sometimes i wish you were dead so they could put you on a stamp

while doing some research for something, i came across a website still hosting a shareware windows application that i wrote a long time ago in visual basic. it was a stupid little utility that sat in the system tray by the clock and sent out data to a specified tcp/ip host at a specified interval to keep a dialup connection alive (i think i wrote it for someone to keep their isdn line up).

so i downloaded it and installed it in windows xp under parallels on my mac, and much to my surprise, this program that i wrote in windows 95 actually still works. according to that site, 152 other people downloaded it since 1998 and if i remember correctly, some people actually paid me the $5 shareware fee for using it (there was no nag screen or anything, so there wasn't a different licensed version). that bitchin 3d logo was made in a pirated copy of truspace3, i believe, which i also used to create the original superblock logo (which was just a blue 3d block).

according to the dates embedded in the executable, it was compiled on 1998-02-17, so i would have been 15 when i made that program. luckily i discovered linux shortly thereafter and stopped using and programming for windows. then i found openbsd 2.3 or 2.4 in late 1998 and have been using openbsd ever since.