proof i’ve been using the internet longer than you / florida dmv stuff

Tuesday Jun 6th 2006

For years I’ve always wondered who registered the Yahoo ID "menga", then yesterday I thought to myself.. Did I register it? So I headed on over and attempted a "forgot password" thing where you enter in some information and then answer a "secret" question you define when you first sign up for the account.

Long story short: I got in. Couldn’t believe it. Yes, it was me that registered that Yahoo! ID. NINE YEARS AGO.

As proof, see the profile page. The "last updated" date is in 1997. I kid you not. I purposely did not update the profile so that date stays as is for nostalgic purposes. You can’t "fool" Yahoo!’s servers into doing that - so it’s legit. It’s probably one of the oldest Yahoo! ID’s in existence.

I would have written about this yesterday, however I had to write Yahoo! and request that the "secret" question be changed because it would have been really easy for some people to get in there - but that’s all fixed. Yahoo! wrote me back, honored the request and everything’s cool with that.

Here’s some more factoids that will probably make you say "whoa".

At the time the ID was registered….

Yahoo! Mail was under a year old and still in its infancy.
Yahoo! itself was the #1 search engine on the planet. These days people say "Google it", but back then they said "Yahoo! it".
Google did not exist (that was 1998)
Geocities was not owned by Yahoo! (that was in 1999)
The #1 instant messenger was ICQ.
The most popular operating system was Windows 95 (remember, Windows 98 didn’t appear until 1998).
The most popular web browser was Netscape Navigator - which some of you out there have probably never heard of.
A good dial-up internet service was $29.95 a month - and that was a deal in 1997.
I did not own any domain names. My first one was registered in 1999.
Blogging as we know it now did not exist.

A nice stroll down amnesia lane. Ahh…

So why does it exist in Member Profiles now when there was no such thing in ‘97? The answer is that it was "imported" over when Yahoo! decided to implement profiles.

I have "menga" on Yahoo! Messenger and gave it an e-mail account just for kicks - but I’m not changing that profile. Just seeing that 1997 date is way cool. ;-)

—

I now have a Florida driver’s license. It was very easy. Go to the office, hand over CT driver’s license, birth certificate, have photo taken, pay twenty bucks, done deal.

And yeah it was that easy.

And the staff was very nice and courteous. Kudos to Florida there.

Back in Connecticut I never really had a problem with the DMV, for the simple reason that I always came prepared. I would make sure (usually by calling them first) that I had all my documentation, write-ups and whatever else I needed before I even walked in the door. I notice that 99% of the time, people have a hard time at the DMV because they didn’t bring with them what they were supposed to bring in the first place. Had they prepared, they would have been in and out lickety split.

My DMV photo, as usual, is awful.

Goes with the course I guess.

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