I wrote this in 1995. Most sites I link to no longer exist. I leave them here anyway. *sniff*
My boyfriend, CJ Holmes, and I were the first people to take the web seriously on this campus. I was working full time in the library Multimedia and Microform room, managing a computer lab - mostly helping people figure out how to extract binaries from the alt.whatever groups. He was a student assistant in IT (then called CMTS), working for the Network group, helping to pull cable and configure hubs and routers (or whatever it was he was doing on those ladders and in the ceilings and basements of the campus buildings).
He was pretty excited about the web (and still is), and I was pretty excited about him (I still am), so we spent a lot of time talking about it (and still do). Back then, there weren't really too many people who knew about the web (Gopher was still the hot thing), but we cruised around the sites and built some pages of our own. CJ turned the Mac IIcx he had on his desk into the highly unofficial SSU webserver. Mostly, it sported links to other servers (he was really into goverment info), but we did have a few pages of a more personal nature.
Of course we showed this to as many people as we could. Some were equally excited, others were suspicious. One person, who shall remain nameless, told me flatly that "all that stuff you showed me was on the diskette. It's just a demo. You weren't *really* looking at stuff in Switzerland." At first most people didn't see how cool it really was, or realize its potential. But we kept on playing with it anyway. We set up a site for our roommate Michael Mollo, a poet. CJ somehow got it listed on NCSA's new site list. Since the exhibit was titled "A Purgatory of Semiotics" it was put on the top of all the neatly alphabetized lists (as a library worker, I suddenly recognized a benefit to including initial articles when sorting by title). We were getting tons of people visiting the site and listening to my roommate (who, by the way, has nothing to do with SSU, owes me money, and is now my EX roommate, the bum!) read his mediocre poems (actually, to his credit, he's not *that* bad...he was a finalist in a nationwide contest of spoken word artists sponsored by MTV. And to think, he lived in a trailer in my driveway!).
Then I convinced my friend & mentor, Elizabeth Herron, to let me put up some of her poems and watercolors on the server. She didn't know much about computers or the internet, and I'm proud to say that I've gotten her hooked on email despite the problems we had with the listservs she subscribed to. Why is it so impossible to unsubscribe?
At about that same time Susan Harris, the library director, started noticing CJ. The next thing I knew, Susan had enticed (stole is such an ugly word) CJ away from IT to run a web server for the Salazar Library. CJ couldn't resist the official status (despite the low wage). CJ got an office 20 feet from mine. Oh, how romantic!
CJ and I worked well as a team. He taught me techy stuff (I actually recognize a Perl script when I see one), I taught him graphics. I also like to think I'm the reason (OK, one of them) he now no longer considers himself a PC person, and has nearly become a Mac Evangelist. And he's one of the big reasons I no longer look down at PC users. I chatted up everyone I could about the internet, and then sent everyone interesting or influential his way. My motto became "Gee, have you ever thought of putting that on the Web?" Soon the library was host to other campus departments and individuals who wanted to get on the web. My lab was one of the only places on campus with color scanners and graphics programs, so I started giving classes on scanning - mostly to students, staff and faculty who wanted nice gifs and jpegs for their pages. I was also training the library staff on using the web and helping them to author pages. CJ started getting so busy (remember, he was still a full time student, and wasn't allowed to work for the library more than 20 hours per week) consulting with campus committees and managers, writing CGI's, etc. that the library hired a student assistant for him. I think Amanda was the library's first student assistant's student assistant.
Eventually, CJ attracted the attention of Mark Resmer, the Director of IT(it really didn't take long). The web sort of hit Mark like a 2 by 4 when he wasn't looking, so Mark hired CJ as the campus Webmaster on a temporary appointment. I was worried that meant CJ would be moving to a new office (I'd gotten used to being able to keep tabs on him, er, I mean see him at work all the time), but luckily for me, IT was short of office space, so a deal was worked out so he could keep his conveniently located (for me) office in the Library.
Shortly after that, a new job in IT became available - that of Service Center Coordinator. Well, obviously I applied, and obviously I got it. And although I was really happy about getting the job, there was one great drawback. My new office was on the first floor. I would be nowhere near CJ's office unless I went to visit my former workmates in the Multimedia Center. I took the job anyway. That same week, CJ finally proposed (marriage, that is). Did missing me finally knock sense into him? Maybe. Or had it been my month-long strike against giving away free milk at home? Probably. But I prefer to think he's marrying me for my money.
CJ decided not to apply for the permanent position of Webmaster, officially known as Web Admin, or Electronic Information Coordinator, although he would have had the office right next to mine. Instead, he has opted for working on his own business, Net.Dreams, which he started in early 1995. He creates websites, writes CGI's and does some cool database stuff. I'd recommend his business highly if it were ok for me to do so on a CSU server.