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Chapter 1: A mouse is born

 It all began with a video game called Wing Commander II.  My dad had just completed an upgrade-fest on our computer, replacing the old 486SX25 with a 486DX33, adding 8 whole megs of ram, adding another 160 meg hard drive, and adding a 14400 baud modem to bring us up to light speed!  To test the speed, he went out and bought a bunch of games, including WCII.   He installed the game and logged me in as a pilot.  Codename: mouse.  Why mouse?  I was beginning high school in a few months and I stood 4'9" and weighed a whopping 72 lbs.!  So, it fit, and I stuck with it.

Chapter 2: Castle Aaugh

 A friend of mine, Mike Murphy, had been trying to get me into the BBS world for some time, but since I had already been using the modem (to call giant shareware boards that charged for access like PDS-BBS) and didn't care much for it, he had a hard time convincing me.  Of course, now that I had a 14.4, I could do anything!  Well, Mike finally got me to call his brand spankin' new board, Castle Aaugh, and I haven't been the same since.
 I was no longer known as Jason Mansuy, but mouse.  Mike was no longer Mike Murphy, but Sir Robin.  His brother, the main sysop (though some of the others I'll mention would say he was merely the owner of the computer the board was on), was no longer Pat, but Quasar.  Other friends from school made the transformation as well, but ironically I ended up meeting more people on Castle Aaugh before meeting them in real life than vice versa.
The co-sysops (along with Quasar and Sir Robin) were Rook, Lurch, and Tyrone.  Then added shortly after was Augie, who was also known as Sgt. Pepper or Cereal Killer on other boards.  Augie didn't call the board from the start, but he was constantly appearing in message after message as just "Dan."  The co-sysops would get very familiar with me in the following months, as I took to the message boards all too well.
Lurch, who was in my Biology class (despite being a junior), is the one of the group that I really drove crazy since he'd sit at Pat's computer as I would post messages.  Not just one here and there, but gobs and oodles of messages!  He'd haul me into chat with the same opening greeting every time.  Not, "Hey, what's up?" or anything you'd expect but, "You type too damn slow!"  He was right at first, but it didn't take long - with me posting dozens of messages a day - for me to speed up.  I learned quickly that it had nothing to do with my typing, but that was just Lurch.  He had to be the high-strung technoweenie since the others were so laid back.  We argued about everything.  In fact, I remember a message string that went on for months about whether a football jersey was a shirt or not!  The rest of the board, including the other co-sysops, made us stop without resolving that one.  I wonder why.  Lurch was one I can thank for increasing my debating skills, though, and I'll admit he made every call interesting.  Not every call was just a series of angry posts towards Lurch.  Some of my favorite conversations were on that board.  Aaugh offered a unique BBSing experience because the co-sysops' (and users' for that matter) creativity gave it a special flavor.  As I continued to call more BBS's (at one point I was calling around 40 different boards on a regular basis), I kept coming back to Aaugh for its message boards.  That is, until I had had enough of one user.  Sylvestre Matuschka was put on this planet for nothing more than to aggravate me.  I am completely convinced of this.  Until he came, I was surely the top poster on Castle Aaugh.  He accumulated quite a post total himself by simply contradicting anything I ever said.  Debating is fun, and Lurch went pretty far, but Sly went way too far.  I took it up with him personally several times, but he wouldn't lay off.  Finally, I gave my friends, the co-sysops, an ultimatum.  If they didn't strictly tell him to quit the obnoxious behavior, then I'd leave.  I was willing to leave my favorite BBS because of one user.  And I did.  I didn't wait for a reply from the co-sysops, because I knew I wouldn't want to be on the other side of that situation.

Chapter 3: World of Krynn

 Up until 1994, I used BBS's almost entirely for messages.  World of Krynn had a reputation for having great message boards, so naturally I had to get in on the action.  Although I initially called WoK for the messages, it offered much more.  Notably, WoK had by far the largest selection of online games I had ever seen.  These online games were mainly text-based (or offered minimal ANSI graphics), but they were really a lot of fun to me because of the amount of people involved.  Caramon, the sysop, had gone as far as to join "leagues" in some games, such as Barren Realms Elite, an extremely popular game nationwide.  The BRE leagues were especially fun since some of them had literally hundreds or thousands of players, and each board unified to defeat the other boards.  I became so good at BRE, I wrote and distributed text files giving playing tips and battle tactics.  I joined every game on every board that offered it, especially if they were involved in a league, but the WoK leagues were by far the best.
Other than online games, Krynn exposed me to more aspects of BBS's that I'd never seen before.  Most importantly, Krynn was the first board that I had seen with multi-node chat, where two users connected on separate lines could talk to each other.  This was great for me since I could talk to many people that I regularly corresponded with in the message boards in real time!  I spent endless hours chatting on multi-node chat, especially with a user named Mel.  Mel and I developed a special relationship online, almost mother-son like, but more like best friends.  I felt like I could tell her anything.  In fact, I often went to her for advice or if I needed a shoulder to cry on and she was always willing to lend an ear.  After Krynn went down, we sort of drifted apart since it was the only board we both called frequently.  A few years later, a message popped up on my ICQ from her and we picked up right where we left off.

