This weekend, I accomplished something I've been trying to do for a long time. I turned one of my best friends onto the internet for the first time. Yes folks, that's correct; this person did not own his own computer and has spent little time online.

Go ahead, pick your jaw up off the floor.

My friend is a great guy. He works hard, works long hours, and has been (quite successfully) managing his own business since long before being in business required being online. And sometimes, when something's not necessary, you just don't do it for whatever reason. In theory, not much different from my unwillingness to use the garlic press my wife purchased. Back in my day, we crushed and chopped garlic by hand, by God, and we liked it that way!

Obviously, I'm a geek, I'm a huge geek. So, it's a bit surprising that I'd be such great friends with a guy that has no clue what I'm talking about - but then again, that's good too. When we talk about our days at work, it gets boiled down to that human element, completely putting technology to the side. It's a great dynamic. But, I digress...

So yesterday, I set him up with an old HP laptop of mine and hook him up to the web. It's been great watching him get acquainted with it all, and discover how much is out there. He nearly went into cardiac arrest over Hulu (but honestly, I had about the same reaction). The experience has really caused me to reflect upon my first experience with the web in the mid 90's. If it hadn't been for the fact that I was a kid and my parents knew better, I would have likely stayed up all night as well.

I was telling my friend about getting our first computer (which was actually at my dad's office) and how I didn't have that luxury of the web. Back then, 1990ish, it was all about the software. And the games...oh yes, the games.

So, here they are, some of my favorite memories of the (my) pre-web days:

1. X-Wing

 (image from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star_Wars_X-Wing_screenshot.jpg)

The original X Wing rocked and you know it. I spent hours...hours...HOURS playing this. At the time, we had a IBM PS/2 486SX with about a 80mb hard drive and 4mb of RAM. No CD-Rom and no sound card. I eventually got a SoundBlaster card and then spent hours on the phone with my uncle in Virginia walking me through autoexec and config sys settings to try and free up enough of that RAM to load the game with sound. Which brings me to my next favorite thing about those old days.

2. DOS

I was 10. I had 4mb of memory. And I used every last drop. And I had every line of those autoexec.bat and config.sys files memorized and knew what the heck they did. I had my own version control system worked out, printed out hard copies of the files, and had scripted making the changes so that I could boot into DOS and play my games; then switch back to a known good config so that my dad could load Windows (3.1!! w00t!) and not have to yell at me. Thus began my career path. Kids these days, they just look at you funny when you say DOS.

But for real cred, you can't talk about how awesome DOS was if you only played with MS-DOS. I, my friends, started on an 8088 clone pc. Running some sort of shell that I can't even recall.

3. Wolfenstein 3D

 (Image from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wolf3d_pc.png) 

The game that started it all. What more can you say? You get to kill Nazis, with an assortment of weapons. And a uber-evil-huge robotic Hitler. There was no plot, no story. Just wander the maze of the castle/prison and kill Nazis.

4. The Penthouse calendar.

I knew a kid, who knew a kid, who's dad had a DOS based calendar app that wasn't really an app, just a calendar you couldn't interact with, so more of a pre-windows screen saver. But it had what at the time was hi-res pictures of naked chicks. So, in that regard, it was a pretty sweet app.