aab
QuIX is the Quasi-Indefatigable Xenolith!

Once, long ago in 1979, I visited my first computerized bulletin 
board system, or CBBS, at the ripe age of twelve years.  I was 
working with an adult friend's home-brewed 8080-based S100 
computer, complete with 8" disk drives, an old security monitor, 
and a *VERY* expensive 300 baud S100 modem card.  I was instantly 
hooked.

I ultimately put together my own computer system that could call 
other systems by 1982 (a TI 99/4 with a modem), but that wasn't 
enough.  I wanted to actually run my own CBBS!

In about 1988, I finally built a computer that could realistically
run a decent CBBS.  It ran the old CP/M operating system and I 
took my rare spare time from college and wife to put together a 
very rudimentary CBBS.  It could not begin to compare with other 
local options, so I had to bide my time.

In 1997, my mother finally tired of my CP/M workhorse and gave me 
her 486 PC.  I now had a computer and modem setup that could be 
a real CBBS, but I had another problem:  I needed another phone 
line.  I was just too cheap.  Then came the wonder of distinctive 
ring to but it was already 1999 and no one wanted to call a CBBS 
anymore.

Although I have moved my efforts to the Internet, I still
ocassionally throw up a dial-up CBBS just to show myself that I
still can.

                       *** The Name ***

In 1995, I had moved to Quay County, New Mexico, USA and most of 
my subsequent BBSs had been called the Quay Information eXchange 
or QuIX.  When I started my website on the ubiquitous free 
webspace that was available in the late 1990s, the name stuck.

In 2001, a contract job provided me a high-speed Internet 
connection and I immediately set up my own Linux server and began 
hosting my own site and registered the name "quix.us" to simplify 
accessing the new Quay Information eXchange.

In 2004, with all the contracts gone, I still had five years on my 
registration of the "quix.us" name, but I didn't really feel too 
attached to the name "Quay Information eXchange" and its local 
assumption.  I looked up the letters Q, I, and X in a dictionary 
and came up with Quasi-Indefatigable Xenolith, which describes 
both myself and what the website was becoming:  somewhat 
relentlessly different.

The change from a website to a part of Gopherspace in 2005 may be 
called a devolution, as Gopher servers were declared obsolete in 
the mid 1990s.  My first experience with the Internet was as a 
technology teacher at an alternative high school in 1992, showing 
kids how to find things that were published on Gopher servers.  
QuIX.us now takes me back to my roots, while also providing a 
simpler and more organized way to publish on the Internet.


0