Saturday, December 20, 2008

Bugbones the Second

Bugbones, as I said, was original. Or was it. I do recall that, back in the stone age, some other kid handed me a strange little drawing of Bugbones. I took it up, as kids do, and made it my own. In all those years, I had never asked where that kid got Bugbones. As a budding artist, I was always coming up with original drawings. I assumed that kid did, too. I also borrowed, as the inspiration hit me. It never occurred to me that Bugbones might have a predecessor other than some obscure kid from my grade school, until the day that I went to sign up for my Hotmail account. I'm not sure why I needed a Hotmail account. Probably Angelfire suggested that one should have a separate e-mail address to publish on one's website. When I went to sign up for Hotmail, I was surprised to find out that Bugbones already existed. So did Bugbones1, and Bugbones10, and Bugbones45. "Odd," I thought, and raised an eyebrow. But Bugbones was already my Angelfire username, so Bugbones it must be. I settled on Bugbones2000 in honor of the much-feted upcoming year 2000. The almost-lacking-but-one-year millenium. I liked the ring of it. (That address is no longer mine ~ I let it lapse long ago).

This was my second e-mail address and the Hotmail learning curve was a pain. I don't remember if the problem was a Hotmail problem or a Netscape Navigator problem. I would carefully compose my e-mail. But when I hit send, the thing would go blank. Hotmail would hang and my letter would be lost. This was frustrating and all new to me. I sent in my first support question. It was a cookie problem. I was using a public terminal and taking too long to compose my e-mails. But I was now the grand owner of two e-mail accounts and a free site. I had my own little corner of the Web, my miniature Web presence, all established under the unlikely nickname of Bugbones.

Oh, the perils of Bugbones...

No comments:

Post a Comment