It's nice to do things 4 the first time, you know, anyway, good morning Wil, here it's almost 17.53 and I watch Star Trek Classic, really lol. Have a nice day!! Chris

GEnie... I remember GEnie. :)

I actually downloaded my first copy of Linux (30+ floppies) from GEnie. Ow. The GEnie bill was mucho large that month. :)

I met Neil Gaiman not too long ago. He was very very very nice and witty. Even after 5 hours of book signing.

He told me that I had fabulous hair.

It was fantastic.

I LOVE The Sandman Comic series. I can't deside which is my favorite sibling, but Delirium is pretty cool, I kind of made a charactor similar to her a while back. In fact Delirum is inspried by Tori Amos, another love of my love ::le sigh:: That is so rad that your going to get to meet him and that he mentioned it. I hope you have a blast and take losts of pics and stuff! !

p.s. forgive spelling I just woke up and am heading out the door to work!

Sometimes I wish I had access to the "old internet" still... I spent my formative years on QuantumLink at speeds of up to 1200 baud.

Ah, those were the days. :)

I remember those days. The excitement that surged through my veins when I witness a visible increase in scrolling rates after moving from a 300 baud coupler to a 1200 speed demon.

The awe of feeling that this is exactly what Matthew Broderick felt like in War Games, when he broke into the Whopper (Mainframe done your way). All I was doing was chatting with other dweebazoids. 2400 baud modems came packaged with braggin rights in those days.

Memories of the golden age before the internet. Baud Town, Club Playhouse, the Annex, CompuServe. Ahh, life was simple back then.

ahh yes, unfortunately i am a shade young to have ever gotten some 'good ole days' stories from my

oh and one more thing, rock on wil!!!!

http://www.poserxxl.com/slayer.gif

You're really going to like meeting Neil. He's so sweet and personable and so very kind.

I met him on the American Gods tour a couple years ago, and was thrilled, but what really bowled me over was the way he treated my kids. He told them how happy he was that they had come so far to meet him and how glad he was that they liked his work - and he *meant* it.

They've all but built a shrine around their signed copy of The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish.

I miss Genie, too. Wil, remember that what you think of as your geekiness is usually perceived as enthusiastic friendliness, and that's always welcome.

Ahh yes, the smell of the plastic as you open up that brand new 1200 baud modem... the thrill and excitement of installing it, and then the drivers without some unknown "plug and play" thing... The Thrill of starting up your Lcom and signing on and seeing the BBS log in screen fly by at what was then the fastest speed possible... Sitting in the chat room and actually not having to wait for your words to finish uploading so you can check your spelling. LOL... No such thing as the world wide web, just an very unused internet to shell to and local BBS users to play Trade Wars and Crossroads with.

Ahh the good 'ol days.

I understand oh-so-well those geeky fan moments: "Oh my fuggin' God, so-and-so wants to talk to *me*?"

Just think, Wil: one day someone will say the same of you. Could be the very next time you go sign autographs, even. :)

Screw GEnie. CompuServe was what it was all about baby! I was 5 years old and flying high on a 300 bps modem on my Atari 2600 XL. I can remember downloading Groilers encyclopedia articles so slowly that I was reading ahead of them as they came, and thinking to myself, "Why would someone ever want a 2400 bps modem? The articles would come in too fast to read!"

Well, your blog is just one degree of separation from his. There's a link to both his blog and Elaine Riggs' blog on Peter David's blog, and Elaine also links to you and Neil. In fact I found your blog through hers, I think.

I don't think I'd want to revisit my first internet conversations either. Especially that time where I thought chat rooms and message boards were the same thing. Then I got confused when nobody was talking to me on message boards.
...
Did I just admit that? Oh well.

I'm the webmaster for Penguicon, Wil. Thanks for mentioning us. See you in April!

I can actually recall coming home from the (now non-existent) Devonshire Downs Comp-Swap, where rows and rows of Asian vendors were pawning their high quality "Imported from China" wares on unsuspecting nerd folk. It used to get so crowded, you could barely move. I used to call the real (hard-core) uber nerds, Deodorant Right Activists.

I came home with a brand new Zytel 1200 baud modem. "Same as Zoom brand, 15 dollar cheaper!" $179.00 (Zoom was over $200). I remember that every time I turned that peice of shit on, I smelled silicone cooking. At first, I thought to myself, maybe this isn't a good thing, and finally came to my senses when I realized that smoking silicone is a small price to pay for blinding modem speed.

