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poltr1While going through Box 62, I found a few message threads which dealt with my voracious appetite for netnews, aka the Usenet. I read a lot of rec.* groups in college, and probably to my detrement. I even got into trouble with the system administrators because I'd either send batches of news articles to a person who was temporarily off the net, or I'd receive news articles from someone whose site didn't cut them off, thus running up our site's phone bills. (The way Usenet worked in the 1980s is that the machines would call each other and send both the mail messages and news articles in a store-and-forward fashion.)
As I re-read these messages from John and Gretchen, our system administrators, threatening to take away my Usenet access, I felt anger, and then sadness. What I didn't know at the time -- or even admit to -- was that I was addicted to Usenet. I even referred to myself as "The Usenet Junkie". My OCD, hoarder syndrome, and addctive personality aspects ganged up on me. But now that I'm aware of these aspects in my life, I can no longer cry victim. If I was in their position, would I have done the same thing? Perhaps, but I wouldn't have been as punitive.
I kept reading netnews until graduation. Then I had to quit cold turkey, since I no longer had access. That wasn't easy.
I guess I had Internet addiction before it was fashionable, or even recognized as a legitimate addiction.
Now I look back on my college days and think what an idiot I was back then. If I could have spent less time reading the rec.* groups, and maybe some more time reading the comp.* groups, I probably would have had a better grade point average than what I earned. I haven't gone back to Usenet, now known as Google Groups. There's so much information out there on Usenet that it's impossible to keep up. I wish I would have learned that lesson 20 years ago.
As I re-read these messages from John and Gretchen, our system administrators, threatening to take away my Usenet access, I felt anger, and then sadness. What I didn't know at the time -- or even admit to -- was that I was addicted to Usenet. I even referred to myself as "The Usenet Junkie". My OCD, hoarder syndrome, and addctive personality aspects ganged up on me. But now that I'm aware of these aspects in my life, I can no longer cry victim. If I was in their position, would I have done the same thing? Perhaps, but I wouldn't have been as punitive.
I kept reading netnews until graduation. Then I had to quit cold turkey, since I no longer had access. That wasn't easy.
I guess I had Internet addiction before it was fashionable, or even recognized as a legitimate addiction.
Now I look back on my college days and think what an idiot I was back then. If I could have spent less time reading the rec.* groups, and maybe some more time reading the comp.* groups, I probably would have had a better grade point average than what I earned. I haven't gone back to Usenet, now known as Google Groups. There's so much information out there on Usenet that it's impossible to keep up. I wish I would have learned that lesson 20 years ago.
