Category: Life

I confess I never used AOL. But there is no denying it was huge. It was a key gateway for a lot of people to access the Internet in the early days of its existence. Talk about a major A-OL.

The biggest reason it was so huge? They had this crazy idea to manufacture CDs by the millions (loaded with their installation software) and mail them to everyone in the US! Did you know there is a group of people who collect these discs now?

I just did some checking and found some mind-blowing stats showing just how big AOL was in its prime.

AOL mailed 660 million disks during this promotional deluge. Keep in mind the population of the US was around 260 million at the time. That is almost 3 discs per person, not just per household!

Now stay with me here, this is where it gets fun. I am saying that way before Netflix, AOL was shipping discs to every city, every street, and every person in the US. No wonder Netflix knew it could be done! They watched AOL do it for years.

At the height of its DVD service, Netflix had almost 20 million customers and 40-50 million discs in its catalog. AOL did it bigger. They had 26 million US customers and hundreds of millions of discs in circulation.

Don’t forget we also had the BMG Music and Columbia House mail-order music clubs around that time. You could get 12 music CDs for the price of one! So did AOL ship more discs than BMG and Columbia House too?

Digging around, it seems the music clubs (BMG and Columbia House) are estimated to have shipped over a billion CDs in their heyday. (Interestingly, I also read that they didn’t properly license the music they were selling until 2006. Ripping off the musician, no real shocker there.) So all told, they rivaled or perhaps surpassed AOL’s reach in terms of discs delivered.

With this info, it seems my old hunch about the post office is clear. In the late 90s, the mail carrier’s job was little more than transporting shiny discs from place to place.

Phrases overheard when computer shopping in the 1990s:

• Get the cool beige one!
• Make sure it can boot into MS-DOS.
• Floppy or hard?
• Bring friends. One to carry the monitor. Another to carry the CPU. Third to carry the cables to connect the two.
• Comes with the entire catalogue of recorded music aka has CD burner and Napster installed.
• Free mousepad.

I’m sure most of you zillionaires out there have taco Tuesday on your menu. It’s one of my favorite dishes. I only like Old El Paso seasoning. The kit comes with either soft or hard shells and a taco sauce to accompany the meat. My only beef is you can’t buy the seasoning separate in my grocery store nearby. You have to purchase the entire box to enjoy the delicious MSG soaked seasoning. You can settle for Ortega but I find the flavor is a little off. By no means is it bad but I just prefer Old El Paso. However their soft tortillas are mediocre next to Mission brand’s tortillas.  Sometimes I splurge and I buy the Old El Paso kit and mission tortillas on the side. The best combo is an Old El Paso taco kit, Mission brand soft tortillas, fresh chopped lettuce, grated cheddar cheese and wait for it…sour cream by Breakstone. Now that’s my kind of a’meat and potatoes’ taco night.

Remember prop comics like Carrot Top or Gallagher? I have no idea why they get such a bad rap. Sure, if you think of them as comedians with a bunch of zany ideas, maybe I see your point. But if you reverse it… They are inventors with a sense of humor! Now you understand why I think they are underrated!

Seeing Carrot Top’s act is like watching Seinfeld pitch 30 products in a row on Shark Tank. The prop comic’s job is to show you a series of practical items in rapid-fire succession that make you say “Why didn’t I think of that?”

And all these life hack bloggers and YouTubers owe their entire genre to the prop comics. The prop comics were the first ones who recognized we could modify off-the-shelf products to better suit our needs and purposes. DIY would be SOL without PROPS.

To prove this lineage, will you play my little game?

Prop Comic Gag or Crazy Russian Hacker Video

1. Russian Toothpaste
2. Slippers You Can’t Stub Your Toe In
3. Shoes You Never Will Outgrow
4. Fastest Potato Peeler
5. Back-saving Toilet Seat

Answer Key: 1. CRH 2. PCG 3. PCG 4. CRH 5. PCG

Team,

With the recent relaunch of the website, it is critical that we all change passwords and conform to the new Password Policy.  What you see above is the old policy, which was considered highly secure in 2005.  Eleven years and an unknown number of security breaches later, we have lost zillions of dollars in expected revenue.  That changes now.

The new password policy goes into effect immediately.  Please change your password at your next login and be sure it conforms to the following requirements:

• Password must be at least 38 characters long
• Password must be an illegal play in Scrabble
• Password must contain a prime number greater than 997
• Password must contain two letters from a foreign alphabet (eg. ñ or ø)
• Password must contain a symbol of foreign currency (eg. â‚¡)
• Password must contain the name of a South American mountain range
• Password must not contain your first or last name
• Password must not contain the names of any spouses, ex-girlfriends, hookups, etc. It’s all on file.  We will be checking.
• Password must not be longer than 22 characters
• Password must be changed weekly

Thank you for your cooperation.

 

*That is an actual screen grab from my job