1998

It’s 1998 I’m in Sixth grade and I’m 11 years old.  Back then it seemed like time took forever to go by.  As i look back today i realize wow I learned a shit load in 2 years.  Well like I said its 1998 ! and my family finally gets their own computer im almost positive its a Compaq Persario.  

AOL was already pretty popular but I’ve never heard of it.  My father was in the Sales and repair of Televisions and VCRs so I guess you could say he was in the “tech scene.  I know before getting AOL we played games from Lion King, looking at Encarta, Redneck Rampage, etc.  I’m pretty sure i could be getting ahead of myself with my dates but hey its a long time ago.  Shit who would have thought I would be typing this from a phone that’s more powerful then some laptops.

I remember being in school and trading screen names with friends so we could chat online.  I remember chatting with my one friend and later on saw his font colors changing in an instant message.  I did the same thing back to him by switching every color manually.  Then the next day asked “Hey man how are you changing your text color so fast?”  He said oh it’s a program called AOL Prop I think it was “AOL4Prop“.  Aka a Fader.

I remember it being a pain in the ass and was missing all sorts of .DLL files.  I never gave up and pushed myself to figure out how to use this program for America Online.  It was hard because the internet wasn’t like it was today and the search engine then was Dogpile or Ask Jeeves.

I finally figured out the whole fader/ AOL Prop thing and I can also remember downloading south park and other games which required the same .DLL files.  It was a pain in the ass getting online to use the computer because I would have to fight my older brother for who’s turn it would be next.  So I remember waking up about 2 hours early every morning before school so I could sign on.

I would do little things from organize files on Windows , add favorites to my AOL, fix my Buddy list, etc.  Each day was something new.  After the fader I began using other programs for AOL some that stick out the most are Gothic nightmares, Prophecy, Solar Winds, Dreamcatcher, Rampage Tools, Methodus Tools and so many more.

After I thought I was the biggest Hacker online using all my programs from scrollers, macros, email bombs, punters.   I actually started making webpages that were dedicated to AOL proggies.  I would download and test progs and upload them to my site usually angelfire or geocities with a cool redirect like cjb.net or 8op until I could finally afford my own domain.

I made tons of websites from South park, PlayStation cheat codes, Prog sites, WWF and so many more. Back then it seriously would take months to create a website that could be made in 3 days today.  The tools and content management just wasn’t there back then.

It’s amazing how little was archived from back then.  I seriously thought AOL would never disappear and technology wouldn’t advance as fast as it did.

I remember purchasing domains from my personal name, cjonline.net? And some others.  Some websites I visited was Lenshell, new world, STRGame, Phatz Progs, etc.

After web design I wanted to get into the programming of AOL progs.

 Stay tuned for 1999.