Luckily, I got a job at the Faculty Research Center of University Computing Services, and was at ground zero of a high-tech lab that was allowed to try anything new. Anything. And this WWW stuff was really new, and really exciting.

Gopher was cool, but Mosaic was cooler.

Dr. Rashidi mentored me through the next few years as we embarked upon a fantastic journey of web servers, httpd, Mosaic web browsers, Marc Andreeson, NCSA, Netscape web browsers, Sun Sparc 5 Workstations, Winsock protocols, Solaris, NeXT, and a whole host of other highly technical things that 99.99% of people dismissed.

This was when Yahoo was still a project at Stanford. Google (Googol) was still a word that meant (1) followed by (100) zeroes. Mark Zuckerberg was only 8 years old.

The "world wide what?" people would say as I told them what I was working on. Ha! Boy I wish I had those conversations video taped.

But three years later, in 1995, people like Jeff Bezos realized it was going to be big. Really big.

Perhaps so did Phil Alden Robinson, a writer/director who released a fairly obscure 1992 movie called Sneakers. It's one of my very favorite films, especially for this line of dialog:

The world isn't run by weapons any more, or energy or money. It's run by little ones and zeros, little bits of data - it's all just electrons. There's a war out there old friend, a world war. And its not about who's got the most bullets, it's about who controls the information, what we see and hear, how we work, how we think. It's all about the information.

While he could be talking about media, he's actually talking about computer networks. Email. Web. Facebook. Google. Twitter.

As you can imagine, Phil's prediction turned to be quite correct. Eerily correct. It's all about who controls the information.

In this clip from Sneakers, Robert Redford (Marty) finds an experimental electronic device that can hack into any system by quickly rendering any encryption useless. Ben Kingsley (Cosmo) wants the device for himself. They then discuss the power of who controls the information...

Yes, this means they will be able to record your dreams.

Note that as you bring your mouse over to the left hand side the content will change color to indicate a rollover. However, I still have my mouse button down, which means its a down state rollover which is also scrolling! How neat.

User interfaces are tough to understand without seeing them move so check out this :30 second video clip of it in action.

At first glance, it makes sense. There is a risk, however.

On MacOS I can click and grab that area and move the browser window around. Imagine I'm at the end of an airline or hotel reservation (several pages of checkout) or other critical page, and when I go to move my browser window, poof! the back button is triggered and I've lost all my work!

As you can imagine, this particular scenario is a nightmare. Now, once I realize that "hit" area is in fact part of the browser back button, I will certainly steer clear of it when wanting to move the window around. Also, there is that huge title bar at the top! But to some, it will be an awful painful lesson to learn, eh? Perhaps a larger back button would be the answer? Who knows?

I wish Jared, Firefox, and team the best of luck, Firefox is my favorite browser and I only want it to get better!

Think this was easy? Not only was it not easy, it was impossible. Their websites are down. I am telling you, here I sit, and several of these sites are down simulatenously. How is that possible?

As you read, keep in mind I took these screenshots all within 20 minutes of each other as I attempted to update my checking account.

AT&T Wireless, with revenues over $30 billion, cannot keep their site up

Time Warner Cable forgets the e-mail address linked to my account

I haven't changed this since I enrolled years and years ago. So why all of a sudden aren't they recognizing my e-mail? I can't re-register, because, guess what, I don't have my customer ID.

Paperless Billing=I don't know my account ID

Often companies ask for things like your customer account ID. But since I'm on paperless billing (which they know, and have known for years) how can I possibly know my customer ID? It's been 7 years since I ever saw a paper bill or my account ID.

Contact Us. Or Not.

In a final attempt to end the frustration of registering and logging in, I attempt to contact the company, in this case Manhattan Mini Storage to get this information so I can pay my bill. Think that's easy? You haven't been paying attention! The contact form asks for the same information I don't have. Please enter your customer ID number, e-mail, etc. to contact us. I don't have that!

So I finally find a form that doesn't ask for all this information, and click submit.

Guess what?

404 Page not Found. I kid you not!

It's like a sadistic game of catch 22. You don't have your account info, but you need it to get your... account info.