in grad school who used to work there, he seemed to like it (if you work on site they have some cool benefits), however, since they hired him right out of high school, he didn’t have much on his resume when he left other than software tester, so that part kind of sucked for him. Over all they seem to be a good company to work for, they take a lot of crap, but everyone I know who’s worked for them has said they enjoyed it.
I’ll definitely stop by the myspace page. Thanks for dropping in!
January 31st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I’m sorry, I just have to say this.
“if I ever needed another programmer, I would have asked you first”
You’re cool Pat, but watch him. He says that to everybody.
- dos
February 1st, 2008 at 12:23 am
lol, I wouldn’t be too surprised. Kev’s a nice guy though. I never take stuff too seriously unless there seems to be a real push behind it.
In the late 90’s I was talked into working for some guy at college park for free. The idea was that we’d all get paid when we hit it big (and then we’d be millionaires). Obviously that didn’t happen. The project fell apart after 6 months of hard work and nobody made any money. After that I was a little more careful with the projects I chose. Nowadays I don’t see myself working on any projects (outside of work) that I’m not directly behind.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Well Chad, I may have said that to you at one time…but it was before I realized how truly hung up you were on yourself (in all fairness I don’t know about now not having talked to you in some years). One of the last things you said to me was that I was only ever your friend because of your “status” and who you were. Not only was that not true, but it was a completely egotistical thing to say and I lost a great deal of respect for you after that. The kiddies who were hating on you because they said you had a huge massive ego were essentially right. I was friends with you because you were an intelligent fellow who used to think outside of the box. I had assumed you got too comfortable in your role as some kind of self proclaimed programming deity and decided it wasn’t worth bickering over. Maybe you’ve changed, I don’t know, but since you obviously felt the need to take a swipe at me like this after all these years and since I’ve not said anything about you to anyone…well, I have to wonder. If you’ve still got some kind of problem with me, please let me know directly so we can spare Pat the drama. Thanks.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:26 am
You said it Kevin and its alright. I’m not bent out of shape over it or anything. Its just a little sideways talk and liking Pat, I thought I’d drop him a word of caution. I don’t think you’re a bad guy for it. I used to do something similar myself. Granted that was high school and I was talking to girls, with intentions I’m not going to explain here.
I really don’t get your recollection of things. I wonder if you’ve played too many RPGs or if you’re one of those people who lie so much you start to believe your own. We can clear up a few of those here though.
I didn’t have an ego. I never talked about my “status” nor did I ever claim you were my friend because of it. The kiddies didn’t “hate on” me either. I spent a little time on AOL helping people however I could. I never released a program or pulled any other common rep-building stunts. I released a help file, a chat control, and tons of example code, all meant to help people. People were really nice to me too. The only problems I had with people were the problems I started. I couldn’t stand guys like Bofen picking on the little guy. I only left because the attention I received took too much of my time.
I’m sorry but I really don’t remember you that well. I guess we were friends and I know you wrote commercial add-ons. I don’t remember why we quit talking and maybe to your surprise I haven’t been thinking about you all these years. Somebody just linked me to this page and I saw your comment which sparked a memory. I just thought “what a douche-bag, I remember when he said that to me” and posted. Sorry.
April 4th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Allow me.
At the height of all the AOL crap, which is how the majority of us know each other, I would estimate the average age to be around 16. Chad and Kev are substantially older. In fairness it’s probably like five or so years. However you have to consider WHICH five years it was. Think back to when you were 20 compared to when you were 15. Not really the same guy/girl is it?
I think it’s fair to say that while most of us didn’t have any group affiliations or anything of that nature, we were neck-deep in the addon writing culture on AOL that created life-long programmers out of a lot of us.
I’ve known a lot of you for over ten years now, and at least for guys like Dos (Chad) and Pre, they’re friends to me. Not “guys I know online,” but on par with any of the friends I socialize with on a regular basis. With that said I’m going to say I’m not here to take sides, but it’s pretty obvious that’s not the case.
At the expense of being labelled a crony or sidekick to Chad in this situation and/or throughout our time on AOL, I have no idea that he had any haters. I went to bat for Chad on a million occassions because I felt the guy was just too damn nice. Maybe it’s the Nebraska corn, or the age difference (the masses being much younger and quick to bicker and be petty). It’s obviously not like he needed my by any stretch; debate and confrontation has always been a genuinely enjoyable activity for me. I was more than happy to take up a genuine friend’s cause if it meant I was going to get to go hog-wild on somebody in front of 20 other onlookers, in the oh-so personal atmosphere of an anonymous AOL chatroom.
