You'll probably find this very boring, but this is how my homepage evolved into it's current form. As I said earlier, this pageis likey to bore you to tears. :)

Early to Mid 1994: I was using Netcom as an ISP, in the pre-graphical days of the Internet. SLIP and/or PPP accounts did exist at the time, but they were terribly expensive and there were almost no Internet Applications for Windows anyway. (Certainly not as many as today.) I had a Unix shell account and used UNIX apps to do everything. One day as I was reading thru UseNet, I noticed a web address in someone's sig.. I thought, "What the hell are those, anyway? I'm starting to see them a lot." .. I pulled out my handy book on the Internet, "The Internet Navigator" (absolutely no relation to Netscape or Netscape's product) and checked it out. Surprisingly, it had a small blurb about Lynx, Unix's (non-graphical) web browser. I loaded Lynx up on my shell and began surfing the web for the first time. At this point, the web wasn't all that new (it'd been around in one form or another since 1990), but it was very under-developed. At the time, I knew of no search engines (although, some probably existed) and could only goto links listed on people's homepages. At this point, I discovered an interesting little program called The Internet Adaptor, or TIA. It allowed you to "convert" your shell account into a SLIP account! I don't understand exactly how it did it, but it worked. I was able to use Netscape (albeit, an early version 1 Netscape) and Eudora and FTP from Windows. I was very excited. The first thing I decided to do was make a Homepage for myself. This is where I ran into a glitch. As I looked thru Netcom's help files, I stumbled upon a question about homepages, and Netcom said, "Netcom does not run an HTTP server, and has no plans to at anytime in the future." (Do they run an HTTP server now? I'd assume so, since I imagine a lot of users would leave if they didn't.. I've never checked, tho.) Anyway, Netcom was nice enough to give you a "workaround" solution.. you could get an FTP site setup (which I'd done months earlier), and then put your HTML files there. So, I got an HTML tutorial (Bare Bones Guide to HTML.. a very good resource, even today. The basics of HTML have not changed in the past 3.5 years.) and quickly wrote out my first homepage. The address, however, looked very funky.. something like: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/users/st/streeves/home.html ... very annoying to type out.. but I had a homepage! It had one scanned B&W picture of me on it, some text, and maybe 2 subpages. It was called something incredibly unoriginal ("Steve Reeves's Homepage" or some such name) and was pretty crappy, even by 1994 standards.

September, 1995: My next big step in homepage was September of 1995. I dropped Netcom because they couldn't hold a connection for more than about 45 minutes, and went over to Net Access. They provided me with a SLIP account for less than the Unix Shell I had at Netcom. Around this point, the Internet was just starting it's "popularity boom." and I found out about a search engine, Yahoo! ... at this point, I had access to a decent scanner, and started scanning in all sorts of stuff for my homepage. Most of it was erased by accident and never made it onto any of my homepages. Net Access had a Web Server, and I quickly set up my 2nd homepage, which looked very similar to my first, except I was using a color scanned picture of me. (one of the few scans which weren't erased.. I still have it today.) This page was when I upgraded to a version 2 of Netscape and discovered backgrounds. I used some horrible, awful colored background and you could barely read the text on my page, because I didn't yet know it was possible to change text colors. My page was still pretty crappy, but at least it loaded faster than my Netcom homepage.

January, 1996: I was still getting my Internet Access from Net Access, but re-did my page so it was very much more readable. I included a few more graphics (most notably I replaced the standard hr tag with a graphical JPG) and my page was starting to look semi-okay .. I learned about text colors and changed them so they were readable against my more subdued background. (My Links page still suffered from the bad background problem, tho.) This was the homepage where I started using some more humour and started putting Food in the title. The official name of this page was "Dormammu's Homepage and Salad Spinner" .. and I cracked jokes about sausages and golf courses whenever I had a Links section. This was the first page I had that included a Counter. Overall, the page was now average by 1995 standards.

