That same week I went down to the the computer lab at UCI and got my own account setup. I was doomed to become an addict. I began IRCing like crazy. I even went out and spent $1400 on an Apple Powerbook just so I could IRC. I pretty much spent all of my time IRCing. My grades were dropping, I was losing sleep, and I often skipped classes. After I got bored IRCing from my laptop at home, I began spending all my time at OAC, the computer lab at UCI. One friend gave me the titles of 'OAC Bum' and 'Leader of the IRC Cult'. There were nights I would go to the lab at 6pm after my class, and I would sit there playing around on the computer until 10am the next morning. I was nutz!

These days I don't IRC much anymore. When I do get the chance, I find it to be very boring. I guess you can say I have grown tired of it. Sometimes I find myself thinking that it's stupid. I guess it's not so much that I think IRC is stupid but rather the people I see on there nowdays. But I have met some really cool people(from the east coast) on IRC who came out to California for a visit. The three most notable ones were Ann, Nung, and Putt.

I met Ann Thanawastien back in November of 1994 on #siam. She was one of my favorites to talk to(on irc and the phone). Very sexy voice. :)

Annee

Anyways she came to California to visit that December...to check out the medical school at UCI or so she said. But I think it was to see someone special. Anyways we did hang out and she was every bit as cool as I thought she would be. Before she came, I had never seen her before. And I remember she told me she was a short, unattractive computer nerd. So when we met I was quite surprised. Well after that visit she came back to California a few more times before she went broke. I haven't seen or heard from her in quite sometime. The last I heard, she was working for some hospital and preparing for her MCAT. I wish her the best.

Nung stopped off in California on his way back from Thailand in August of 1995. We got a group of nine people together and drove to Las

Nungie

Vegas. It was a very memorable trip. And man did Nung make a lasting impression. He is definitely one of the wildest people I have met. Non stop drinking the whole trip. As soon as we got to Vegas he asked to go to a liquor store where he bought a huge jug of Black Label whiskey. The whole night he played drinking games with Net and his buddy. I believe they were up doing this until six o'clock the next morning. I'm amazed that he didn't gamble...I think he had to save all his money for booze. :) He did have the best stories to tell though. He talked about his trip to Thailand and his ventures to the bathhouses there. His stories about this girl and that girl...what a sly dog!

In January of 1997, I met Pat Na Phuket(a.k.a Putt), the creator of the SiamWeb. To be honest, I've wanted to meet him for a while. Ever since I got caught up on the Internet and designing Web pages, I have

Putt

been an admirer of his work. He has designed some of the best Web sites I have seen so far. He's very innovative and humorous in his work and he is the same in person. The impression you get from reading some of his publishings is that he is a very silly and goofy person, and that is exactly how he was when I met him. He decided to return to Thailand after graduating from Ohio State University, so he swung by California before he left. I was to pick him up from the airport and he was going to crash at my place. But he missed the flight. He ended up coming a few days later. After crashing for a few nights, he decided he would go to San Fransisco for a few days then come back to LA again. His flight back to Thailand was scheduled to leave just two hours after his flight back to LA(from SF). But he ended up missing the flight back to LA, so he took the next flight, which means he missed his flight back to Thailand. So he ended up crashing again for a few more days. On top of all of that, he lost his Thai passport, so I took him down to the Royal Thai Consulate in LA and he had to beg them for a new passport. What a dork!

Some time around March of 1995, I remember using one of the terminals in the library to look up a book. I caught a glance of the screen on the person next to me. He was looking at some MPEG of a music video from a Web site. I was so fascinated. I asked him what program he was using and he said Mosaic. Later that week I went to the computer lab and asked my friend Khahn to show me how to use this Mosaic program. He told me not to use Mosaic. So he introduced me to Netscape...version 1.1 at that time. I really got into the WWW. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Shortly after discovering the WWW, I lost complete interest in IRC as well as just about everything. I was consumed by the Web. I began spending more and more time at the computer lab browsing the net. Not long after that I went out and bought myself an account from Deltanet so I could create my own Website. Their service sucked(at the time), so I switched to Netcom because I heard a lot of good things about them. They were semi-decent...but at that time they didn't offer Webpages for their customers. So basically they sucked. Eventually I decided on Kaiwan. I began to work on my own Website. It went thru several different face lifts because I was never satisfied with it. I would put up a new page and think that it looked good, but a week later I would look at it and tell myself, "This looks like crap!" Some nights I would not stop working on the site until I was satisfied. And sometimes this meant skipping social events with friends until it was just right.

After a month with Kaiwan, I decided I needed a new provider. I wasn't happy with the speed. I think I just wanted a new toy. Anyways I signed up with Netvoyage Network. They were lightning fast at the time because they were a realtively new provider. I moved my Website over to them and was happy for a while. Then as more people discovered them, their servers began to slow down. I realized I should have stayed with Kaiwan, but I wasn't about to switch accounts again. I remained with Netvoyage even with all the problems surrounding the company. Eventually they got to the point where their service sucked so bad I was ready to leave. Towards the end, Netvoyage started overbilling me. I tried for weeks to get a hold of them, but their lines were always busy. Finally when I got through, they were no longer Netvoyage. They were bought out by Starlink. And the Starlink people said that they had no records of the billing from Netvoyage. I was pissed to say the least. Anyways I figured I would give them a try and I soon discovered that they were pretty much the same shitty company with just a different name. I ended up leaving them. Next I moved my site to Digiweb. They were dirt cheap and damn fast. But their service started to lag and I had to move my site once again. Now my site currently resides on Earthlink. Hopefully I won't have to move again. :)

Well, where did all of this playing around on the Internet get me? I ended up getting a job as Webmaster for Earthlink Network. Now I'm on the Internet more than ever. I can't escape it. I'm an Internet junkie! I'm on the Internet nine hours a day when I'm at the office. Then when I get home, the first thing I do is turn on my computer and jump onto the Internet. I basically have no social life. I enjoy my work though. I work for the best ISP in the world(so what if I'm biased!). I've been working here since March 1996 and I've seen this company grow like crazy. It really is unbelievable. I've never worked for a company before that was this dedicated to growth as well as excellent customer service. The people I work with are great as well. It's sort of a second home for me. I know...sounds cheesey. But I didn't ask, so shaddup! :)