Golden Oldie Text Files

Wow, now I remember why I archive things forever! I ended up re-discovering the “txt” directory on my computer. This has been there for as long as I remember… in fact, it started out as “D:\txt” back in the days when I had a whole 100 megabytes of storage and I split it into 2x50mb and used the D: drive as the storage drive (at least I think it’s back to then anyway). I filled up the txt directory with random snippets of stuff I found throughout the net. The directory has stayed with me through countless computer upgrades and has honestly and truely been around for a decade! So maybe now if someone needs my geek cred I just need to whip out my archived txt dump of my Microsoft Mail (before it was outlook I think, just a lonely “mail” icon sitting on with windows 95 desktop) archives from 1996 🙂

I’ll make a full page for this stuff, but as a teaser, here’s a few golden oldies:


  • net.rum – classic stories from computer technology that I found in a file on usenet or some such. Looks like it was created from email messages around 1989/1990 to various newsgroups.
  • Top-Ten – top 10 signs bill gates is worried about linux… this was posted around the time that windows 95 was released (or in the year between when it was supposed to be released and when it actually was). Linux nerdery at it’s best.
  • unixfool.txt – Creators admit Unix, C a Hoax.
  • unixwiz.txt – Fred apparently forwarded this to me 11 years ago – how to tell your different types of unix hackers. Unsurprisingly still accurate 🙂

That’s all for now. If people are interested, I’ll post a full directory of these, or at least once they are scrubbed for any incriminating evidence 🙂 There is the potential for a lot of very embarrassing files, messages, and screen captures (from back when screen cap meant “log text to a log file”) that may make some good friends of mine blush just as badly as myself 🙂