Much More Fun Than Logging Onto Compuserve!

A real trip down Memory Lane, back when memory was mostly in megabytes!

I made this one the other day for the Haven's October Caption Contest, which I haven't entered in quite a few years, mostly because I can be on call to settle ties if there need to be an independent review. What made me decide to throw my hat into the ring this time? Here is what it is about:

October is anniversary time for the Haven and in celebration of that the contest theme is something special. It is about you a Havenette or Havenitte or a haven with a side of bacon. What inspired you to take the first steps into joining the Haven to start you on the path of who you are now? Who inspired you to maybe take that first not so sure step to maybe discover another side of yourself? It could be anyone from a trans supermodel to someone who inspires you to write. Yes I know this is pretty wide open and it could be anything or anyone really. 

So this month you get to reveal what inspired you, who is your hero? Of course there has to be a tg twist to your story I mean this is the Haven. 

Well, I did more of a "what inspired you" as opposed to a "who inspired you" since I didn't want to make another Doug Henning caption. I figured, why not take it old school? As far as TG and the Internet goes, REALLY old school! Especially since I was there pretty damn early. As Simone has mentioned, I would probably make a good TG historian!

Here is my write up for the submission to the Haven:

Saw the contest premise and I thought it was a great idea, so I grabbed a can of Surge (I was out of OK Soda) fired up my cassette copy of Jagged Little Pill, and whipped this up. I sort of blended a few years into one, but honestly, most of the 90's were a complete alcohol soaked blur. I look back and think, "at one point I spent 500 dollars on a color scanner" and that was considered A BARGAIN! 

Hope everyone that was around back then enjoys a trip down memory lane. If you are younger, we were turning guys into girls when you were in diapers! Not that we won't do that to you again, you whippersnappers!

Nice to know that things have come so far in just 20 years. Everything is so much faster, with more storage and much more portability, and above all, the prices are so much cheaper now. A few weeks ago, I snagged a 512 gig SSD drive for about 120 bucks on sale. It is the size of a deck of cards. 20 years ago, when i wanted to store something that too big for a floppy disc (1.4 megabytes) I had a Zip drive that had cartridges that could hold 100 megabytes. The drive itself was about 150 bucks and each cart was around 15-20 bucks. I don't think there is a new iPhone now with less than 16 gigabytes now. And of course, I think I'm around 30 megabits per second with my cable modem, for which I pay 50 bucks. In 1995, I was actually on an Internet Dial Up plan with a local twisted pair provider that gave me a complete 56k logon. Compuserve was 2.95 a hour ar 2400 baud, 8.95 an hour for 9600 baud speed. AOL then went to 3.25 an hour at 14,400 baud before blowing everyone else away by going unlimited .. which pretty much broke the internet for a year or so!

And yes, I know the picture is of someone wearing a Seahawks jersey from last year. Do you know hard it was to find a good picture I could use of the half boy/ half girl Halloween outfit? Sometimes we just have to suspend our sensibilities occasionally when we read TG captions! LOL What is even better though is I think its a girl in the costume, but if it is, they did a GREAT JOB on the male side of the face. Otherwise, if it is a guy, he makes an incredible looking female! Wonderful either way though, and enough to keep us guessing!

Hmmm, as I kid, I wanted to do this, but BECOME Lisa instead. I can't be the ONLY one right?

DISCUSSION QUESTION: Let me know if you were too! Also, I look forward to reading about your earliest computer and online TG experiences! Let's talk about them below!