joeware - never stop exploring... :)

I have temporarily disabled user registration. Some sort of automated process is out there registering hundreds of new accounts. I will re-enable it at some later point.

   joe

If my calculations are correct, and I am not saying that they actually are, that would be roughly how long ago it was that the joeware.net domain was spun up and opened for business. Ten years ago today.

May 29, 2001. That wasn’t when joeware was born, just the official joeware website. For years prior to that, I had a large number of personal type web sites that I maintained scripts and maps and other information from a game that I used to play back then called MajorMUD. MajorMud was a Multi-User Dungeon, sort of a Dungeons and Dragons kind of thing, World of Warcraft without all of the annoying distracting graphics… I played the game for about 2 weeks because of some coworkers back in 1994 and thought it was pretty cool. However, the developer in me didn’t like the boring tedium that most of the game consisted of and so I started writing SLIQ scripts for the QModem utility I used to dial up the BBS. I found writing those scripts was more fun than playing the actual game. I took the scripts, fight captures, and other information that I came up with and would post it to the website so others could enjoy it as well.  If there was truly ever a “starting” place for the joeware concept with the open sharing, those early websites were it. Just today I went looking out on the internet and still found some sites out there that still have my original scripts that I had posted, files all dating to 1996/1997 time frame. Some may recall I previously mentioned MajorMUD before on the blog, here are the links with some code examples:

http://blog.joeware.net/2008/06/19/1369/
http://blog.joeware.net/2008/06/19/1370/

Anyway, in August 1996 I took my first “big” administrator gig for a very large company and my MajorMUD game-time was reduced but I found a new love, writing tools for Windows 95/NT and OS/2 that were missing from the installation CDs that were obviously needed. This was done in REXX and PERL and C/C++. Some of the first tools I wrote (lgmod/lgenum) were the precursors for the LG.EXE utility I still have my website today because the remote viewing/manipulation of local groups was something that Microsoft never seemed to have thought was important for the NET.EXE tool, though their API easily supported it. A few years later I took my first (and last) steps into Open Source as well when I wrote and publicly published the source code for a tool for Windows 95 that could receive and display the messages sent out from Windows NT via “NET SEND”. I had that code published in December 1999 in the, hmmm what was it called back then, Windows NT Magazine? Windows 2000 Magazine? Not sure. Anyway, that is still out there for everyone’s enjoyment as well. Of course I realized the usefulness of these and many other tools I had written and they were all up on my site right next to the MajorMud scripts which back then were still the way more popular part of my site.

Anyone who had a website back then may recall that many ISPs were coming and going sometimes on a monthly basis which meant that your e-Connections through email and web URL could be lost in an instant. I had one company that I signed up with and barely got my website set up and email configured and they were already out of business. So I had to move my MajorMUD and pre-joeware tools from ISP to ISP to ISP. Finally, after moving no less than 15 times which also meant trying to help people find the new web URL to get to the tools no less than 15 times, I decided I was tired of constantly having to move everything AND republish the locations so I took some time and just figured out how you set up your own domain so you never had to tell people, hey, I have a new URL and new email address now…

Tada… as easy as Dotster could make it, the official joeware.net website was officially born. At the time, WWW.JOEWARE.NET was just a CNAME alias to my Earthlink personal account but never again would I have to say, hey my URL has changed… The opening image was there as it is now, the main page looked sort of like:

joeware?
Searching…. One entry found for joeware.
Main Entry: joe·ware
Pronunciation: ‘jO-"war
Function: noun
Date: 2000
: generally useful idea pulled out of the ether by joe: as a: script
and/or tool that makes the difficult easy; specifically: system
administration tools b: win32 command line tools that almost make UNIX
people think that there might be something to Windows after all c: the
tools that real win32 admins prefer to use

joeware is a term that was coined by some friends of mine based upon little c++ tools and scripts that always seem to fall out the back side of my computer. I am one of those people that actually believes that computers can be useful, they can actually make our lives and jobs easier when properly used. To put it another way, I am a technology guy who thinks we should use technology to be more effective.

 

Many of the tools that I wrote then are still on the current site and still just as, if not more, popular. Granted I am sure I could be much further along in a business type model if I had actively taken joeware in that direction, but it always has been more of a creative release, fun time, and let me help my fellow admins type thing versus this is how I will make my first million. That could be good, that could be bad, it’s too early to know, but at least it is reflective of me and makes me smile when I think of how many admins I have helped around the world which I consider to be most important.

Anyway, cheers to the first ten years of fun and cheers to the next ten years of fun!

    joe