Disclaimer: this is the story as I remember it. very likely to be incomplete and/or incorrect, but a story nonetheless. Leave comments for corrections. oh, and tell me when i should stop.

And so the summer of ‘99 was upon us, and it was great. It was my first summer in NYC. I was living at the fraternity house for free, and living it up at $12/hour.

The lack of anyone in the Director’s office meant we could blast the music. Up until this point, things were on a muted level. whenever there was music playing, it was kept at a pretty low decibel level and often times john would drown it out with his singing. but now . .. now, it was a full on party with either kanga or roo acting as the jukebox (v.0.1 if you will) since leslie and helen were the only ones in windows at any one time, and, back then, the ole linux boxen couldn’t play mp3s. I believe that year the songs on the hit list included anything erasure, rubber duckie and c is for cookie. funny how some things never change. I’m sure somewhere around the office there’s a copy of the soundtrack as rob was kind enough to burn a copy for everyone.

To be honest, i really don’t remember what i worked on that summer. I’m sure it was important at the time and somehow contributed to the university at large as well as my development as a programmer, but it’s all forgotten now. What i do remember is the experience. getting into the office at 9am on a regular basis (probably having something to do with having a girlfriend at the time who had to wake up at 7am), the morning coffee train, and lunch from hamilton deli or the guy on the corner of amsterdam and 116th. back then the dude hadn’t yet upgraded to the deluxe cart he now inhabits, and would sweat it out all day standing on that corner.
The morning coffee train to IAB was a favorite of mine. It was the first order of business for the day. It was like a team huddle. A little sync action to get us ready to work. Every morning we’d wait for all parties to show up and then we’d march out to the coffee stand, then known as Cafe Cappuccino and not the blue java or whatever is it today. actually, i don’t think i’ve been back to the coffe stand in IAB since those days. Anyway, John and I would get coffee, Helen used to get espresso, and rob and leslie were all over the nantucket nectars.

Breakfast was also a morning tradition, usually a call made to hamilton deli for a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich. yum. And, of course, after the morning festivites, the work began. We’d spend the most of the day singing and coding. every now and then john would get up and do his cabbage patch dance or you’d here a “who’s your daddy?!?” comment from one of us. it was a pretty good gig.
Anyhow, at the end of summer, we gave birth to this. At the time, that rotating image was the bomb. i mean, the dynamic aspect was just soooo cutting edge. The navigation and organization of the site was all Helen, and she went through a whole boat load of lame meetings (the first of many) to get people to provide content and agree on what was to be. But, she was driven, persistent and determined to make something good, which, i soon came to learn were defining traits of Helen’s.

So, the summer ended, the site was launched, and the new academic year had begun. There weren’t very many things notable about that fall semester . . . we got a new director at ccs, elanor sanchez, and we also got owl, our first nt domain server which prompted us to get off of AIS’ services and run for the hills of more network storage and a novel netware-less environment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 at 4:08 am and is filed under CCIT, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.