Text 34524, 55 rader
Skriven 2006-07-25 19:17:37 av Carol Shenkenberger (6:757/1)
  Kommentar till text 34450 av Roy Witt (1:1/22)
Ärende: Re: Where where you when the Towers came down?
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*** Quoting Roy Witt from a message to Carol Shenkenberger ***

 CS> normally mean Carol Bryant (I'd be XX or xxcarol to keep things
 CS> sane).  If i didnt always sign as 'xxcarol' they'd probably call me
 CS> 'Japan Carol'.

RW> And all this time I thought you were signing off with double kisses...

Grin, the name has been asked about a few times.  Here's the real truth of it,
as told many times but you wouldnt know because you've never asked.

Back when I came in to the military, we predated such real 'internet' as folks
have now.  PC's didnt exist and only a few people had computers at home and no
one knew what would grow later.  For the mass majority, 'computers' had
'vacumn tubes and lots of flashing lights' like old 1950's SCI-FI movies.

Real SYSOPS ran mainframes.  There was no Fidonet.  ARPANET existed though and
had changed names and had 'secured itself' from the university mainframes
withonly touch points left.  There were no virii.  Hacker was a good term for
one who checked out programs to find the flaws and helped people fix the
problems.  Set the scene well enough?

Us Sysops chatted at night during the deadtime on the mainframes with one
another.  Because the total line sent could be only 60 characters, and it was
hard to tell the sending site, we added by convention our initials to the end.

Normally that would be enough but there was another on the 'world wide ARANET
outgrowth version' named Charlie Parker.  I was Carol Pape.  So, we monikered
me xx (female genetics as xx chromosomes).  There was a later fellow who
became 'xy' as he had a simular problem.  There were so few of us, that this
was enough.  It simply saved character space.

Years later, I joined Fidonet and added the xx to Carol to be xxcarol and the
few of us who had joined this new thing, would find each other that way (known
initials).  That obviously didnt work by 1990 but it became my moniker.

I think it was 1991 before anyone pointed out to me it might be looking like a
'kiss' and I was literally confused, but after a few moments i realized,
'yeah, sure looks like that dont it?'.  I knew so well it was my old 'sig'
enchanced due to not being so limited in characters that it had simply not
occured to me what it looked like.

Chuckle, I dont mind if people think I'm tossing kisses.  I've known for 16
years now that some think this.  But the origin of the 'xx' is totally to
clarify me and Charlie Parker, added later to be xxcarol so the rest would
know it was me and the Military network folks now gone from that small group.

It serves now to make a nice way to say 'hello' and deal with the rare other
'carol' out there.  If guys think I'm blowing them a kiss, well maybe
sometimes i am as well!  ;-)

                                       xxcarol

--- Telegard v3.09.g2-sp4
 * Origin: SHENK'S EXPRESS, Sasebo Japan 81-6160-527330 (6:757/1)