14.4Kbps Nostalgia

I've got some decent display real-estate on my desk, roughly 576 square inches total, so choosing background wallpaper is not a task Itypically proceed into lightly. Well, last week, my selection of background aesthetic was undertaken a bit hastily. There was fallout. In what can only be described as a Bostonian fashion, Aqua Teen Hungerforce was once again poorly received. This time by my co-workers.

So today I went to DeviantArt looking for some new wallpaper, and stumbled upon these:

They're ANSI art, all done by Thor (iCE), for BBS's I used to call back when I was in high school. Legion HQ was the place, too. No real names. Just teaching each other random bits of knowledge and (mostly) cursing each other out like the angsty, angry misfits that we were. I didn't know it then, but I made some good friends during this time. I still keep in touch with a few, 14 years later. But what ever happened to Evil Dude?

Anyway, it's cool to see these again. They remind me of a much simpler time... of Desqview and Telix, of Pascal and WordPerfect, of Kings Quest and fractint, of 2600 meetings and boot sector viruses. It was all new back then. I was all new back then.

Sometimes in life, every few years or so, you stop and look back at who you used to be. The long blue hair has been replaced with short hair that's starting to speckle grey. I still listen to the same music, but it's not cool anymore. But I think that, aside from having never gotten a tattoo, the 16yr old I used to be would've been pretty jazzed to see how his life turned out.