[Healeys] 30 years. 3 decades

[m.g.sharp at sympatico.ca]

"Useful service" does not describe it Mark.  Your hard work and consistent dedication to this list has kept many cars on the road and helped the Healey community stay in touch for three decades.  It is an invaluable service that you provide.

Thank you.

Mirek

-----Original Message-----
From: Healeys <healeys-bounces at autox.team.net> On Behalf Of Mark J Bradakis via Healeys
Sent: April 11, 2021 9:00 AM
To: healeys at autox.team.net
Subject: [Healeys] 30 years. 3 decades

On this day 30 years ago Team.Net came into being.  The British-cars mailing list was already going strong, an offshoot from rec.autos Usenet group.  Dale Cook, Jim Muller, then me. Team.net went from 2 lists at the beginning, autox and british-cars, and exploded into nearly 70 different lists with something like 15,000 individuals subscribed at its peak.  For a while it was pretty much the only game in town.  As I recall, when I attended the SCCA Solo II Nationals 25th Anniversary event, something like 2/3rds of the 1,000+ entrants were on the autox list.

And it amazes me that with such a scatterbrained procrastinator like me behind the curtain it is still on the air. It is a lot quieter these days, much better software handle many of the janitorial tasks automatically.  Back in the beginning, I had to do *everything* by hand, so to speak. Subscribes, unsubscribes, errors, I was spending 10, 15, 20 hours a week maintaining the server.  The first server had a 100 MHz processor.  Things have changed.  Back then just having a fast network connection at a residence was rare and expensive.  Good old DSL.  I remember that time when my service provider went belly up, and team net was off the air for 11 days straight.  I don't miss those days at all.

Anyway, happy birthday to those of you still here.  I hope I can continue to provide a useful service for years to come.

mjb.