April 11th. As many of you know, the domain team.net was officially
registered on April 11, 1991, by the late Bill Caloccia. I have been
managing the mailing lists on autox.team.net since then, actually for a
while before that. I took over from Jim Muller, who took over from
Dale Cook, and I wish I had archives of those first few years. Actually
I may have some in my office, on 1/4 inch tape cassettes. Every now and
then I consider trying to revive some of the old HP-UX boxes I have to
see if I can still read any of those tapes. Maybe someday.
Anyway, in the beginning I was routing everything through the servers at
the University of Utah Computer Science Department, where I was
employed. When my fellow sys admins started noticing just how much
network traffic there was on a certain box, my boss strongly suggested I
make other arrangements. So I went about getting a network connection
at home. Back then, it was not that easy, or cheap. And as I recall,
the first dedicated Team Net server was an HP box with one of the first
100+ megahertz CPUs, and even with a deal through HP, who worked closely
with the U in those days the system set me back about $2,500. Hardware
has improved since then. And that money didn't all come out of my
pocket, I initiated a fund drive among the list members and got a great
response. Back then it was all checks in the mail, and I mailed a thank
you postcard to every contributor, or at least most of them, no doubt I
missed a few. And for some time there was an annual fund drive to cover
the rather high cost of having sufficient bandwidth from my house.
So here it is 29 and just everybody has fast network available to
them.  I dropped the fund drives some years back, though folks do
continue to contribute to the cause. Now a few clicks in Paypal can
take care of it, though some still prefer to send checks. Yep, things
are different now. And with the Covid-19 pandemic, a LOT different.Â
But the Team Net mailing lists are still chugging along, providing those
spending more time at home a bit of distraction, entertainment or
education as we keep our beloved vehicles rolling along the roads.
I plan to keep it going as long as I can, who knows how many years I
have left. April 11th is also my birthday, 66 this year, and I
certainly won't live forever. And I fear that when I die, Team Net will
die. Sigh.
But for now, enjoy and stay healthy.
mjb.
_______________________________________________
fot@autox.team.net
http://www.fot-racing.com
Donate: http://www.team.net/donate.html
Archive: http://autox.team.net/archive http://www.team.net/pipermail/fot
Unsubscribe/Manage:
http://autox.team.net/mailman/options/fot/mharc@autox.team.net
|