Journal Entry: December 29, 2001
In case you haven’t heard, Google’s extensive USENET archive is finally online. It represents 20 years of Internet history, dating way back before there was a World Wide Web. It’s great to see all these articles being preserved for posterity.
Just for grins, I did a search for myself to see how far back I could trace my online history. Turns out that my very first USENET article was posted on November 6, 1990. I thought it would have been earlier than that, but I guess not. That was my 9th and final semester as an undergrad at the University of Colorado. In December, I would graduate with a BS in Aerospace Engineering Sciences and then in January I’d start graduate school. Here are some other funny subjects I was involved in all those years ago:
August 9, 1991
My mail order bride want ad I was looking for someone who could cook and clean plus take over my job at PVI writing Fortran code. Note my self-assumed title of Supreme Ruler of the Galaxy.
February 24, 1992
First mention of the woman who would become my life partner, Beth Partin I had been dating Beth for less than a month when I posted this. I guess I’ve gotten used to kissing someone with glasses! Also note that by this time I was signing my name as “Todd.” which is something I still do to this day (any of you who have ever gotten an email from me know this to be true). Also, notice the fake middle name “Slan” in my signature:
Todd “Slan” Bradley-Postmodern Reaganomics Renaissance Man, The Exception to Every Rule, An Example To All Men, The Biggest Jerk In The World, Supreme Ruler Of The Galaxy, AND Captain of The Unnamed Computer Science Ultimate Frisbee Team.***
November 11, 1992
On the Dynamics of Rotating Sport Discs This is the paper I wrote to get a Masters degree at CU. To this day, many people don’t believe me when I say I got a Masters Degree in Aerospace Engineering by studying the flight of frisbees. Here’s proof.
*** If you’ll forgive a tangent for a moment, each of the items in my signature has a history, and I’ll explain them now:
Slan: I once got a letter from CU addressed to Todd Slan Bradley. My middle name’s Alan, and S is just one letter away from A on the keyboard, so someone clearly made a typo when entering that. I thought Slan sounded like a cool, Slavic name and so I used it as a pseudonym for a while.
Postmodern Reaganomics Renaissance Man: A coworker of mine at Precision Visuals named Matt Powell gave me this title one day. He was impressed at the amount of computer and non-computer trivia I knew.
The Exception to Every Rule: I wish I could remember the context, but I’m pretty sure that Jaye Lampe gave me this name.
An Example To All Men: Hmm, I can’t remember where this came from.
The Biggest Jerk In The World: In high school, I had a friend named Daren Deffenbaugh. His sister Julie called me this one day when I was bugging her about something or other. The title stuck in my mind because it’s such an absolute. If I can be better at something - anything - than the other 6 billion people on the planet, that makes me feel pretty good.
Supreme Ruler Of The Galaxy: When I lived in Libby Hall at CU, one of the other guys on our floor was a very soft spoken fellow named Bill. When anyone would ask him what he wanted to do when he graduated, he’d always say he wanted to become a king. He was totally serious about it, too. And so I figured if Bill can aspire to be a king, I can aspire to even greater power.
Captain of the Unnamed Computer Science Ultimate Frisbee Team: Even though I wasn’t a Computer Science student, I hung around with lots of them. I somehow got elected to captain their Ultimate team, and I think the team was later named “The Flying Bitheads”.