There’s a song that goes something like, “I was country when country wasn’t cool.” Well, to paraphrase, “I was an Internet provider before anyone really knew what the Internet was, including me.” In late 1992, early 1993, Mark Foreman and I were working the bugs out of transitioning ”Pink’s Place” BBS (Mark was a fan of Pink Floyd) into what eventually became Public NetXchange, PNX, Internet service. [Read the rest of this entry...]
About 6 years ago, Elaine’s Mom and Dad bought a house on the bayou in Bridge City. Before they moved in we went by to take a look at the house and hear their plans for remodeling and making it their home. On the back porch, off in one corner was a hot tub. At first glance it was obvious it had not been used in quite awhile. I didn’t really pay any attention to it. That, maybe, was my first mistake.
I learned later that when they signed the papers on the house one of the conditions they made was to have the seller repair the hot tub and return it to good working order. At some point, Elaine’s Dad told her once the hot tub was restored, he was giving it to us… Elaine was excited. What do you think my chances would have been at that point to say “no thanks?” No, I have to admit that initially when she told me I thought it would be OK. What I had to do now was figure out how to have the hot tub moved from their house to our house. It couldn’t cost too much, after all the hot tub was free. [Read the rest of this entry...]
Next month will be a year since I sold PNX and closed my retail store. Some of the aspects of being self employed I miss. I miss the pace and the interaction with my customers. I always enjoyed the challenge when someone would come in and ask “Can you do so and so?” Most of the time, I’d tell them yes. Then, once they left the store I’d get busy and figure out how I was going to do “so and so.” Many times I had no idea what I was going to do to meet their expectations but I loved the challenge. I would usually brainstorm with my staff on how to solve the problem or I would pick up the phone and call someone I knew could help, depending on what the challenge was. I can’t remember a single time I had to call someone back and tell them I wasn’t able to take care of their request.
I had planned to have the July post up before now but I hit a mental block. I kept going through my mind and trying out different subjects to write about and nothing appealed to me. I even emailed WingNet and told Craig I was a little behind schedule this month and told him why. He suggested I use this month to write about the 4th of July and offer my thoughts on what the holiday means to me. Well, I had already considered that topic but I just couldn’t fit all the pieces together to make any sense of it. That is until I went to church Sunday, July 5. There I realized I didn’t really have to write anything this month, I only had to listen.
Friday evening, May 29, Elaine and I attended two different high school graduation ceremonies. The first one (Graduation 1) was at 6:00 PM. We were there for our niece. The second one (Graduation 2) was at 8:00 PM. That one was for our nephew. The contrast between these two schools was significant and that’s what I want to climb on my soapbox about this month. Both ceremonies, as you would expect, were packed. And both ceremonies suffered the same expected flaw, namely each had a very poor public address system. Both ceremonies were held on the school’s football field. I never noticed a problem at either of these schools with the PA system during a football game… I wonder why there’s a problem at graduation? [Read the rest of this entry...]
