My first Usenet posting?

It's embarrassing enough. The program I was posting with to a Usenet discussion group didn't automatically word wrap. Google faithfully preserved the incredibly long third line that resulted from my failure to hit Enter at the right spots. Someone later in the thread complains about it, in fact.

Why should I have had to remember to word wrap? They'd invented word wrapping by then. Usability issue!

Here's the posting in its textual glory:

My first Usenet post in plain text format.

And here's the full thread.

I found this to show I have been on the Internet for 10 years. I was tempted to use another less embarrassing post, of nearly the same vintage, but this one, with its horizontal scrolling, shows how far back usability issues go.

Posted by Chad Lundgren on Tuesday, September 24, 2002 (Link)

Comments

Posted by Roslee Tuesday, September 24, 2002 at 11:51 PM

Wow! I find it hard to believe that you really posted about your more embarrasing postings ever, Chad. Is it humility, self-deprecation, or what?? Myself, I have plenty of embarassing moments in my life. I end up setting myself up for them constantly. I have only ever posted here on this site, and the postings are sometimes very personal and revealing, but I really do not feel they are embarrassing, to me at least! Chad, please let me know if anyone ever reports being embarrassed by what I write herein.

Posted by Chad Lundgren Tuesday, September 24, 2002 at 11:53 PM

If people are easily embarassed, that's their problem.

Posted by Chad Lundgren Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 12:48 AM

I mean really.

Posted by Roslee Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 12:49 AM

Thank you, Chad.

Posted by Roslee Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 12:50 AM

Wow! You must be right THERE!

Posted by Chad Lundgren Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 12:53 AM

Yes, I'm in the middle of upgrading the web site. It got a little grim there for a second, but now everything looks hunky dory. I saw your comments when I was looking in the new database.

The part where none of the entries or comments made it into the new database was fun. Then I suddenly realized I'd taken out what the program needs to find the old database, thinking, oh, it doesn't need this anymore. Wrong! (Web geek speaking, I commented out the wrong line.)

Posted by Roslee Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 12:57 AM

???WHich comments did you see???? Did you see the lllooonnnggg one?? Now I kind of feel like big brother is watching me.

Posted by Chad Lundgren Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 01:06 AM

I saw the two short ones at the end.

Why does it matter where I saw the comments? I was checking to see if mine showed up, so I told it to show me everything, and was surprised when mine wasn't the last one.

Posted by Roslee Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 02:16 AM

I was just wondering if you saw the comment I was trying to post that wouldn't work, that kept giving me error messages. Are you able to see postings only after a reader punches "post?" I am curious. It doesn't matter "where" you saw the comments, really. I was JOKING! All right? I honestly don't think big bro is looking in on much of anything I have to say or do.

Posted by Chad Lundgren Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 07:28 PM

Roslee:

I only see stuff after people hit post. I'm not surprised you ran into error messages in the middle of the upgrade. I know I did. I have to say, I liked my own error message I put in a long time ago that says "It's not your fault, the web server's just feeling cranky right now." Much better than "Internal Server Error", don't you think?

Given how stressful the upgrade was, I'm surprised *I* wasn't crankier.

Posted by Roslee Friday, September 27, 2002 at 12:54 AM

Only one grumpy comment from you....not bad at all, really, since you say that the upgrade was stressful. There's just a lot I don't understand, and I will never learn if I don't ask, right?!