Chad left, to my knowledge (I’m sure he’d lie to me) because of the fact that his code was good enough (and much better than the vast majority of us at the time… AT THE TIME) to warrant them being copied. Also to Kev’s point, Chad did think outside of the box. Not to take anything away from Chad but let’s be frank. Most of the AOL addon stuff at the time were all derivatives of the same basic functionality, so it’s not hard to see why we were all stuck in a certain mentality. Also, I’m not entirely sure why he didn’t leave sooner in retrospect, as once I was 20 I’m not sure you could have gotten me to hang around 16 year olds without money involved. However I honestly believe the guy was just that nice, and he enjoyed playing around with programming at that time.
The first major fallout of programming “talent” occurred when AOL 3.0 gave way to AOL95. The jump from 16bit to 32bit programming rendered most of us rather helpless; waiting for modules to be written by the few who knew how. This also required a change in development environment, as the venerated (read: all we knew how to use) Visual Basic(s) 3 was rendered obsolete.
I digress. The next major shift came with AOL 4.0, which was the start of the goofy colored graphic menus. This also marked the change from the chatroom windows to the rich text boxes. Overnight (again) all our hard (copied) work was rendered obsolete.
The point of this is… throughout all of this, Chad wrote examples; Bits and pieces of code. Arguably the most popular vb6 module to date, and generally pushed the envelope of what the kids (us, at the time) thought was possible to do to the AOL client. He was the first I know of to subclass the chatroom window instead of using a timer to read text. He was the first I’m aware of to be able to RELIBLY (not send-keys) run the AOL4 menus. If there are legions of haters out there, I’ve yet to hear of any of them. Maybe they were mad that he stopped providing the engines for them to write yet another cloned version of the next guy’s “proggie.”
What does stick out in my head is when Kev’s buddy Will started hanging around us. Long story short, the tabbed IM windows that Chad had shown me months prior, became a feature in the application that Kev and Will were writing, after Chad showed Will the source. This application eventually became a sanctioned addon by AOL. If I remember right, they (AOL) pretended they were opening a new area of software, but there only ended up being like three apps that made this coveted list of “approved” addons. There was a bit of a confrontation if I recall (and I do), with Chad saying something to the extent of “Whatever, just use it.” He got his name listed in the “thank you” section of WavMan or whatever it was called, and that was that. Given that was the history of the dealings between Kev and Chad, to Kev’s point of “…I’ve not said anything about you to anyone…well, I have to wonder.” Read between the lines here, but I don’t hear Microsoft talking much about stealing Windows’ interface from Apple either, so I guess I don’t wonder. That’s just my personal take however. Whether or not you agree/disagree with any of that is up to the individual.
In conclusion, no I don’t actually care about either of this, and I won’t speak for anybody else. I know what I know, because I was there when it happened. It’s not necessarily awesome or terrible, it just is. For what it’s worth, I’ve yet to see Chad’s massive ego manifest itself in any capacity despite knowing the guy for going on 12 years now, and asking for his help on countless occassions. If there’s anything I’m curious about, it’s why WavMan was an approved addon while the rest of us were getting TOS violations for our programs that essentially did the same thing. I’m not taking a shot at Kev here. The reality is the rest of us lived with our mothers and went to highschool. He was in the right place to take advantage of his maturity, and properly market the program.
Don’t sell yourselves short AO-programmers. It is no coincidence that a lot of the functionality we pioneered (tabbed IMs, faders, UI/color manipulators, moving windows outside of the MDI of AOL… even away messages) are now part of the standard offering of AOL’s products.
P.S. Chad is way more of an asshole now than I was on my best day on Hider’s BBS. I’m getting soft.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Its nice to see some of you guys around still! Yea I am still here, but no longer doing anything with VB or AOL. I haven’t opened VB since before I shut down knk4life.com (rumor has it, that its coming back… Well its not from me then!) Unlike most of you I did not go on to some programming job. Hell I never really was a programmer, heheh!
This brought back some memories! The old sites and programs. Wonder what happened to most of the old programmers that were popular in our day.
I’ll have to stop in at #thezone one of these days,
April 8th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Neo/Neø here - probably not too many people remember me, I was always in private room ‘vb’, ‘veebee’, ‘vb32′, or whatever it was that particular day. I also put out a few lame-ass AOL addons and had the website http://neo.8op.com, thanks to m2 (who I recently talked to).
Aside from some of those who posted above, I occasionally keep in touch with allen/orb, who was also friends with monk-e-god.
As for me, I’m 25 now - haven’t been on AOL since probably 1999, which is coincidentally the same year The Matrix came out and everyone and there mom wanted to change their handle to Neo. I haven’t touched Visual Basic for a long time, although I still dabble in perl, tcl, and some other assorted scripting languages just to make my life easier with certain things.
I’m keeping myself busy with work (construction related) and getting my degree as a Civil Engineer.
As Syber mentioned above, some of us are still hanging out on IRC together and it would be nice to see some “older timers” in there.
PS: It’s funny the stuff that you remember. If I remember correctly, the reason patorjk is patorjk is because he and his brother had to share a screen name.
