The Definitive Guide to schow
After twelve years, I’m leaving MacNexus and the schow@macnexus.org email address.
Long story short, don’t skimp on hosting services if you are a business. Don’t go for the cheap services like GoDaddy and Bluehost. They’re crap. You get what you pay for. They don’t actually expect you to use it. Once you do, they’ll start crippling everything. If you do end up going with them, don’t act like you’re just following their orders. You’re their damn customer. Take your business elsewhere, and don’t screw your customers because you’ve made a mistake. And above all, don’t act like you know what you’re doing when you really don’t.
My new email address will be schow at alumni dot rutgers dot edu. This will reflect the refinement, knowledge, and character building I received at one of the oldest and most prestigious educational institutions in the world. Yup.
Since I’ve used schow@macnexus.org for about ten years, I thought it would be good to look back on my old email addresses.
1992-1996: chow@ccvax.ccs.csus.edu
This was my first email address. I still love it dearly. It was on the old VAX mainframe of CSUS. This was before email addresses were handed out to everyone. I had to petition the head of the Economics department to get it. Luckily he was also my advisor. I think I put “undergraduate research” as the reason. In reality, I used it to download games and fonts from ftp://archive.umich.edu and post on sports usenet groups. What’s awesome is if you search "ccvax.ccs.csus.edu" on Google this site is the first result.
1996-1997: chow@csus.edu
Around ‘95 or so, CSUS rolled out a new unix server, saclink, and gave everyone accounts on it. The VAX machine was getting locked down and you actually had to be in the CS department and have a good reason to be on it. The writing was on the wall for me. The actual user names were hideous. It was like sac12345@saclink.edu, but shortly after they rolled out, you can register for an alias much like Facebook’s landrush last month. Yes, it was exactly like it. I was given something like sac14193, but I quickly registered the alias “chow@csus.edu.” Still, I didn’t use it. I didn’t like the short “@csus.edu” nonsense. Saying “chow@ccvax.ccs.csus.edu” took effort. Four syllables, four syllables, three syllables, four syllables, and three syllables. It was rhythmic, poetic, and beautiful. In 1996, I was forced to use the saclink account when the CS department dragged me kicking and screaming off the VAX machine. I eventually appreciated the simplicity and balance of chow@csus.edu. Just look at it. So compact, so minimal.
1997-1999: shu_chow@bbs.macnexus.org
When I left CSUS, they eventually found out I was leaching dialup access and booted me. I had to find another provider. I was spoiled with the power and prestige of a .edu address. I vomited at the thought of using AOL, or CompuServe, or anything that would relegate me to a .com domain. I asked around. A friend and another Mac user introduced me to MacNexus, Sacramento’s Macintosh user group. They originally had a BBS with an email gateway and all the member accounts were on that machine.
1999-2009: schow@macnexus.org
About a couple of years after I joined, MacNexus got rid of their BBS machine and migrated everyone to a real server. I got transferred to this one, which was based on my user name. As technology marched forward, I dumped MacNexus dialup for DSL but stayed with them for email continuity. I truly envisioned using schow@macnexus.org for as long as they were around. Eventually, I got tired of getting dicked around by them and bluehost. All I wanted to do was to actually, you know, use email. Oh well.
2009+: schow at alumni dot rutgers dot edu
With this address, I finally return to the .edu domain. It’s actually just a forwarding address, so the email isn’t hosted at Rutgers. I have it forwarding to a gmail account. Since it’s forwarding, I’ll hopefully be inoculated against host mess ups, and be able to use this one forever.
Honorable mentions:
shu_chow@educaid.com: Educaid work email (1997-2001)
shuch@vsp.com: VSP work email (2001-2005). VSP uses the most ridiculous convention for their systems. First four letters of your first name followed by the first two letters of your last name. It’s nonsense and you feel silly when you go out and give your address to the public.
schow at eden dot rutgers dot edu: My current student account. I wonder how long it will be before they yank it.
