Heh I mostly remember redialing BBSes waiting for the line to open so I could check for replies, play games, find other BBSes to call. It was all modem-to-modem and most BBS sysops only had one or 2 lines, with different phone numbers, so it was hard to connect. Also, as a teen, it was too expensive to dial long distance so I mostly just dialed into local boards. AmNet was an animal rights board. Wabbit Hole was my buddy Josh. We'd meet up IRL for beer (well those old enough had beer) and to trade software on floppies.

My first modem was 300 baud and looked like the one in War Games, with the rubber cups [1]. Upgraded to 1200 bps, then saved and got a 2400 bps so I could run my own BBS, called Digital Mind with ASCII art I made of a brain made of 1s and 0s. Everyone had a handle. I was Quince. Dunno why now.

LOVED IT.

Had a program for my Apple IIgs that dialed random numbers and recorded any that answered with a modem. Then later I'd dial up and try to get in.

My buddy, The Wabbit, had money and I remember in 1989 or so he started hosting an email node. I was so jelly I turned green.

Then I graduated HS, decided to major in art, ended up travelling a few years and missed a few milestones. Made my first HTML site in 1996 and got paid $1500. Man I thought I was the shit. Then 4 years later I get a gig for a drum company and encounter PHP for the first time. Whoa. This ain't like Pascal, baby! Haha.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem