OK, here's the story behind all this nonsense.
Late in 1999, I was working tech support at a major international ISP, and in between hanging up on rudemembers callers,
was reading an article on how bandwidth at server
farms was being sucked up by the recent explosion in the number of
newly installed broadband connections in people's
homes. There apparently wasn't enough good planning by the operators of
some data centers to account for the increased traffic by the
hordes of geeky teenage boys who convinced their parents there was nothing
better in the world than DSL, and who insisted in getting the very most out
of their bandwidth 24/7 by downloading anything and everything from
anywhere they possibly could. (256k pipe? I'm only getting 242!)
Anyhow, the article detailed the plight of the
poor unfortunate souls who saw their dedicated allotment of bandwidth
sucked dry as a bone - and, as I recall one of the the authors put it,
"It wouldn't
be much better if they were using two tin cans and a string for their
internet connection."
Being the quick thinker, I thought out loud, "I wonder if that would really work?" Then, realizing I was being distracted by the poor schmuck in Nowhereville, Idaho trying to get a faster local access number (should have gotten DSL,) I hung up on them and took a potty break to think this through.
Could you REALLY connect to a server somewhere using two tin cans and a string? After all, before anyone had the perspicacious epiphany that you could plug a modem into the wall, they all used acoustic couplers, right? Just gather up some old hardware, throw a (working) modem in each, plug in some acoustic couplers, smack some of those babies to a 2-node array of tin cans and an appropriate length of string, and viola, Violet! Right?
Well, a few weeks later, my boss tells me I'm browsing the internet looking for cheap acoustic couplers too much and not spending enough time on my calls... so I emphatically rolled my eyes in disgust and tried my best to radiate indifference. A few hours later, I realized that I could never afford some cheap acoustic couplers on the unemployment roll, though, so fear struck true, and I decided to just get the domain twotincansandastring.com and work on this stuff at home.
My wife had a baby. I took 13 weeks off for FMLA and never looked back, finally getting a FedEx saying that I was considered "resigned". Good thing, because I don't even like talking to my wife on the phone, let alone complete strangers who wanted to complain at me all day. So the days of lounging around on a wickedly fast internet connection and doing not much else were behing me, and I had to go get a real job doing systems administration for a small software company. Hey, when you got a good thing going, look for it again when you move, I say. I kept renewing this domain name, fully intending to make good on my self-made promise to see for myself if this could really work. I never did get any acoustic couplers. But I never stopped thinking about it, either. Kept me awake at night. Sometimes.
I've spent about $100 on a domain name I've never used, and years of self-depricating angst over what I never did about a passion in my life. (Humor me, it was a passion for those first few minutes.) So, I pick up pretty much where I left off at the call center... I finally populated an index page. Yay. In March of 2004 I even had some losing bids on eBay for some cheap acoustic couplers. We'll see how it goes, eh?
Late in 1999, I was working tech support at a major international ISP, and in between hanging up on rude
Being the quick thinker, I thought out loud, "I wonder if that would really work?" Then, realizing I was being distracted by the poor schmuck in Nowhereville, Idaho trying to get a faster local access number (should have gotten DSL,) I hung up on them and took a potty break to think this through.
Could you REALLY connect to a server somewhere using two tin cans and a string? After all, before anyone had the perspicacious epiphany that you could plug a modem into the wall, they all used acoustic couplers, right? Just gather up some old hardware, throw a (working) modem in each, plug in some acoustic couplers, smack some of those babies to a 2-node array of tin cans and an appropriate length of string, and viola, Violet! Right?
Well, a few weeks later, my boss tells me I'm browsing the internet looking for cheap acoustic couplers too much and not spending enough time on my calls... so I emphatically rolled my eyes in disgust and tried my best to radiate indifference. A few hours later, I realized that I could never afford some cheap acoustic couplers on the unemployment roll, though, so fear struck true, and I decided to just get the domain twotincansandastring.com and work on this stuff at home.
My wife had a baby. I took 13 weeks off for FMLA and never looked back, finally getting a FedEx saying that I was considered "resigned". Good thing, because I don't even like talking to my wife on the phone, let alone complete strangers who wanted to complain at me all day. So the days of lounging around on a wickedly fast internet connection and doing not much else were behing me, and I had to go get a real job doing systems administration for a small software company. Hey, when you got a good thing going, look for it again when you move, I say. I kept renewing this domain name, fully intending to make good on my self-made promise to see for myself if this could really work. I never did get any acoustic couplers. But I never stopped thinking about it, either. Kept me awake at night. Sometimes.
I've spent about $100 on a domain name I've never used, and years of self-depricating angst over what I never did about a passion in my life. (Humor me, it was a passion for those first few minutes.) So, I pick up pretty much where I left off at the call center... I finally populated an index page. Yay. In March of 2004 I even had some losing bids on eBay for some cheap acoustic couplers. We'll see how it goes, eh?