I think we would all be embarrassed by archives of our first forays into the internet community. I didn't use aol-speak or abuse the capslock key, but...yeah, well. It's embarrassing.

Gosh Wil, now you've got me all nostalgic for GEnie, too. Not SF though, it was Disney Roundtable for me back then.

GEnie wasn't our first, though. We did some local BBSs and Q-Link first.

Ah, nostalgia. ;)

Gaiman's a great guy who wrote me a very encouraging e-mail about my blog. In return, I've ripped off his style and hope to be able to write with just a fraction of his ability. One day. If I'm lucky.

Hey,

Short circuit was a GREAT movie!!!

Oh, great Ghu. GEnie. My first online home.

Believe it or not Wil, I not only remember you showing up on GEnie a few times, I remember you in the RTCs a few times. 'sokay. I was a fanboyish geek thrown into the middle of pros myself...

Just for the record, though, you can sleep easy about having any of those posts show up on the net. I was a staff volunteer for a few years, and you didn't have any "special archive files". Many an obnoxious pro (and a few fans that became pros) on the other hand....

There was the one female pro who was a bit chagrinned that you kept calling her "chick", though :^

GEnie was nice, but I remember those 1200 baud days on the Star Trek forum on CompuServe. Sigh...

(BTW, I'm the ConChair for Penguicon - and we DO have some folks that are looking forward to meeting you like you are to meeting Neil. )

Ahhh, good times...good times....

These people are not lying. Mr Gaiman is a gentleman and a scholar... he also does a damned funny impression of William Shatner. I met him in Charlotte last month. The plan was that I would interview him for JIVE magazine (http://www.jivemagazine.com) before his reading that night, but the man was dreadfully sick with something three steps above a sore throat. So the interview was cancelled. Instead, we sat and he had two cups of piping hot tea while talking about nothing.

Class, I tell you. Absolute class.

Hehe. I remember GEnie. And I remember when you were on GEnie, sort of. I remember when I found out you were on, I sent you an email to pester you with script ideas (I was a teenager then too), and got back the canned 'leave him alone' response from the admins. So if you were lame, I was lamer. Sorry 'bout that a decade late.

I remember subscribing to GEnie because of some game. Can't remember the name, wasn't Morpheus, it was a sci-fi mud, and included some 'galatic trader' type mini-game among other things. It was pretty cool for its time I guess.

i would wet my pants with excitement if neil gaiman said that about me. (i would probably wet my pants if neil gaiman even looked in my general direction.) that is so awesome.

Short Circuit was the shit Wil. As was War Games.

don't be so hard on yourself!...you have have to live through your own idiocy and ignorance before you can get to the place you are cool and informed...otherwise you would be too scared to ask the questions...or ever learn to express yourself in an intellegent way...i think whatever you did in those youthful days turned out to be great preparation for the cool and wise man you have become.

I am even now trying to calculate whether my husband and I have a prayer of affording a trip up to Michigan next spring...

I completely envy you. If you meet Neil and/or Terry, you HAVE to show us pictures. Two of my favorite writers.

Don't be too surprised that he'd like to meet you. I think everyone who read your site regularly would like to meet you.

Ooh Ooh, read "Good Omens" when you get the chance. Both Gaiman AND Pratchett wrote it. Also, my sis told me just the other night that they made a Brit miniseries out of "Neverwhere." I'm gonna try and rent it when I have the time.

My God, I think I might possibly pee myself a little if I ever read in Neil Gaiman’s journal that he was looking forward to meeting me. Just as well it was you having a drier, if no less enthused, reaction... Congrats at having the respect of an amazing man - and enjoy your inevitable chat with him in April, you lucky dog!

If you hung out in the SFRT (either 1 or 4), you must have known my husband, Nic - he was sysop there for a good ten years.

Always a blast to see GeNie remembered.

Not to sound like to big of a nub but sweet zombie jesus!!! Gaiman's nothing short of a god. How did you avoid a full blown coronary? You know,before this post you were my geek equal(excluding the whole "trek" thing, lol) but now, you sir, are my geek GOD.

Rachel's right (except she misspelled my name). You and Neil are the two people whose journals inspired me to start one of my own (if you look at Blogtree you're both listed as my blog's progenitors) so it's only fitting that y'all finally meet. Never did GEnie, myself, I was a CompuServe (Comics and Animation Forum) person...

