May 24, 1985 - What were you doing on that day?

The day AOL was formed..

[Essex_boy]

Just turned Fourteen so would have been at upper school thinking about how the hell I could get of the place.

Or learning Z80A in the evenings so I could break the copy protection on software. Naughty, naughty very naughty.

[Alex_Miles]

Learning to solder, play drums (adequately) bass guitar (badly) and fight - while plotting my escape from Doncaster.

All in all that was a very well-spent year!

[john_k]

I am pretty sure that is the exact day that I reported for basic training at Ft. Bliss, TX.

The Sgt. that had given me the ticket to get there laughed about the name "Ft. Bliss," saying "you know that's a misnomer, right?" That has been the most polite description I have ever heard of the place.

Tequila was cheap and plentiful though, so that made up for some of it.

[Iguana]

I got up early that day. I had the radio on and remember hearing "19" by Paul Hardcastle - it was number one that week and quite a catchy song really. I had Peanut Butter on toast as normal and a cup of Instant Coffee. Left the house with my girlfiend, bought a copy of The Guardian, and we got the two buses into work. The traffic wasn't too bad and we arrived well before 9 o'clock.

I guess I was in a good mood because it was the end of the week and I had two free days to look forward to. I took classes in the Computer Based Learning Centre all morning. The Computer Studies students were particularly lively, kind of bravado that the nearness of exams produces. Had a class from the local primary school in at 11. I had a real treat for them - I had hacked into the game Granny's Garden and added in a call to the speech synthesiser that was loaded in EPROM on all of our networked BBC computers. I sat them all down and told them to put on their headphones. They did and played the game. No reaction to my masterstroke. I asked one of the kids whether he was impressed that the game now read the words to him, "Oh, not really, I always thought it could. I just didn't have the headphones on". I sent the mod to the Programmers back at base and at least they were impressed.

At lunchtime, me & Rose finsihed the cryptic crossword in reasonable time. I set the watch and we times the quick crossword: 2 minutes 12 seconds - well outside of the 1 minute 30 seconds record set earlier that month.

I only had one class in the afternoon so it was a chance to get on with some paperwork. I got half an hour using Autocad on the Lucas CP/M machine but didn't have a chance to use the IBM PC that sat in the resource centre because the Computer Studies.

I cooked a Macroni cheese/tuna tea and then we went out. Not a big night out, a couple of pints in the Craven Arms and finished off in the Nursery Tavern - having two good pubs on the street where you live is a real bonus.

I can't remember much apart from that though...

[perfectcoding]

My day was pretty much identical to Iguana's, but I did the crossword in a slightly quicker time.

3 Down was a great clue - it was one you either got or didn't.

[Iguana]

Oh yeah, 3 down...

Future name of Arpanet (8)

Obviously it was Interweb. I had to struggle to fit in two of the other answers to that.

[AWildman]

I was almost 10 and my only knowledge of computers came from "Star Wars" let alone knowing anything about no fancy-dangled internet! :)

[Iguana]

The Internet didn't exist then. AOL started with a BBS devoted to an Atari/Commodore 64 game, I think

[Essex_boy]

BBS! I recall, when I was stuying IT back in 1990 we could snea into the lib and use the ancient BBC micro to connect with one.

Although I was banned for using it to much. Some things never change.