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About Me |
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I was born in a small town on the Sunshine Coast. (Remember the TV show called "The Beach combers"? Same place) I grew up with little to do since I was located 6km's from the nearest store or friend. Self amusement was pretty much it. I was kept busy in the summer with our large fields of grass and a push mower. (Near the end of my life with my parents they finally bought a ride 'em mower) And in the winter we chopped and hauled wood. A lot of wood. Up until 1989 we didn't even have cable TV. We had 3 lowly channels in which my childhood TV memories are largely based upon. Perhaps that is why I don't have cable now and don't watch TV.
Since being left to my own devices most of time, I turned my
idle hands to my hobbies. Before computers I used to dismantle
every sort of gadget and dodad around, and for the most part,
returned it to the way I found it, if not better. My mother could
tell stories of where I'd rewire the phones and cable and broadcast
at will to any room of the house, but that's another story.
I was given my first computer in 1981 for Christmas. It was an
Apple ][+ with 48k memory, 5 1/4" disk drive and a green
screen monitor. I had a computer before the schools did and used
to tutor the teachers on the ones at school. My first game was
space invaders. Many an hour was spent on that little computer.
At first it was just to play games on. But soon all the games
we had became very mind limiting, and needing more, I began to
delve into the world of BASIC programming. By the time I reached
high school (grade 8) I was pretty good. I produced a few programmes
and pic viewers. (The apple had 8 colours. That included white
and black) But around that time my little computer was sadly outdated
and required replacement. I was given a new Apple compatible computer
called a Laser128. This machine had 128k and two disk drives and
an orange monitor. Shortly after this time I bought my first modem.
A Hayes 1200 baud auto dial, auto answer MODEM. This ushered in
a new era in my life.
The Telecommunications era was a time when BBS's were just
budding. When home computers were just starting to trickle into
the common home. At the time when I bought my first modem, there
was only one BBS on the coast. It was called "Go Express".
It ran on an old XT and was operated by a retired mill worker.
Needless to say, for a young teen as myself, it wasn't very exciting.
After repeated suggestions for a few activities for the 'younger
crowed' and not getting anything even remotely close, I decided
to start my own BBS. In the spring of 1990 I officially opened
"The Lost Carrier BBS". The name was meant to mean that
this was the realm that you go when you modem loses carrier. (NO
CARRIER) It was run on my Laser128 with a few custom attachments
soldered to it's side. It had 2 10meg SIDER Hard drives. Each
as large as the computer itself. The BBS ran under a APPLE Programming
language called 'ACCOS'. I spent many months programming my BBS
to be the best it could be. I had many custom written on-line
games and voting booths, message bases and file bases. I even
had a huge multi-player game called 'The Land of Spur'. My BBS
inspired other teen BBS to spring up all over the coast. From
it's running time of 1990 to 92 there were 9 other BBS's that
came on-line with on-line games and such. But non were like the
LC. As the other BBS's used standard BBS programmes they didn't
have the same custom features and feel. I shut the BBS down when
I moved out of my parents house in the fall of 1992.
In the Spring of 1993 I moved to Vancouver, BC Canada. 42.5k's
from The coast as the bird flies. I took up a job in a logging
company, doing invoicing and accountability in the log scale department.
Over the 4 years that I was there I redesigned the way the log
tracking system worked. I won't go into detail as it's not very
exciting. On Sept. 2nd 1994 I opened up my second BBS, called,
interesting enough, "The Lost Carrier II". A month later
I dropped the "II" part and kept my old name. Being
in Vancouver with a huge potential user base I opened the BBS
with three lines. Two months after that I went to 5 lines. This
BBS ran off of a Amiga 3000 Desktop (10 megs RAM 2 170meg HD's
and a 1x CD-ROM Drive), with 2 GVP I/O Extenders (Serial cards)
and 5 modems. (2 288's, 2 14.4's & 2400+ Modem). The BBS ran
under Excelsior! BBS V1.21k. It allowed for full inter-user communication
at all times. There was a 'CB' chat area, (Like IRC) many message
and file areas and of course, on-line games. Besides the normal
games you see around I ran a MUD. CircleMud 2.2 to be exact. I
compiled it for the Amiga from the Unix/Amiga archives and modified
it (to help learn 'C' coding) to support many, many new worlds
and lands within the game. Users would give suggestions on what
to add and would even help with the world creation and policing.
(I remember my hand cuffs code was very popular to all but the
criminals. 8^) )
The phone lines were in two ring down sets. The 288's set and the 14.4's set. The 2400+ was on it's own. Unfortunately I lived in Ladner at the time and a few of the Vancouver areas could not reach my system toll free. So, to help with this I set up call forwarding lines form Vancouver to my two numbers. In all I had 5 phone numbers for users to dial in on. My system was VERY busy averaging 160 calls a day. I met the love of my life Xandria over the phone lines. (See her link to her page from my main menu) The BBS's down fall came with the opening of 'Internet Direct's cheap internet. After that, why would anyone want to chat with 5 people or play a MUD with 5 people when they could chat/play with hundreds? I can't say I blame them. So, when I moved to live with Xandria I shut down the BBS. A few tears and warm felt good-bye's from my BBS friends I left the BBS world and entered Internet Life myself. I'll never go back.
Aug. 16, 2001 - This page is 4 years out of date! Oh dear... I really should update. a HELL of a lot of pain and suffering (and yes, some good stuff) has happend. I'll add it to my list of items to update. Whew...
Thanks for reading my Bio.
--- This text is still being edited and tweaked, please forgive any mistakes, thanks ---
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updated: 03/18/97)