Don't worry about Neil Gaiman, by most authorities he's a bit of a closet geek himself, no worries there.

Hey! Much as I like Neil Gaiman, Short Circuit /was/ cool!

I don't know what your quoting or linking rules are so I'm just covering myself with this post.

I have linked to your website in my livejournal. You're welcome to read or ignore as you please.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/alem/228099.html

If you object to me quoting or linking your site, please let me know.

Thanks.

Wil, a word to the wise on the geek-out factor when you meet Neil: go for it. Get it out of the way right off the bat. Just tell him, "Neil, I'm going be a slobbering fanboy for about a minute here, then we can talk like human beings."

The tactic has worked for me with a couple of comic book artists and Trace Beaulieu from MST3K. Had great conversations with all of them, and even ended up singing karaoke with my favorite artist of all time, George Perez!

Somewhere at home I still have my big GEnie poster. Not sure if I ever used the service, but I know exactly where I have the floppies.

Ah...GEnie! It does bring back memories. I don't recall bumping into yourself, or Mr. Gaiman (though I do recall seeing many other 'industry' types: Peter David, Michael Stackpole, Aaron Alston jump to mind). While I did visit the SFRT on occasion, I was more freqently found in the TSR RT (page 125??), and Chat*Lines (page 400??) (I was staff in both areas for a few years). Ah, the joys of Aladdin and TurboTerm.

Was the game you played Morpheus in called 'Gemstone'? That's the most popular game that pops into mind. Someone else mentioned the 'Trader' style game which I think was called 'Federation II' or something.

Paul
formerly: GEnie's Stoneson

Like WOW, too cool to be remembered for Genie!

I am way looking forward to meeting you at Penguicon.....I will be the Token Hot Middle Aged Babe.

:)Francine

I still miss Genie. The level of conversation there was far above what shows up on a lot of other forums. And to this day I've never found a better place to discuss SF...

Somewhere among the piles of old discs I have, there are collections/logs of old conversations. I should dig through them sometime, just to find all the dumb stuff I said...

dt

Ahh..I love dredging up old online memories. :D GEnie, Delphi, Prodigy, and my personal favorite, good old Q-Link. I could sit around for hours thinking about those good old days. :D

That's so cute! I'm active at this gaming site called Avidgamers and we have people every day who aren't quite sure what they're supposed to do, write in all caps, and unfortunately... use chatspeak, strange abbreviations, etc.

I've been reading your blog for eons, but this is what finally inspired me to say something. :) GEnie was my first online experience, back in college ... I remember clearly the first time I ran across "WILWHEATON" somewhere on the SFRT (it was probably Neil's topic, come to think of it), and I thought "wow, this is so cool, Wil Wheaton actually hangs out here with the unwashed masses!" :) Not to mention it was rather validating to know someone else my age was out there on the boards. Sometimes I felt so young in the SFRT!

I remember spending a lot of time on
GEnie in the forums, particularly the ST:TNG forum. I remember your tirade after Gene R. died.

I probably still have transcripts, printed out on dot-matrix paper, stashed in a box... somewhere.

*sighs* GEnie was great - I miss it so! The RT discussions, the slow languishing script of the modem, staying up until dawn because of friends on the West Coast since 'email' wasn't quite there yet.

Gemstone was a terrific game! I've lost track of our old crew: Carroam, Gio, Aerielle, and myself... but we had fun. *sighs*

Thank you for bringing the memory!

TurboTerm!!! Wow. What a blast from the past. That's the program that when in chat mode (split screen even...) would do a /who lookup on anyone entering the channel. Remember the Trivia game? "Just /sen 38 Your Answer" Some dope would always screw it up and blurt the answer out for everyone.
God! Remember "Job Numbers" I've gotta have a drink and push all this now useless information back into the recesses of my brain once again.

[Brontosaur] Has Left

-MB

GemStone 2 on GEnie at 1200 baud ... Ach, those were the days! What a nice flashback the initial piece (thanks, Wil) and all the comments were.

~Sysmom, aka "Luxelle" et. al. in GemStone

I'm not sure if anyone is reading this board anymore, but I was a former GEnie member too. . I noted Paul Stoneson's name above and just wanted to give a shout out! If anyone remembers me from the GEnie days, please drop me an email at AuroraMirage@hotmail.com.

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