162 - The Internet, as I Remember It

I had asked last post, if anyone remembers their first Internet experience. Well, for mine, I had dial-up from a company named Esslink. I can still remember dialing up the first time, wondering where to go. Back then, there was no Google, or Yahoo, but the main search engines were 'search.com' and 'altavista.com' (both of which are still around, but so much lesser known than the big 2 now (Google and Yahoo). I used Altavista mostly, and nowadays, the draw to them is for the "Babel Fish Translation" section. Now, Altavista is currently owned by Yahoo, but keeps a separate page for the search engine, but if you go to the Babel Fish Translation area, it's on a yahoo page.

For those of you who do not know what a Babel Fish is, it comes from the 5 book trilogy called "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", by Douglas Adams. The Babel Fish, has this description in the book:

"The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix, formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language."

So, you can see where they got the name! *chuckling*

Other than the search engines, I can't remember too many places I went online. Of course, I was online pretty long ago, so I could have been anywhere! *S*

Now, for a funny from my friend Mike H, for michelle who loves puns:

A Holiday Groaner!!!

A Russian couple was walking down the street in St. Petersburg the other night, when the man felt a drop hit his nose.
"I think it's raining," he said to his wife.

"No, that felt more like snow to me," she replied. "No, I'm sure it was just rain, he said." Well, as these things go, they were about
to have a major argument about whether it was raining or snowing.
Just then they saw a minor communist party official walking toward them.  "Let's not fight about it," the man said, "let's ask Comrade Rudolph whether it's officially raining or snowing."

As the official approached, the man said, "Tell us, Comrade Rudolph, is it officially raining or snowing?"

"It's raining, of course," he answered and walked on.

But the woman insisted: "I know that felt like snow!"

To which the man quietly replied: "Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear!"

Have a wonderful Monday!