April 8th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Since every body else seems to be doing the update the world on Pat’s blog comments thing, I might as well jump on the band wagon. Like 3 people might know who I am, but I don’t really care… lol I refuse to be left out! *puts on his mean face*
I’m Jay… I run (read “ran”) the DarcFX.com site that started this mess… I am not married yet, but very involved with a girl I’ve known for nearly a decade who has a young daughter — both of which I love very much. (This is where you go “awwwwwwwwww…”)
I am the senior web developer (soon for general windows development also) for World Harvest Church and the 14 major ministry’s under Pastor Rod Parsley. I mostly work with C# (read .NET), SQL, JavaScript, and some middle-ware things we wrote… but I do dabble in COM stuff now and again.
I talk to Syber every day… usually on AIM as I seem to suck more and more at life (read “opening mIRC when I’m at the computer”), but being in my position at work and my priorities in my personal life, I don’t usually sit there without something to do, so I don’t generally think about it. (I’m making a personal note to attempt to be better at that, starting now… and you should join us too.)
I’ll tell you the thing that struck me most about this thread, and I think Syber touched on it for a second, is how something so seemingly insignificant in our pasts drove us to be where we are today. When I broke onto the AOL scene looking for something to do to pass my abundant amount of free time (read “was tired of trying to not suck really bad at basketball — which was the thing to do in my neighborhood back then” lol), I was little older than 9 or 10. I had no idea that I’d be where I am today, doing what I do.
I don’t know.. I just thought that was interesting. Been good hearing from everyone.
- Jay
April 8th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I think this has become one of those posts where the comments are actually a lot more interesting than what was written in the post itself.
Syber - I agree with most of what you said. I have a vague memory of the whole tabbed IM window thing, but I can’t really remember any details. I also don’t remember anyone named Will, so I might be thinking of the wrong thing.
Neo/Dennis - I remember you, also, you’re correct about the handle.
Bill - Someone did apparently purchase knk4life.com and mentioned something about bringing it back (in the AOHell article on wikipedia). It unfortunately might even have been because I mentioned it in this post, but oh well. According to Google it has no incoming links, so the domain itself, without the original content, probably isn’t worth much right now.
Darc - Good to hear from you. I think if it wasn’t for the AOL scene I probably wouldn’t have become a programmer myself (before then I was heading toward either biology or journalism). It’s amazing how the seemingly small decisions we make today end up having big impacts on what/who we are tomorrow.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Word up everyone. Sounds like we are having a reunion in pat’s honor.
I just wanted to mention some things. Mostly to give a big thanks to all of the peeps of #thezone. We totally rocked out with our cocks out and for that I am in a position in my life I never thought I would be in.
I started having an interest in VB when I was 17 and thought it was totally awesome when I wrong a sub-routine that ended a program. “End”. I was addicted at that point. I started making things for use in AOL, but of course was using dos’s bas, no way in hell I was going to write my own shit when someone already wrote it for me. But, not only did I use that for making programs, I can honestly say that is the way I learned how to program. I never read a book, or took a class or anything on VB with the exception of a few tutorials but those came after the intro to dos32.bas. I bet if you compared a lot of my code to dos’s style it would still be the same to date.
Currently I am working for a company (7 years in total), that is an office supply wholesaler (largest in the countrY), and I was a supervisor in the field and recently tuned my talents into something useful for the company. I currently am a Staff Engineer (which basically means I work for an actual engineer and provide reports in any way shape or form), mostly I use VBA in Excel for building reports and automating tasks. I’ve made a very good name for myself in the company and am widely respected since 1/2 of what I do ends up making the 300+ manager’s jobs easier.
I got into the web design about a year after the AOL thing started, I knew a guy named “mouse” and he showed me the ways. I ended up with a copy of Adobe Photoshop and there was no stopping me. After completing nearly 1000 tutorials in my lifetime I became an expert in tutorials. Which, I also now use today (algorithms for facility consolidation). Which basically means I follow a set of instructions for gathering correct data from our systems to reprofile and establish new warehouses.
I am constantly learning new things, I’ve probably watched every lynda.com training program they’ve ever made. Even the 30GB in total Adobe After Effects 6 (10 DVD Disk bundle). I always have a passion for starting a new webpage, which I am trying to do as we speak. Mostly about how you don’t need school, if you can empower yourself to take your life in your own hands. If you want school then that is fine. Here I am, considered an Engineer, and I didn’t even graduate high school.
By the way, I have a wife and two kids, son 2 1/2, daughter 1 yr old in 2 days. I live in Chicago now but was born and raised in Utah.
Long story long, I definitely wouldn’t be where I am at today if it wasn’t for the shannigans we got ourselves into. I owe it all to the homies of #thezone that wanted to help themselves by helping others.
Even though it seems like we’ve died, we’re still here, and we’re still kicking.
‘Till next time.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:45 am
[...] least I know it would have been if I’d had it when everyone was giving their updates in the Three Things to Say [...]