An Early Computer Lesson by Gaelyne Gasson College was where I discovered computers in general. It just happened the group of people I enjoyed drinking coffee with were programmers. This was "back in the days" when Cobol was one of the main programming languages, and often my friends would have stacks of printouts they poured over in debugging their programs, which were fed to the computer using cards. After a semester of listening to their comments, I decided to take a computer course for myself, and found I had learned quite a bit just from osmosis. The campus had a computer message system. By today's standards it was a bit primitive, but it attracted several of us who really enjoyed using the message system for fun. You could only send private messages, but you could see who was online and send them a message. Through this system, I met an extraordinarily intelligent person who didn't attend the college, but dialed into the system from his farm - using a homemade acoustic modem and home built Heathkit computer. He lived too far out in the country to attend classes but did computer studies online at a time when this was unheard of. It was in meeting this person (his name escapes me) that I realized how computers can make a difference in peoples lives - no matter where they live. There was a girl on the message system that really loved to chat the fellows up. If a guy logged in, she would send him messages and be all over him like a rash in a matter of minutes... I'm sure she's probably somewhere in a chat room on the Internet these days. Anyway, one day I thought I'd play a joke on her and so I gave myself a new online name to use - one that sounded male. As expected as soon as I logged into the message system she was "chatting me up." I logged out, and the next turn of events hadn't been planned, but ... since she knew me, she asked if I had seen the person she had just been chatting with. I told her no, and she asked me to help find him, since he had to be using one of the few computers on the campus. So there I was, walking around the campus looking for an imaginary guy... it's the BEST practical joke I've ever played on anyone. But, also the worst. After I gave up the search (before I gave myself away by laughing about it), she visited the student Sysop (systems operator) and enticed him into revealing the true identity of the fellow she thought she'd been chatting with. When she discovered that it was me, she talked the sysop into erasing my account. This action caused the poor student sysop to lose his job (deleting user accounts under the influence of nubile females is a definite no-no). This wasn't the worst of it though. The Dean decided that we were having way to much fun on the message system and decided to permanently shut it down. I have no idea how long my former college went without a message system until it connected up to the Internet. For the longest time, this was just one of those forgotten incidents in ones life, but considering how much time I spend in corresponding with people all over the world on the Internet and in Fidonet, it was definitely an influence. One of the results of this experience though is that I never EVER use a "handle," "alias" or fake name when online. Even in chat rooms I use my own name. And I never go anywhere online that I wouldn't be willing to use my real name.