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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 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 not be around anymore. <\/span><\/p>\n She\u2019s a fighter and she 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 great ideas too – like Cloudeight Direct, just to mention one.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Her birthday is July 30th. What I wish the most for her birthday is that all her dreams come true.<\/span><\/p>\n You don\u2019t know this, but she used to own a bar, and that\u2019s where I met her – in a bar. The bar was called Michigan^Tavern. Honest! I stumbled into her bar and started fighting with her right away (and that is the TRUTH!). <\/span><\/p>\n For some reason, despite my arrogance and contentiousness, 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. <\/span><\/p>\n I showed it to Darcy. Rather than telling me that it looked like a pile of garbage she redid the entire site for me\u2014 she took the time to make the first website I ever made look great! This was back when she barely knew me and didn\u2019t know my son at all.\u00a0 What she did with the junky-looking website was amazing \u2014 yet 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 websites and creating graphics, we collaborated on and 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’s Christmas Graphics created in Autumn 1998. This was the beginning of Cloudeight<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n We both worked other jobs back then. Every day, whoever got home first would check the visitor counter on the website to see how many people had visited that day. I can remember the day we got fifty visits and we were sure we were on our way to Web stardom \u2014 ha! But there\u2019s something beautiful about naivete. The excitement of having fifty visitors encouraged us, kept us going, and we kept working together.<\/span><\/p>\n Then one fateful day, Darcy 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. <\/span><\/p>\n It did not take long, and we figured it out, and we started designing and making stationery. It was then that we created Cloudeight Stationery, and it became wildly popular \u2014 at our peak, we were getting three 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><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Above: The Cloudeight Stationery \u201cVisions\u201d Stationery Collection for Outlook Express \u2013 October 18, 1999.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n We loved our new business, and we were so excited when we were working together 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 website visitors. Cloudeight Stationery grew and grew \u2013 and Cloudeight became a business and our life’s work too.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2002, we started Information Avenue and later InfoAve Premium (now called InfoAve Weekly) to pass along some of the computer tricks and tips we had learned over the years. It\u2019s a good thing we did, because when Microsoft introduced Windows 7, it had no email program; therefore, Windows 7 users couldn\u2019t use our scrolling musical stationery. We could see the future, and it didn’t look bright. Scrolling, musical stationery was our bread and butter. We had to reinvent Cloudeight completely, and trying to keep our small business afloat became (and still is) a continuous struggle.<\/span><\/p>\n I do not doubt that if it weren\u2019t for Darcy\u2019s kindness and caring, we\u2019d have gone belly-up many years ago. But she never gave up and we came up with some other ideas, and. as you can see, we\u2019re still around. <\/span><\/p>\n Cloudeight Direct Computer Care was her idea, not mine, and it has helped us keep our small business going. And just as importantly, it has helped us get to know many of the folks who helped us through some very dark days.<\/span><\/p>\n Our Cloudeight friends also help support us with donations, and we sure appreciate it!<\/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, and sometimes belligerent nature, she has always been able to see beyond 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.<\/span><\/p>\n Darcy and I have had our difficulties. 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, no doubt, she\u2019s your friend too.<\/span><\/p>\n She\u2019s the best partner and friend anyone could have. I poke fun at her in many of our newsletters, and she laughs along with everyone else. I am incredibly lucky to have her as my partner, but I\u2019m even luckier to have her as my friend.<\/span><\/p>\n Help me wish Darcy a very Happy Birthday!<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Help Me Wish Darcy a Very Happy Birthday! Some of you know her as EB, some of you know her as Darcy, and most of you know she\u2019s a 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\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30574"}],"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=30574"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30576,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30574\/revisions\/30576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30574"}],"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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