IT History

http://www.geocities.com

November 1995 to October 1996
Cut teeth, learning first HTML code using text editor in earliest days of fledgling GeoCities hosting company (later owned, then shut down by Yahoo.com), creating several highly original pages and sites using groundbreaking Second Wave HTML technology, catching the eye and confidence of early surfers and fellow designers among friends. One of the first to implement animated GIFs and dynamic image mapping in unique ways in an era when bandwidth conservation and stylistic limitations were the clever designer’s achilles heel.

Remote Hosting During Early Hosting Wars

October 1996 to November 1998
Registered several personal domains, began building sites, and accepted first professional clients, designing sites and hosting them remotely, including several that were hosted and maintained on our own SDSL-powered webservers.

Power Macintosh System 9.1 running WebStar 4.4

November 1998 to July 2004
Helped configure, then troubleshoot for long problematic months first ISDN, then ASDL lines into home studio, suffering the early differentials between promises and delivery of the early versions of broadband service. Configured Macintosh web server, mail server, listserv, DNS, web crawler, indexer, and bulletin board solutions across three slave machines. Shifted personal and professional clients in-house, constantly updating and reworking these sites. Work included web design, hostmaster, network administrator, webmaster, design and maintenance of several personal and corporate websites on the Macintosh platform, Mac OS tutor and troubleshooter with experience dating back to 1988. Limited experience with Windows OS, made only necessary in studying platform and browser issues. Pulled plug on all hosting operations in 2004.

OR, seeking my own small but comfortable niche while watching the big money gangs grapple for turf, gold, and way too much excitement to be legal before the bubble burst, gagging on the reality that the expense and time consumption of technology was galloping onward as my own skills and fiscal rewards dwindled, in a case of too small to matter. It was time to retool.

Early pioneer of the Amazon.com affiliate program; made several thousand dollars per quarter in referral fees in the late 90s before considerable dropoff due to Amazon’s own name recognition threshold. Have established several online stores for clients, solid researcher, and a general asset to whomever whenever the conversation drifts towards the quarrels and resolutions of our Information Age technology.

Have launched and maintained more than a half-dozen blogs still active, including muscle-twitching political, religious, art, and literary criticism. These blogs are all nested within this website—The Scenewash Project—showcasing the many strains and burdens (passions and enthusiasm?) of one Gabriel Thy, now old enough to feel the years grinding the gears of his own fears and nervous system in search for honest work to exchange for honest pay.