Yesterday, Darcy and I were testing something together and we had a chat box open. I can’t remember the last time Darcy and I “chatted”, but it’s been a long, long time. When we were chatting she said, something like, “we’ve kept Cloudeight going for 25 years, you know”.\u00a0 I guess, someplace deep inside I knew it was 25 years, but it still shocked me.<\/span><\/p>\n Darcy and I have seen the internet change so much in our 25 years of working together online. People used to make fun of us for being on the internet so much – but I can tell you this, neither Darcy nor I could stay away. I used to have to leave for my day job at 5:00 AM, so I’d be up at 3:00 AM to get on the internet. My best friend at the time, Jeff, (God rest his humorous soul), called me “Captain Internet”.<\/span><\/p>\n And I can still hear the squeals of the dial-up connecting and feel the anticipation of whether it would ever connect or not… and the satisfaction that came with my Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator browser FINALLY opening my home page – back then it was “Dave Central” a software download site where everything was free. I was up at 3:00 AM looking at all the new freeware Dave posted each day. Then I’ll tell Darcy all about it. I think she got a big kick out of my excitement of finding new, good, free stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n The internet was 99% free back then. Amazon was just starting to sell books and Yahoo was the web’s biggest (and worst) search engine. There were dozens of other search engines including Alta Vista (my favorite at the time), DogPile (really!), Ask Jeeves, and dozens more. Dozens were needed because none of them were very good. Back in those days, you had to know how to use more than one search engine or you’d never find what you were looking for.<\/span><\/p>\n Then Google eventually came along – becoming not only a search engine but a verb too.<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway, Darcy and I were chatting in a little chat box and that little chat box became a Niagara Falls of memories. Memories are wonderful things – but they can be painful too, especially when you factor in the “what ifs”. Twenty-five years ago Darcy met in a chatroom – one that Darcy and an erstwhile friend had created. Darcy was the boss – (and still thinks she is :))<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway, I don’t remember how I stumbled into that chatroom but I did and I was a troublemaker, and Darcy being the boss, gave me a lecture. But I think she liked my know-it-all, condescending attitude because she didn’t kick me out. Actually, she took me under her wing.<\/span><\/p>\n She had been on the internet longer than me, by then, in 1997 she had more than 3 years of exploring the web, compared to a year for me. I didn’t get my first Windows computer until 1996. It was Windows 95. And for all you folks who think Windows 10 or Windows 11 aren’t very good, I wish I could take you back to 1997 and let you sit in front of my Windows 95 computer with its 16 KB (KILOBYTES) of RAM and its internet connection of about 16 Kbps (Kilobits per second). And remind you of how I had to format it every two months or it wouldn’t boot. And then trying to get that rascal connected to the Internet after the format would take days… until I found a freeware program on Dave Central that would automatically configure the arcane Windows 95 internet settings.<\/span><\/p>\n Most of you who have been with us for more than a few years know the history of Cloudeight Stationery. But most of you don’t know is that Cloudeight was around before Cloudeight Stationery was born. We never started out to make money on the internet. We were just having fun and learning each day.<\/span><\/p>\n Darcy taught me a lot of things. She taught me how to use PaintShop Pro to make graphics, she taught me how to build websites. She even spent hours and hours of her time, making a complete website for one of my sons. She was the teacher and I was the student and sometimes her frustration and inspiration too, I think.<\/span><\/p>\n Darcy use to call me the “King of Search”. She would get frustrated when she couldn’t find something on the internet so she’d ask me to help; Little did she know that I had an armada of search engines bookmarked. I would spend hours and hours searching until I came up with whatever she was looking for.<\/span><\/p>\n In the autumn of 1997, we created the first Cloudeight site – but not under the name of Cloudeight – it was under the name of Thundercloud & Eightball then. Christmas Graphics. Little did we know where it would lead.<\/span><\/p>\n We’re not going to bore you with the details of the rise and fall of Cloudeight. At one time we were among the top 100 websites and had a newsletter with over a quarter-million subscribers. We were making stationery using the artwork of some of the world’s best contemporary artists – and with the artists’ permission, something the other stationery never did. <\/span><\/p>\n We rose to the top and who knows where we might have ended up if Microsoft, in 2007, removed Outlook Express\/Windows Mail from Windows and made all our scrolling, musical stationery, useless. We were decimated, our newsletters subscription base shrunk, and the income we worked so hard for dwindled.<\/span><\/p>\n Luckily, during our stationery heyday. back in 2001, we introduced our Cloudeight InfoAve computer tips & tricks newsletter and many of you who subscribe to our Daily and Weekly InfoAve newsletters came from our stationery newsletter -all those years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2011 we started Cloudeight Direct Computer Care – a remote computer care service that many of you have used. The sales of a couple of products and other services have helped to keep us going.<\/span><\/p>\n But really, the biggest source of income that has helped us keep the metaphorical doors open and lights on is your generosity and friendship. The individual gifts you give<\/a><\/span> and the gifts from those of you who have signed up to help us monthly<\/a><\/span> are the reason we’re still Cloudeight.<\/span><\/p>\n And because of your gifts, we have changed our policy of answering only the computer questions you send in that we intend to use in the newsletter – we answer every single question you send in. And if we can’t answer it, we’ll point you to someone who can. Instead of trying to sell you a Cloudeight Direct Computer Care repair key, we try to help you by answering your questions by email free of charge. We spend around 4 hours a day answering your questions and making screenshots, writing tutorials to help you with your computer.<\/span><\/p>\n Some may call that financially stupid. But we call it Cloudeight. And we’ve been around 25 years now and mostly because of your generosity and support. So to all of you who donate to help us, to all of you who have signed up for automatic monthly donations, thank you so <\/strong><\/span>much<\/strong>. Without you, we would not have been able to say…<\/span><\/p>\n 25 Years: What a Wild Ride!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Please Wait! Before you go\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Every week we help dozens of people with their computers without charge or any expectation of payment.\u00a0And we have helped many folks who have fallen for tech support scams or other scams designed to steal their money.<\/span><\/p>\n And we now depend more on readers like you to help keep us going. Your donation helps us to help more people with their computers and helps us keep everyone safer online.<\/span><\/p>\n Please help support our small business and help us to keep on helping you.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 25 Years: What a Ride! Yesterday, Darcy and I were testing something together and we had a chat box open. I can’t remember the last time Darcy and I “chatted”, but it’s been a long, long time. When we were chatting she said, something like, “we’ve kept Cloudeight going for 25 years, you know”.\u00a0 I guess,\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":[2071],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23158"}],"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=23158"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23172,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23158\/revisions\/23172"}],"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=23158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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