Yes, I'm A Dinosaur

I totally admit that I am a dinosaur. I have been on-line since 1996 (not counting Bulletin Board stuff and ridiculous computers before then). At that time there were three major choices for how we got onto the internet - Compuserve, Prodigy and America On Line. The three companies started a feeding frenzy - poaching customers from one to the other and back again. They merged, separated, disappeared and then reappeared under different names. Although I started out with one (don't even remember which at this point), I switched to AOL at some point and by the end of 1996, I had found a home.

Remember those discs we got through the mail? Hundreds
upon hundreds of them - enough to decorate trees and
scare crows! 

What I found on AOL was a community of like-minded individuals who shared my craft and my love for beads, glass, and color. AOL was, at that time, a set of different, very active communities. It had the basic news and events as the basic splash screen, but then you could hit the menu and go to your community of interest. Within the "Crafts" community was a beading subgroup and we were active, happy, and sharing.

We exchanged ideas and tips. We put patterns up, discussed new beads that had been manufactured and were just introduced in the market, and we challenged each other and shared with each other. We talked daily amongst ourselves - a community of well more than 100 like-minded individuals, many of whom are still friends today. We shared resources, we celebrated the milestones of life together - marriage, the birth of children and the death of parents - and we mourned with each other when one or another of us passed on.

In 1999, AOL sent out the software for version 5.0. They
are now rolling out version 10.0. I could still get my
mail without upgrading, but I'm not sure I want to
limit myself by restricting my access that much. 

Time went on, the Bulletin Board community aspect of AOL diminished and we set up other groups to take it's place, often with groups on Yahoo, About.com, and similar portals. Our small, tightly-knit communities broadened, altered, and changed focus to regional groups, specific types of materials, or in some cases the groups were actually sponsored by publications we read. Most people fell away, choosing different web hosts and dropping from AOL completely. But some of us stuck around.

I still am a AOL member. Probably because I have five different e-mail accounts with them - three for my business, one for miscellaneous, and one for all of my other burf-snurf. I look at other email hosts regularly, but truthfully, just haven't found another one that I like as much as the AOL format. I have a g-mail account that I use for my phone. It's annoying to use it on my larger computers, but it works well on my phone. I tried Outlook, but absolutely hated it. I need easy, fast, and I understand AOL's format - limitations and positives.

I've probably had most of these over the years. I upgrade my computers
regularly, and all software programs get upgraded regularly too. I really
hate upgrading my AOL software, though, because I use it without
thought, at 3:15 am. Who wants to try and think at 3:15 am? 

Now AOL is insisting that I upgrade to a new platform, and I'm a bit spooked. The last time I had to do something like this, it wasn't a positive result, but I'm not being given a choice. So, I'll probably tackle it within the next few days. I'm just hoping it won't be the meteorite that will kill my dinosaur.

I have a seriously busy day off today, so have a great Wednesday. I'll be back tomorrow - at least, that's the plan!