I've now been online for 10 years - "into double figures" - (and computing for much longer). How things have changed over those ten years!
When I first got online, I was the European Technical Support Manager for a USA company known as Connectware - a part ot the AMP empire - that was looking to break into the high performance networking business using ATM technology, and also owned the RasterFlex and Vitec lines of high performance graphics board for use in Sun workstations. "The Internet" was to be this new-fangled way of communicating and my boss asked me to look into it as a better way than faxes and phone of communication with customers in some circumstances.
Based in Basingstoke, I signed the company up for an account with Demon - initially dialling in to a rack of modems in London, but improved soon thereafter when they added a POP ("point of presence") just up the road in Reading. In those early days, we spend up to half an hour at time dialling until we got through to make a connection, lines dropped frequently, and the main internet services ("killer apps" as they were known) were email and the newsgroups.
The Internet has opened up a whole new world for me - for both work and personally; great times in the past 10 years and long may they continue. Wouldn't have missed anyone or anything.
(written 2005-02-23, updated 2006-06-05)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
G999 - Well House Consultants - Keynote [164] Well House Consultants - review of 2004 - (2004-12-31)
[295] Pricing strategy - simple and fair - (2005-04-29)
[360] Spring turns to Summer - (2005-06-26)
[419] Most popular courses - (2005-08-19)
[428] Swindon - Chippenham - Melksham - Trowbridge - Westbury train service - (2005-08-29)
[452] Is enough enough? - (2005-09-27)
[464] Technical Loneliness - (2005-10-14)
[549] 2005 - Come as a student, leave as a friend - (2005-12-31)
[626] Not just a pretty face to answer the phone. - (2006-02-26)
[695] In the hospitality business - (2006-04-23)
[774] Bed and Breakfast, or Hotel? - (2006-06-22)
[845] Course scheduling and Geekmas - are they traditions yet? - (2006-08-26)
[890] Open - (2006-10-09)
[898] Courses at Well House Manor - (2006-10-19)
[929] Presenting Melksham - for a weekend away in Wiltshire - (2006-11-17)
[1079] Wilts and Berks - two conference / training rooms in Melksham - (2007-02-14)
[1161] A contrast in room rates and facilities - (2007-04-25)
[1245] Ensuring that our tutor answers YOUR questions - (2007-06-25)
[1317] 2008 course schedule - Perl, Python, PHP, Linux, Java Deployment, Ruby and more - (2007-08-23)
[1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
[1414] What we teach - expained for the non-technical - (2007-10-28)
[1481] The Christmas Letter - (2007-12-22)
[1492] Well House Consultants Training and Hotel - 2008 news - (2008-01-01)
[1555] Advanced Python, Perl, PHP and Tcl training courses / classes - (2008-02-25)
[1615] PHP training courses every month - (2008-04-18)
[1676] A warm welcome for visitors from the USA - (2008-06-14)
[1748] Hotel room prices - Melksham, Wiltshire - (2008-08-11)
[1773] The Longest Possible Day - (2008-08-26)
[1857] November and December Public Course Schedule - (2008-10-27)
[1859] Wiltshire at dawn - the tourist trail - (2008-10-29)
[1929] 2009 - Hotel, Meeting, Training Course prices - (2008-12-07)
[1955] How to avoid duplicating web page maintainance - (2008-12-20)
[1975] Well House Manor Hotel - on plan for 2009 business guests - (2009-01-03)
[2144] Looking for a career change - Physician to Web Site Designer - (2009-04-28)
[2216] Past Delegate Offer - Summer Holiday / Weekend Break - (2009-06-03)
[2228] Where do I start when writing a program? - (2009-06-11)
[2326] Learn a new programming language this summer. - (2009-08-06)
[2384] Looking ahead to the Autumn season of training and accommodation - (2009-08-28)
[2483] Clustering on Tomcat - (2009-10-30)
[2537] Faster network, but not faster browsing until ... - (2009-12-14)
[3164] Brown - or Mrs Sally Brown, accountant from Whitstable? - (2011-02-10)
[4588] What teach you in a week stays with you for a decade - (2015-11-29)
G210 - Well House Consultants - History [38] An update for old friends - (2004-09-03)
[2968] Well House Consultants - a potted history - (2010-09-23)
[2999] 2999 - looking back - (2010-10-15)
[3149] Looking back at www.wellho.net - (2011-01-28)
[3510] The skull above the door in Melksham Town Hall - (2011-11-06)
[3615] Historic documents for Wiltshire - (2012-02-16)
[3628] Historic Drawings from near Melksham - (2012-02-28)
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