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This is the first part of a serial touching tale to which, to some degree or another, I'm sure we can all relate. It originally started out as a gag to entertain my fellow addicts in net 354, but by the end of the first episode, the idea struck that it may be entertaining to the readers of the snooze as well. So, assuming that it passes the stringent standards of the editorial staff of that august body, herewith is part 1 of the ongoing story of a BBSaholic:

Area: SOK.SYSOP

Date : Jan 22 '98, 09:07
From : Pete Snidal 1:354/910.1
To : All 0:0/0.0
Subj : I'm a BBSaholic

Hi, All!

My name is Pete S., and I'm a BBSaholic.

It started the first time I got my first taste. I can still remember the day I walked into a friend's apartment in Burnaby, while down there on a semi-annual junket. He was hunched over this amber screen, typing away like a fiend, and I looked over his shoulder to see what was going on in there. Well, he was replying to what looked to me like a very interesting discussion about something or other, and I instantly wanted to know where the input was coming from, did somebody send him a disk to reply to, or did the guy send it to him modem to modem, or what.

Well, he explained to me about Fidonet, echoes, and stuff. This was about 1988, and it was the first I'd ever heard about it. We sucked up a box of beer that afternoon, and he basically hooked me on his habit then and there. I'd never heard of Fidonet, or for all that matter, any computer network at all, and as he explained how it had evolved, and what it had come to by that time, I just got more and more into the idea. I was fascinated. This was something that my genes had programmed me for from the day I was born. I know it isn't really contagious; that I had the incipient dependence since birth, so I don't blame him for my trouble, but just the same, that's the day I became a BBSaholic.

Of course, as soon as I got home, I started shopping for a modem for the ol' Kaypro II, and once I had it in place, I started looking for a BBS to connect to. I called my friend in Burnaby, and he dug into his nodelist and suggested Bob Shiels' board in Kelowna as my closest fix.

So for a few months, there, I was calling Kelowna LD to support my habit. This was with an old Kaypro CP/M computer, with a very basic sort of software available. No .QWK packets or offline reading with this baby; I'd get into a message area, start it scrolling messages at 2400 baud, and use text capture to write as much as I could get onto a 190K floppy, watching the clock tick them minutes by till I couldn't stand it any more, and then terminate the connection. You can imagine how I felt the first few times, when I forgot to save the buffer to disk after 6 or 8 minutes online! Fortunately, Bob was using good ol' bulletproof Binkleyterm, so when I dropped carrier by turning off my external modem (I couldn't make the software exit graciously from capture mode,) it didn't lock his system up or otherwise get me in trouble.

Then, I'd ignore friends and family for hours on end, while I read this fresh intelligence from all over the planet, on such esoteric subjects as to be found in EDUCATOR or ALTMED. I was _fascinated_ with this connectivity! With seeing people in Australia respond to questions from people in Arizona! It was all I could talk about with anybody who would listen. But soon, BBSaholics start talking a language that's all their own, and the more you get into it, the more your friends are out of it. I'm sure you all know what I mean.

I know this is a sad tale already, but it's only starting. This was when I was just chippin' - I was only a User at this point. Just partying on weekends, so to speak. In further episodes, I'll tell you how I got hooked on the Hard Stuff - setting up my own BBS. Where we ALL ended up - God Help Us!

Origin: KETTLE VALLEY FORUM BBS - Grand Forks BC CANADA (1:354/910)