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Some of you know her as EB, some of you know her as Darcy, and most of you know she\u2019s a pretty special lady. She is the one who makes sure that everyone who writes gets an answer, every order gets filled, and everyone with a computer problem who has a Cloudeight Direct service key gets scheduled. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Without her, Cloudeight would probably not be around anymore. <\/span><\/p>\n She\u2019s a fighter and she really cares. She’s the one who takes the ideas I come up with and makes them work. My head\u2019s always in the clouds \u2014 which is why we are called Cloudeight\u2026not really. She makes this our business and our site work. And she comes up with some pretty great ideas too – like Cloudeight Direct, just to mention one.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Her birthday is next Thursday – July 30. That’s less than a week away.\u00a0 I wish most for her birthday is that all her dreams come true.<\/span><\/p>\n You probably don\u2019t know this but she used to own a bar, and that\u2019s where I met her. The bar was called Michigan^Tavern. Honest! I stumbled into her bar and starting fighting with her right way (it\u2019s true). <\/span><\/p>\n For some reason, in spite of my arrogance and contentious nature, she became my friend. I was a helpless nerd who knew almost nothing about computers back then. My son was in a rock and roll band \u2014 and I made him the world\u2019s worst website, but I was proud of it. I showed it to Darcy. Rather than telling me it looked like a pile of junk she redid the entire site \u2014 she took her time to make the first web site I ever made look great \u2014 and she barely knew me and didn\u2019t know my son at all.\u00a0 What she did with the junky looking site I made was amazing \u2014 but she never took any credit for re-doing it and making it look nice.<\/span><\/p>\n The year was 1997 and the bar Michigan^Tavern was virtual \u2014 it was a chatroom that EB and some of her friends had created. So we met in a virtual saloon and it was there that Cloudeight was born.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1998, after she took me under her wing and taught me a lot about making web sites and creating graphics…\u00a0 we created the first Cloudeight site. It was called \u201cThundercloud and Eightball\u2019s Christmas Graphics and you can still see it here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Above: A screenshot of Eightball & ThunderCloud\u2019s Christmas Graphics created Autumn 1998. This was the beginning of Cloudeight<\/span><\/p>\n We both use to work other jobs back then. Every day whoever got home first would check the visitor counter on the site to see how many people had visited that day. I can remember the day we got 50 visits and we were sure we were on our way to Web stardom \u2014 ha! \u2014 but there\u2019s something beautiful about naivete. \u00a0The excitement of having 50 visitors encouraged us and we kept working together.<\/span><\/p>\n One day, EB sent me an email with a scrolling background \u2014 and it had music playing. I thought she was magic! \u201cHow did you do that?\u201d , I asked. We figured it out and started making stationery. It was then we created Cloudeight Stationery and it became wildly popular \u2014 at our peak, we were getting 3 million visitors a year and our stationery became the most famous stationery on the Web.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Above… a screenshot of Cloudeight Stationery, May 8, 1999.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Above: The Cloudeight Stationery \u201cVisions\u201d Stationery Collection for Outlook Express \u2013 October 18, 1999.<\/span><\/p>\n We loved our new business and we were so excited when we were working on a new stationery collection. We\u2019d show each other what we had designed and couldn\u2019t wait to release it to our subscribers and visitors. Cloudeight Stationery grew and grew \u2013 and Cloudeight became a business and our only job.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2002 we started Information Avenue and later InfoAve Premium to pass along some of the computer tricks and tips we learned over the years. It\u2019s a good thing we did because when Microsoft introduced Windows 7, it had no email program and therefore Windows 7 users couldn\u2019t use our scrolling \/ musical stationery… and that was our bread and butter. We had to completely reinvent Cloudeight and staying in business became a continuous struggle.<\/span><\/p>\n I have no doubt that if it weren\u2019t for Darcy\u2019s kindness and caring, we\u2019d have gone belly-up several years ago. She never gave up and we came up with some other ideas and. as you can see,\u00a0 we\u2019re still around. <\/span><\/p>\n Cloudeight Direct Computer Care was her idea, not mine, and it really has helped us keep our small business going. And just as importantly it really helped us get to know many of the folks who helped us through some very dark days.<\/span><\/p>\n Whether you know her as Darcy or EB, she\u2019s quite a lady and I\u2019ve always felt lucky that, despite my cantankerous, contentious, belligerent nature, \u00a0she has always been able to see through all of that and saw a different part of me \u2014 the part I never show the world \u2014 the compassionate, generous, gentle part. <\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019ve been friends since I walked into her virtual saloon and I\u2019m a better person for it. And any of you who have had the chance to know her are blessed too. She\u2019s one in a billion and we\u2019re all lucky to know her.<\/span><\/p>\n Darcy and I have had our ups and downs. We\u2019ve been partners for over two decades. She\u2019s always been the one I\u2019ve counted on when things weren\u2019t going so well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She is my partner, she is my friend \u2013 and if you\u2019ve ever had any dealings with Darcy, then she\u2019s probably your friend too.<\/span><\/p>\n She\u2019s the best partner and friend anyone could ever have. I poke fun at her in almost every newsletter, and she laughs along with everyone else. She\u2019s a great person, a great lady, and I know I am very lucky to have her as my partner, but I\u2019m even luckier to have her as my friend<\/span><\/p>\n Please help me wish Darcy a very Happy Birthday!<\/span><\/p>\n Happy Birthday, Darcy! May all your dreams come true\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happy Birthday Darcy: My partner and my friend Some of you know her as EB, some of you know her as Darcy, and most of you know she\u2019s a pretty special lady. She is the one who makes sure that everyone who writes gets an answer, every order gets filled, and everyone with a computer problem\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[3996],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19751"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19753,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19751\/revisions\/19753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"TC](\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2015\/cloudeight-christmas1997.png\")
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