hot; fingering wasn't sleazy
it's hot--80 degrees again. like i said in my previous entry late last night, the warm weather here makes me so glad i didn't go to minneapolis this week.
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i've been using AIM (aol instant messaging) recently, and it's nice. funny enough, it makes me think about my very 1st e-mail account. i got it in 1992 when i started college. it was one of those old unix, or "shell" accounts that runs on a program called "pine". it makes me feel old, but you probably know what i'm talking about if you started college before 1996. in fact, itzie mentioned this kind of account in her diary recently. come to think of it, bathtubmary and arajane might possibly know about this type of e-mail account, too.
for you young ones not familiar with these accounts, they were purely text based--nothing like hotmail, aol or yahoo. anyway, there was this one command called "fingering". you could "finger" someone by their username to see if they were online at the same time as you. if so, you could submit a "talk" command, allowing you to chat with them much like IM.
i loved it, maybe b/c of the novelty. my 1st year in college, i was still in touch with brian, my 1st boyfriend from h.s. he was officially my ex, but we remained in touch for a while. looking back, i still had feelings for him, and i think it was mutual. but he was two years older, and when he went to off to college at MIT, we agreed to "see other people".
anyway, soon after arriving at college, i signed up for an e-mail account. when i found out brian also had e-mail, we started to chat online. before i knew it, it turned into regular sessions where we'd "meet" each other online at a given time to talk. doesn't that sound sleazy? LOL!
it gets even better: during spring of my 1st year, i had chemistry on mon.wed.fri. 9-9:50am, and anthropology on mon.wed. 11am -12:15pm. that left an hour to kill between classes. as soon as chemistry ended, i'd head over to the computer lab adjoining the library for a rendezvous with brian. it was agreed upon that we'd meet at 10am online. usually i'd get there first, and i'd go online and wait for him to finger me. that just sounds kind of sleazy but it really wasn't at all...essentially it was just chatting, like IMing today. it was just like any conversation, though i do recall getting some strange looks from other students in the lab, for grinning and laughing out loud while staring into my computer screen, fingers flying across the keyboard.
i'm sure i sound like such a geek! i used to get so restless as the professor finished up lecture because i couldn't wait to go online and wait for brian to "finger" me. i mean, we're talking butterflies, fidgeting, tuning out from lecture, and sneaking glances at my watch as 10am rolled around. yeah, looking back i definitely still had feelings for him. the minute class was dismissed i hightailed it out of there to mac lab. [but despite my distraction, my chem grades didn't suffer. i got a flying colors A. and believe it or not, it was easily one of my favorite college classes]!
so i'll quit rambling... and my point is....that fingering wasn't really sleazy at all. ah, the good memories of my first e-mail account. and you know what else? i still have that e-mail account but rarely check it. my school kept it active for me for official college & alumni related stuff. but alas, no more fingering, because i've moved on to bigger and better things like AIM.