Mid to Late 1996: Net Access closed my account over a misunderstanding, that I could not resolve despite a phone call to the higher ups in the company. (Left messages -- not a single call was ever returned by anyone at Net Access.) After this, I decided if they wouldn't even return a call, I didn't want an account at Net Access. (which was good, since I didn't have one anymore :> ) I now had several ISPs to chose from, and at this point, Erols had not expanded to Philadelphia yet. I ultimately decided on Voicenet, even though they were slightly more expensive then Net Access was. ($22.95/month for PPP access + Shell Account, they dropped it to $19.95/month after I'de been there about 5 months) I grabbed my old Homepage source code off of NetAxs's server (strangely, my homepage was still up on Net Access for over a year after they closed my account.. they finally erased all my files after a very long time.) and quickly designed a page called "Dormammu's Recycled Homepage and 3 week old Roast Beef Sandwich" which was just my NetAccess homepage with the link addresses for subpages changed to the new address, and a few other minor changes. This page was never even so much as uploaded, so I don't really count it. I did an entirely new page and called it, "Dormammu's New Homepage and Cappuchino Machine" .. and the only thing noteable about the page was that it got me several e-mails saying I misspelled Cappuchino.. one of the emails was even a flame over my bad spelling! It was the first unsolicited flame I'd ever gotten. (Yes, I admit it.. on occasion, I've gone trolling for flames on Usenet or IRC... after you get flamed 5 or 6 times, you suddenly realize getting flames wasn't as much fun as you thought it'd be.) At this point, I was running out of ideas, so I just let my homepage sit there, and then I struck upon an idea. Back at Netcom, before the Web was really well known, I ran a nice little FTP site with about 35 JPG's of various models. Why not re-create my Model Archive? I decided to, and thus Dormammu's Page O' Models was born! It wasn't very good at first.. and, I must admit, I knew nothing about handling a graphic intensive web site, as up to this point, my pages had had maybe 3 graphics on them at most. On my model page, I basically took a page and stuck about 15 img src tags on it and called it a Model Page. Apparently no one else knew my page was a piece of shit either, as I was getting about 50 hits a day. (My personal homepage got 8 hits a week if I was really lucky) After about 2 months, I revised the homepage so it was semi-useable. First, I divided all my pages up into sub-pages, so I had a page for Kathy Ireland, Cindy Crawford, Elle McPherson, etc, etc. Second, I used HEIGHT and WIDTH tags, which helped quite a bit when loading. The page stayed up for quite a while, but eventually went down and moved to Pro Hosting which was a free web hosting site that gave you 50 megs of space. However, this didn't last long, as ProHosting must have not liked my content, as my web page disappeared after about 3 weeks and any e-mail I sent to ProHosting over the matter was met with an automatic reply basically saying, "This is a free service. Fuck you if you want support." (except they said it nicely and without the cursing.) So the Model Web Page is not currently up anywhere, and I was in desperate need of hard drive space a while back, and had to delete my model pictures... so, the Model page may come back eventually, but I'd need to collect pictures all over again from scratch. My personal homepage also went thru various changes, and has also been called, "Dormammu's Homepage and Grilled Cheese Sandwhich" as well as "Dormammu's Froopy Homepage and Wide Slice Toaster" .. but these changes were minor, and I consider it all to be just one "incarnation" of my page. I did add one feature in 1997 which proved to be incredibly popular with those who saw it.. my "Observation Page" where I talked about what happened during my day, and tried to make it sound humourous... I started off the page trying to sound like some strange mixture of Dave Barry, Howard Stern, Jerry Seinfeld and Monty Python. Those are 4 totally, entirely and wholly different comedy styles. I gave up the Monty Python aspect when I realized I couldn't even hope to match the genius of their material, but am still trying to be humourous as best I can.. btw, the page ends up sounding a little bit like Stern, Seinfeld and Barry, but not enough like any of them for you to say, "He's ripping them off!" I guess I've found my own comedy style.

March, 1998: Ah yes, we're to the present, with this.. my 5th incarnation of a homepage which has been around in form or another since 1994. I got a second account at Erol's, and don't use the Voicenet account for much except getting massively large amounts of e-mail from a mailing list, and maintain my old personal homepage as well as a few others. And we're up to the newest page.. "Dormammu's Homepage and Waffle Iron" .. it's still being worked on, so I don't really have anything to say about it, other than it'll probably be very similar to my Voicenet page, minus the background JPGs. I intend to eventually bring back my observation page, however.