Chapter 4: Explorations

 Although World of Krynn offered great onliners, message boards, and multinode chat, it still only offered only public domain files.  At least, I thought.  One day while chatting with another friend in multinode, he mentioned something about downloading some new game that had just been released in stores.  When I told him that they didn't have pirated software (a.k.a. "warez"), he reluctantly informed me that they certainly did, and that the only way to gain access is to upload something brand new.  When I did, a whole new world opened up before my eyes.  Caramon had kept it a secret all along, but WoK was full of just released (0-day) warez!  Browsing through his file areas was like walking up and down the aisles at Egghead, except that what he had was often newer and always free!  Of course, I had been on boards with warez before, but never anything close to this!  Having "elite" access on Krynn allowed me entry into many other systems.  Before I knew it, I was caught up in transferring hundreds of megs a week.  I positioned myself to be able to get anything I wanted, any time I wanted it.  And then there was Nick.
Nick Sitko, often "mispronounced" as "Shitko" to those who know him, was quite the con artist.  Under a blanket of lies and false promises, The Grim Phreaker had managed to put together a legendary board, Social Distortion.  Although I first called SD looking for warez, and later became Remote Sysop in charge of the message boards, I discovered more than I probably wanted to.  Rather than specializing in games and applications, his files were of two types: art packs and H/P/C/A/V.  This stood for: hacking (illegally breaking into systems to obtain information, or just plain crashing systems), phreaking (illegally making free long distance phone calls, usually through hand-crafted devices), carding (using stolen or fake credit cards), anarchy (general adolescent "fuck da law" attitude), and virii (the generation and use of the computer virus).  I had been exposed to some H/P when VAS (Vaginal and Anal Secretions Newsletter) was heavily circulated in my early days, but all 80+ issues of VAS was just the tip of TGP's illegal activity iceberg.  This was beyond harmless piracy, it was malicious.  On Social Distortion, one could find information on anything from free calls from a payphone to building a bomb.  To state it that simply, though, doesn't give it justice.  For example, there were hundreds of files on all the various types of bombs you could build, many of which did not need obscure materials like Plutonium and could instead be built with relatively common products.  I stayed away from most of this, only getting caught up in hacking for a brief period.  The Atomic Brain, who ran a board called No CaRRiER and lived a stone's throw away from me, and I did some virtually harmless hackings, with the most damage done to the Zohrob brothers' board, The Hollow World.  The first time, we basically didn't do much other than make it obvious we broke in.  Then they publicly taunted their hackers, daring them to try to hack into their "new improved high security" board that they had put up two weeks later.  We couldn't resist, so we broke in and wiped them out.  We've since apologized to the Zohrobs and left them alone, but unfortunately we had allowed ourselves to be influenced by our environment, Social Distortion and its users.  The other side of Social Distortion completely changed me as a BBSer forever.
Art, specifically ANSI art, was a huge part of SD.  While Social Distortion was up, the art scene exploded from being just a few groups (ACiD, iCE, CiA, TRiBE, and a few other very small ones) to dozens.  People called SD from all over the world, partly because of its extensive art pack collection and variety of users heavily involved in the art scene.  Interacting with all these people, I became incredibly interested in being part of the scene.  Although I already enjoyed drawing VGA art, it couldn't be displayed on bulletin boards and I had to concentrate on improving my ANSI skills if I wanted to really be known as an artist.  At the same time, TGP was putting together an art group of his own called Hyper.  I joined in, even though I was pretty bad, and brought it down right before the launch of our first pack.  Nick blatantly stole one of my drawings by simply erasing my name and putting his in its spot.  Of course I was furious and went on a hunt to see if he had done this to anyone else.  This is when I found out what he was really about.  I found several ANSI's from well respected artists and compiled a pack myself that included all the original works and TGP's versions.  Before going public with this, I discussed it with him on many occasions.  He not only admitted to doing it, but encouraged me to as well!  I couldn't stand for it, and uploaded the pack I had made to every board I called.  This included his own board.  Soon after, Nick saw a serious downfall not only in the BBS world, but in real life too.  Many months later, when I had my own board and art group, I gave him a chance to make a comeback under a new alias because I felt sorry for him, but he blew that opportunity and disappeared forever.

