[NOTE: This was originally posted to my Facebook notes a while back, but I think it’s appropriate to reblog here. It’s pretty entertaining. Have fun!]
It’s 11-11-04, which was my first quarter in college (UC Riverside). The time is 2:34am. It was a Wednesday night/Thursday morning, and I’m up doing math homework.
Sometimes, doing math homework at 2:30am just doesn’t process, especially online, and we’re susceptible to frustration. It appears I was so frustrated, I typed the words fuck, this, fucking and problem into the four answer boxes, and pressed Continue, or Submit, or whatever the hell it was. Browser didn’t like that very much and decided to crash out on me. A sure sign I should probably just give up and go to sleep. I might have. Or I might have finished my homework after sarcastically laughing at the irony. I don’t actually remember.
That, however, is the typical part of this screenshot. What does the rest say about me?
I used Winamp. I never upgraded to Winamp 5 because it sucked. They just released a new one a few weeks ago, and I have yet to get it. I think I will, for the sake of reminiscience. Did you know I made my own Winamp skin way back then? Using MS Paint? I used to be so much more creative. Then real life happened..This disappoints me.
Cool Math in another tab? What the hell is Cool Math? Well.. It’s a website that tries to tell you math is “cool” with its black background and fairly rainbow colored text. I can dig it. Actually, I was too cheap to buy a fancy graphing calculator like everyone else, and no one had smart phones yet, so I used the Java one they had built in there. This was way cooler because it was an all black background and used red and yellow text. Right? It still exists, but my work thinks the website is full of “games” and is blocked. It probably does have games. Because games are cool.http://www.coolmath.com/graphit if you’re interested.
Speaking of tabs, this is 2004 we’re talking. Who the fuck else had tabs? And what is SlimBrowser? Actually, SlimBrowser was a (hugely unofficial) “add-on” for Internet Explorer, introduced to me by a friend, and I fell in love with it. It really cleaned up the thing, and added a few extra features, such as tabs. So I liked being innovatively efficient. That’s definitely nothing new. But I now see that my need for efficiency started earlier than I thought.
Speaking of efficiency… University broadband was a huge hell yes. Boy, was that an upgrade from DSL at home! Actually, I was using dial-up in the hotel room we lived in up until about a month before I left for UCR. Can we say HELLOOOOO, WORLD! But yes, bigger pipes lead to bigger downloads. There was this thing called DC++ and it had a specific server thru that was only accessible if you were on a university IP. P2P 2 t3h M4xx. It was absolutely brilliant! So look what I was downloading. Halo 2 leak.. Yes, for regular xBox. It had come out 2 days prior (November 9th). The download started well before that, and finished well after that. But it was free. My xBox was modded. Okay, it still is. And I still occasionally boot up this leak for kicks. (Don’t worry. I actually purchased the real version, and the rest of the modification used for silly homebrew games). Mainly because the leak turned out to be IN FRENCH. They called you “Chef” and can you just imagine the hilarity of the Covenant yelling French at you?! Assuming you don’t speak any French, that is. I’m sure it makes sense for those who can understand, but for me, high-pitched French accent gibberish coming from the lil grunts before I blew their blue brains out sent me into a giggle fest.
I was also on AIM. Using the same AIM name I’d already had for years, and am currently signed into at this moment. But no one was talking to me. Oh yeah, it was 2:34am.
Yeps… That’s my life for you.