© Mark Ollig
While writing today’s column on this early November morning, I paused and looked out the living room window.
The sky is filled with clouds. Checking the thermometer, it reads 32 degrees.
What happened to our beautiful summer? Why is autumn passing so quickly?
Another year is speeding by. Very soon, 2022 will be upon us.
In online news, Facebook recently announced a name change to Meta.
Anyone who writes HTML code knows meta-tags or meta elements are used on web pages.
Also, my aging brain realized meta spelled backward is atem. Atem in German translates to “breath.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg could have renamed it Breathbook.
Okay, enough of my futile attempts at humor.
Before Facebook came into existence, many of us were using the MySpace online social media site.
In late January 2009, I was convinced to join Facebook by my oldest son, who, at the time, was preparing for his trip to Italy.
“What would be a good way to stay in contact with you?” I asked him.
“Go to Facebook and request to add me as a ‘friend’,” he told me.
“What about using MySpace?” I suggested.
“No, you want to get on Facebook,” he confidently replied.
When I first started Facebook 12 years ago, it reminded me of the dial-up online community known as Prodigy.
The Prodigy interactive online service began in 1984, and by 1990, it had grown to be the second-largest online service behind CompuServe.
I was an active Prodigy user and still have my original porcelain Prodigy coffee mug shaped like a computer terminal screen and keyboard.
By 1992, being part of a dial-up online virtual community was becoming popular all across the country, so I decided to start a hobbyist computer BBS (bulletin board system) called; “WBBS,” which was the abbreviation for Winsted Bulletin Board System.
I began with a text-only interface BBS software program by Galacticom, Inc.
WBBS users sent and received email messages with each other, text-messaged in real-time in the chat rooms, played games, and sent and received software files within the BBS community.
The WBBS computer used six telephone lines connected to six modems.
Most dial-up users were from the Winsted and Lester Prairie areas, where the telephone number to reach the BBS was a free, local call.
Sometimes, users would log in for hours to text chat; others stopped by to play a few games, check their messages, or share files. It was a virtual community.
Jumping back to early 2009, I was on the phone and praising the many advantages of Facebook with former Herald Journal and Enterprise Dispatch editor Lynda Jensen, who sadly passed away June 15, 2010.
I frequently spoke with Lynda on the phone while writing my columns. I very much miss her and our playful bantering.
During one conversation, I said to her, “Lynda, it would be so much fun for you to get on Facebook.” After some hesitation, Lynda eventually agreed and decided to get her own Facebook account.
Of course, once Lynda established her account on Facebook, we included it as a venue for our back-and-forth bantering.
It was a lot of fun for both of us.
We posted photos and links to interesting stories and shared humorous comments via Facebook’s status and text chat program for a little over a year.
Lynda told me, because of Facebook, she was able to find her best friend from college, her pastor, a former co-worker, and other people she knew, which made me feel good.
She also penned a few columns about her adventures on Facebook.
Lynda’s March 2, 2009 column is titled “Dragged into the 21st Century,” which can be read here: https://bit.ly/3buxkdB.
At the start of the column, Lynda wrote, “Learning new technology is kind of like taking a ride on Valleyfair – you get an intense thrill and then feel like throwing up, I always say. Anyway, taking this love/hate thing to a different level, I decided to open a Facebook account; being prodded into this a bit by fellow columnist Mr. Mark Ollig.”
She continued, “This is great because if I don’t like it, I can blame him for my troubles and make him buy me chocolate in compensation.”
The following week, Lynda’s column was titled “Hacking my way through the digital jungle on Facebook,” you can read it at https://bit.ly/3jURnqu.
Lynda began her column March 23, 2009 with, “I must confess that Facebook is more fun than I thought it would be. Part of the blame ... er, I mean reason ... is because I goof around with fun people online who have a great sense of humor and are fun to bug. It’s a pick-me-upper that only takes a few seconds to check online once a day when I get home from work.”
I truly miss those days of playful banter and camaraderie.
