[Husker] Happy 20th birthday to the Husker List

[George Rapp]

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 3:02 AM, Mike Nolan <nolan at tssi.com> wrote:

> I forgot to mention it yesterday, but October 1st, 2011, was the
> Husker List's 20th birthday, as the first USENET announcement for
> it went out on rec.sports.football.college on October 1, 1991.
>

Happy 20th, ya old coot!  You don't look a day over 18.  8^)

I may have mentioned this before, but 20-year anniversaries are times for
storytelling, and so I shall.  I think I subscribed the first week Mike had
the list up and running.  (Of the old-timers who are still around, I also
think Jon Johnston subscribed before I did.  8^)

Living in Dallas at the time, there wasn't a lot of 'Husker news in the
papers, so rec.sports.football.college and then the 'Husker List were a
godsend.  This was back in the days when Internet access was limited to
universities, government/military organizations, and companies engaged in
R&D (which is how I got access, working for EDS Research at the time).  It
was technically illegal for commercial entities to connect unless they could
demonstrate they were using the network for research, although that was
widely ignored.  It was a text-only world; for perspective, the graphical
browser wasn't even invented until 1993.

However, I can't claim continuous membership from the first week. In 1993,
after some corporate reorganization, I got moved to a group in EDS that
didn't have Internet access. I decided that was untenable, so I purchased a
Gateway 2000 386 computer for around $3000, including a 28.8Kbps modem, and
contracted with a company in the metroplex for a dial-up email account for
$50/month - as soon as the technician came out to my apartment to set up my
dial-up access, my first test was to re-subscribe to the 'Husker List.  I've
been around in some form ever since.

As Mike put it so well in the announcement
post<http://groups.google.com/group/rec.sport.football.college/browse_thread/thread/80856d8e71528804/44ee334b29313f4b?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=nolan+group:rec.sport.football.college#44ee334b29313f4b>:
There is no place like Nebraska!

-- 
George Rapp  (Pataskala, OH) Home: george.rapp -- at -- gmail.com
Work: george.rapp -- at -- hp.com (or) george.rapp.ctr -- at -- dfas.mil

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring
one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their
own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the
mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of
good government... - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address