I just found my first-ever post to USENET. I was eight years old, not yet old enough to have grown out of AOL, and read the newsgroup of one of my favorite TV Show’s “Beakman’s World”. You’ll have to excuse my poor spelling and punctuation — this clearly was one of my first ‘Net experiences. So, thanks to Google Groups, I can now read my very first post.

It’s short, isn’t it? Notice how even then I had two email addresses. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t seem to have the message I was replying to.

I remember talking to my father about how the creators of a competing show, “Bill Nye: The Science Guy”, kept asking the newsgroup to explain what they liked so much about Beakman’s World. I remember being rather puzzled at the question, as it just seemed obvious to me that Beakman’s was better, even though I had no reason for that decision.

Later on, it seems I shared an account with my two brothers, who were looking for games and after that I started asking about DC-Nets (a question which I still haven’t gotten a good answer to).

Anyway, enough memories for one night.

Some of you might find the full text interesting. Here it is, for posterity:

From: aaronsw@aol.com (Aaron Sw) Newsgroups: alt.tv.beakmans-world Subject: Re: Alanna is a Brady Date: 3 Sep 1994 08:59:06 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 5 Sender: news@search01.news.aol.com Message-ID: <349ruq$eom@search01.news.aol.com> References: BPOSTOW.94Jul11120335@ringding.cs.umd.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: search01.news.aol.com

In article BPOSTOW.94Jul11120335@ringding.cs.umd.edu, bpostow@cs.umd.edu (Brian Postow) writes:

No on Sat morning Its The same as TLC Except At 10:30 I think Aaron Swartz,AaronSw@aol.com,aaronsw@mwc.com

posted February 07, 2002 12:46 AM (Personal) #

Nearby

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Plucky Headline Viewer for Mac
FBI: Illegal DVDs Fund Terrorism
Arrgh, pirates.
Moving to Movable Type
My First Usenet Post
Fancy Stats-Man
My First Drive
Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
The Decline and Fall of ArsDigita
My Flamboyant Grandson

Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)