Chapter 5: NO CARRiER, ORBiT, and Horizons

 As I had mentioned before, The Atomic Brain was a friend of mine who ran The No CaRRiER BBS.  That was another one of the many boards that I had gained Remote Sysop access on, but it was different.  When TAB got tired of the hassle involved with running a BBS, I offered to take it over from him as is and keep him on as a Remote.  While switching over, I made some changes, mostly cosmetic, and had it back up as NO CARRiER within a week.  I used my contacts from Social Distortion and other boards to accumulate an elite user list of people from the art scene.  They also came because my art pack collection was unparalleled.  The modifications I had made (along with TAB and another friend, Veediot!) transformed the Renegade software on which NC was running into what we called Renegade-X, making NO CARRiER a unique experience.  Soon it became the premier art BBS in the area code, if not the state, or even the Midwest.  With a successful board keeping me deeply immersed in the art scene, it was time to start my own art group.
In one night, TAB and I laid the tracks that my life would follow to this day.  While listening to William Orbit's Strange Cargo III (which I now refer to as "the album that got me into techno") and playing around with a brand new type of "BBSing" called "the Internet" we decided to give life to ORBiT.  Indeed, the name came from William's last, but it had the requisite "small i" and sounded cool.  We made a feeble attempt to make it an acronym (as ACiD is ANSI Creators in Demand, iCE is Insane Creators Enterprise, and CiA is Creators of Intense Art), coming up with something like "Oblique Rampant Boyz in Trouble," but quickly ditched it knowing that nobody will ever care what it stands for.  We let our friend Orange Crush, who started BBSing very soon after me (and actually did all his BBSing from my house for the first year or two until he got his own computer), in as one of the co-founders, and we were on our way.  Thirteen members contributed to the first pack, with many people doing multiple forms of art.  For example, I released both ANSI art and VGA art, even though releasing VGA art was a new concept in the art scene that made pack sizes grow exponentially and turned many people away from downloading them.  Our total member list doubled to 26 in the following few months as we released a total of six packs.  Granted, we never became a huge group, but it was still loads of fun running it.  I think it actually may have helped me as a businessman to gain that experience.   Veediot! and I went on to be parts of major groups (he joined just about all of them for about a week - or less - and quit for another while I just bounced from Blade to CiA before dropping out of the scene completely) and others eventually did the same.  Part of the reason ORBiT didn't do as well as I had hoped was completely my fault.  I tied up the phone line way too much to chat on IRC, mostly in the art channels to others from the scene, and took NO CARRiER down when the Internet started taking too much of my time.  I wasn't alone in this, as the Internet completely wiped out BBSing as we knew it.  But before that happened, there was a period where the two coexisted and helped each other, almost symbiotically.
After taking NC down, I still craved running a BBS, but I didn't want to give up my freedom any longer.  So, I went looking for a challenge.  Stosys was a kid from my high school who ran a board called Horizons.  It was the absolute worst board in our area code.  I always made fun of it, deleting any user on NC that made reference to it, unless they too were ripping on it.  Stosys needed some serious help.  His login sequence used a series of stolen ANSI's, TGP style, he ran completely unmodified software, his users were lame newbies, and the entire board was completely helpless.  Until I came in.  I offered Tom (Stosys) my services as a Remote Sysop if I was given full access and free reign to make any changes I thought were necessary.  He agreed to this, as he wanted his board to be good.  Well, he got his wish.  In my first login as a newly appointed Remote, I went through the user list and cut it from around 350 to about 70.  Then I made him all new ANSI's or had friends on IRC make him some so that Horizons looked nice and at least appeared to be a decent board.  Then came the biggest change of all.  One of my friends on IRC had figured out a way to connect local phone numbers to unused 888 numbers, with the only catch being that the phone company had the ability to disconnect them when they needed to use them for customers.  Tom had two phone lines, so I struck a deal with my friend to get these two lines hooked up to 888 numbers in exchange for some art.  Once they were set up, we had the pick of the litter with users.  People were calling from all over the world!  Our local/long distance ratio went to somewhere around 1:5 (which was incredible when most boards were more like 50:1), with some of the most elite users in the scene getting denied access.  Tom was getting hundreds of megs of 0-day warez every day, and the 888 lines kept on running.  As other 888 boards went down, we stayed up through the whole summer.  By the end of summer, Horizons was clearly one of the best BBS's in the world.  Being the best has its price, though.  Soon after I went off to college that fall, the lines finally went down.  Tom had had enough excitement and took the board down soon after.  Then he got a bill.  A phone bill.  A phone bill delivered by UPS in dozens of boxes.  $23,000 and change.  Impossible!  Unbelievable!  No, this was real.  "Luckily" the phone co. told Tom that he "only" had to pay $5,000 of it, but that still left us with a bill far bigger than we could pay.  Somehow his parents' lawyer managed to find a way out, but still too close for comfort.
 
 
 

 I still remember my first call ever, the first words I typed, my last call ever, and the last words I typed.  I remember much of what was in between, and whenever I think back to the details my memories are always fond.  I met so many friends, had so many conversations, and had so many experiences.  Often I wonder why I wasted my middle and high school years on the computer, why I didn't lead a normal life, and get down on myself because of it.  The fact is, I had fun.  I had a lot of fun.  I wouldn't trade those days for the world!

 mouse

/s

[Page Last Updated on April 8,2000]