- My Nickname
I’ve had it since 1994, when the chat program of choice was IRC, browser of choice was Mosaic, and email client of choice was either Pine or Elm. (Btw, PINE is a recursive acronym for "Pine Is Not Elm".) Hmm, I’m still using Pine occasionally when I ssh into the campus server. Sure, there’s web access available, but text-based is so much speedier, plus old habits die hard. Anyone remembers Archie and Gopher? That was before we had Yahoo and Google. When I created my first web pages, I made sure they’ll look ok with Lynx – a text browser. Wonder if anyone does that nowadays? Oh and I made my first online purchase in 95, long before Ecommerce became a buzzword (or even a word?).
But I digress… I started using "cybette" as an IRC nick back then, and it stuck. Twelve years later (a few days ago while driving home), it suddenly struck me that I have my whole family in my name! Check this out:
Carol (self), Y.S. (dad), BETTy (mom), and Evana (sis).
And instead of pictures and videos (over my 9.6k modem, are you kidding me?), we used to email each other cool ASCII art. When you page-down and see the screen refresh line-by-line on your VGA monitor (at least it was in color), you wait in eager anticipation to see what is being "drawn"…. ahh, fond memories. I think I have those emails backed up somewhere…
- Myspace
No I did not get another blog or space or whatever. But I did come across this interesting article: Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace. It’s an interesting read, and talks about how young people use Myspace.com as a place to establish identity, hang out, and socialize. It’s becoming such a phenomenon that it generates more hits per day than Google!
I’ve never got into the whole "social network" thing (Friendster comes to mind). Don’t laugh, but I mostly do "research" when I’m online. Read up on digital cameras and photography, latest cell phone technologies, product research and comparison shopping, check my accounts and pay bills, search upcoming concerts and events, try to get more investment knowledge, plan my next trip to exotic locations…. in fact, I think I’m very anti-social when I’m online.
However, way back when I was still a "youth", I was addicted to IRC for a while. I’d spend 4-5 hours a day chatting, and it caused a lot of grief for my parents. Mind you, this was during the Internet dark ages when access was charged by the hour (if you had any). Not many people spent most of their free time in front of the computer like nowadays. So it was really perplexing to my parents why I "loved my modem" so much. They couldn’t ground me (I was already home!) so they’d try to hide the modem. But I’d get up in the middle of the night and take it out of the hiding place and log on. Finally they broke it (I think… can’t remember the details) and I promptly "upgraded" to a 14.4k unit (woo hooo… much faster!).
Anyways… I guess I can understand the cultural shift that leads to the emergence of Myspace and other similar sites, even if I do not actively participate in them. (I just wished I had handled the bit with my parents better.) After reading the article, I can only lament, I’m not young anymore… :P
- My Work
Am I a workaholic? I don’t think so… but work is a constant preoccupation for me, even in my dreams (groan). I’d be checking work emails in the middle of the night, although I try not to reply them until I get to work in the morning. But perhaps this is not as strange as I thought. Some would even say it’s normal: Working Day and Night. Am I turning into a work addict? Help!
cybette's imports 