Re: TOP THAT: Antique Email (WAS RE: Dating the Internet (was Re: Funny Tech Writing))

["Mike McCallister" <workingwriter -at- gmail -dot- com>]

With a little help from Wikipedia, I think I've got the history worked
out. Depending on how you look at it, I've had the single account for
approaching 13.5 years.

I got my first PC with 2400-baud modem for Christmas 1992, and signed
up for Prodigy later that morning with the floppy disk that came with
the modem. That was the consumer service, no Internet yet. They let us
connect to the Net with prodigy.com addresses in 1994, and (Wikipedia
was not helpful here) launched Prodigy Internet (with prodigy.net
email addresses) maybe a year later.

With the proprietary service, they gave each account 6 email addresses
(for the family), but with Prodigy Internet (PI) you only got one
username -- if the spousal unit wanted to escape the walled Prodigy
environment, she had to pay her own $14.95 a month. Since I had dialup
access from my job (the aforementioned UW-Madison gig), I used the
prodigy.com account mostly to access the proprietary content, and
occasionally Usenet and the web. The MikeMcC-at-prodigy.net account
mostly lie dormant until I left Madison.

Twas about this time I started adopting the WorkingWriter moniker,
first applied to a GeoCities account, and then to an "email.com"
account that forwarded to prodigy.net. Also about this time that
Prodigy started weaning people off the "Classic" proprietary service
and opening up the number of PI accounts. When they finally killed off
Classic in 1999, I was actively using both MikeMcC and WorkingWriter.

Due to its long-in-the-tooth-ness (and my early-days naivete in
handing out my email address to just about anyone who asked), MikeMcC
is now almost entirely a spam repository, but the other thrives, a
proud brother/cousin of that original Prodigy account. AT&T may
someday make me give up the prodigy.net suffix, (or they might do
something to make me switch to cable) but I'll continue to use it as
long as I can. And to think, when I got that account, I was branding
myself as a techie-wannabe. All the kool kids were on CompuServe!

OK, that's enough. (some might say, too much -- maybe)

Mike

On 4/28/06, Nuckols, Kenneth M <Kenneth -dot- Nuckols -at- mybrighthouse -dot- com> wrote: