End Of An Era

Yesterday, I did something that many of my Internet-savvy friends had been chiding me about for years: I cancelled my America Online account. After about 5 minutes of lousy hold music (interspersed with annoying advertising: "Skip the lines this holiday season, shop online"), I reached James. I told him I'm not using AOL content, only Instant Messaging and email, and it's not worth the $14.95/mo they're going to start charging in March. He proceeded to look up my account, and you could hear the gasp: "You've been a member since 1991?!?" He quickly offered me 2 free months "to give me time to transition my e-mail," but I turned the offer down. After all, that just means I'd have to call and cancel again in 2 months.

By the way, for the skeptical, the fact that I joined 11 years ago would explain my screen name "EricP23." It's not that I was 23 (in fact, I was 20, so there), it's just that 23 people had signed up before me named "EricP." Not long after, the auto-suggested names were your first initial and portions of your last name. Given UNIX's 8-character limit, I'd had my fill of "epatter" and "epatters" logins in college, and so EricP23 stuck. (In fact, I'm not sure but what I had an account earlier — say, 1989-1990 — and had cancelled and re-joined. Memory fades that far back.)

In the "for what it's worth" department, I was using America Online on my trusty Apple IIgs when it was text-based only, only ran on the Apple II, Macintosh, and MS-DOS platforms, and a full 2 years before a Windows version emerged.