Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Mike Sweeter

Sioux Falls, SD

I think I joined around 2003, been checkin' it pretty much daily since then.

Duane Hancock, my screen name hides my real one well...lol... Bryan Ohio

Since 98 or 99 i believe.

Life's short, race hard!!!

Jeff Wesell

Hartford, WI

1997

Jeff Wesell
Hartford, WI

Terry Gray was here re-building an engine back in 1997 and asked my dad and I about it which we never heard about it. He called his sister Kathy to get the address for the site. Seemed like it was a mile long to type it in but we got it. Been here ever since.

Curt, I remember the AOL chatroom back in the day

Stan, you just answered the trivia I asked. The Openwheel Wizard messageboard was a great place, even Sammy posted there a few times. The moderator was Eric Guttormson who had a hand in the JRG Media website, that hosted the message forum.

Here is a blast from the past that is archived in the later stages...

http://web.archive.org/web/19980118124256/www.tjslideways.com/scripts/messager/ldisplay.pl?wizard

Member of this message board since 1997

I remember the plane crash. The helmet dryer, and how anyone with the name of Duane must be stupid or something like that. I remember the days when Hoseheads was a site hosted on a free account, and had to be moved here because it was getting too big. Can not remember the old address anymore though.

The old open wheel wizard was a blast. What was the deal with people using their real names back then anyway? Sheesh. LOL. The old AOL sprint car forums with Patty, Brad, Traci, and a whole host of others. The SOTD. Beadie. God, what else can we drag up, LMAO.

Mibgets rocked. JRG Media, I have not heard that name in a while.

Duane Turner
Morrice, MI
1996, maybe 97?

John Foust, Lima, Oh., Around 10 yrs., Don't post as much any more just read. Met alot of decent people from all over that I probably would'nt have if not for the get togethers.

Speedbump, originally Dubuque Iowa but now somewhere between Morrison and Idledale Colorado.

I was another transit from the Open Wheel Wizard.

It's hard for people who have only been online for a short time to relate to 14.4 dialup modems, limited graphics and multimedia. It was a time when even some large companies still hadn't recognized the benefits of establishing a presence on the web. Now the internet is a daily tool for most people but back then it was still considered more of a novelty as computers still had 486 processors and hardly any memory or storage space. To be part of the online racing community back then one had to be part computer geek and part racing fan because not many who weren't familiar with computers had gotten online. It was cool to get in on the ground floor of something that has become so big since then.

I think I was supposed to say what part of the country I'm from in my original post and I forgot to do that. I live in Forest Lake, Minnesota, which is approximately 25 miles north of the Twin Cities.

Stan Meissner

Time flys when you are having fun....There weren't many websites back then. CA had NARC, Steve Lafond, Chuck Fry's Sprint Car Page. Jeff Brown's Central PA site, Bronco's Dirt Trackin site in PA. The OW Wizard and TJ's site. I remember going on TJ's chat room and telling him about my new site.

My original address was http://www.epix.net/~hosehead

It sure was different back then. Not everyone had a computer and not everyone with computers was on the internet.

 "We have met the enemy and he is us." 

Brad Brown - Lincoln, NE.....Not sure how long I've been here but almost from the beginning.

www.ibracn.com
#PaulsToTheWall
GO SAMMY!

Mike Whitworth Tuttle, Oklahoma. Formely from Chillicothe, Ohio. A couple of years

A 14.4 modem??? You were late in the game!

My first machine:

DX 33mhz Processor

250 MB Hard Drive ($300)

4MB Memory ($125 a meg)

512k VGA Video card

2400 Baud modem

5 1/4" Floppy Drive

3.5" Floppy Drive

14" VGA Monitor

HP Deskjet 500 printer (B/W)

I spent just under $4000 to build this computer in 1993. The internet was mainly just text. The big thing at the time was dialing into local bulletin boards where you could post things, but it was primaily used for cheesy little games.

Who here remembers having to use WinSock to dial into the internet???? Talk about a pain in the ass!!!!

Member of this message board since 1997

Jason Ray. Bucyrus, Ohio. I've only been posting for a few years. I used to come in and read the board for a couple of years before I decided to join in. I've only met a couple of people that post in here. Swamp and Coach Bob.

...

What has happened to Coach Bob, COACH!

Mike Sweeton - Joplin, MO

Although I didn't post here much early on, have been checking it everyday since the start. Some of you guys are digging pretty deep. Thanks for making me feel old today.

Michael Stephen Patrick Nelligan, currently London, Ontario Canada but started in Owosso, MI as a Hoser around the beginning and had stops in Piqua, OH; Indianapolis, IN; Tampa, FL; and Wakarusa, IN along the way. Likely spent more time in the Kansas City area then any of these places I actually lived at during my years as a Hoser and met a woman in here (and TJ's) 11 years ago from that area who is currently my wife.

TJ Slideways set-up my original computer back in '96 and thanks to his Chat Room, Alan Holland became the first Posse fan I annoyed, my bad. Was fortunate enough to meet thousands of Hosers over the years while chasing sprint cars around this and a few other countries, hawking photos as I went. Made lots of friends and my share of enemies along the way and wouldn't change a single thing. This place defines the Internet to me and while I may not have much contact with anyone in this sport anymore, seeing some of the names of posters in this forum still brings the biggest smile and the best memories on a regular basis. You guys are the greatest, Take It Easy....

Since about 1999 I think. Doug McCall, Lincoln ne.

I'm gonna guess I joined in 2000. Hard to believe but I was only 14! I've been checking in at the least once a day since then. This is by far my most visited site!

I used the old IBMs where you had to work in DOS along with Winsock and an acoustic coupler at work but didn't get my first home computer until 1996. Argghhh....you had to remind me of those upgrade prices. I bought a US Robitics 28.8 modem to replace the 14.4 in the Packard Bell and spending hours researching how to disable the onboard modem. I remember paying something like $60 for a software upgrade to 56k. Keeping up with the memory and hard drive updates used to be expensive as well. I remember buying a 20 gig, then a 60 gig and used to overclock my processors so I could get a little more speed out of the old box. You used to have to buy memory in pairs so that was an expensive upgrade. After that I built a couple of boxes but eventually it got to the point where there wasn't enough savings building your own to justify doing it.

My last rebuild was to take the memory, processor and drives out of a Sony desktop with a fried motherboard and put them on a new board. It required purchasing a new case and power supply because the new board didn't fit in the Sony case. The box was out of warranty and they quoted me something like $700 to fix it. I bought a new computer and rebuilt the Sony for my wife for $160 but had to install Linux because the OEM Sony discs wouldn't install on the new board. The wife finally demanded that I switch to XP but I got a discount on that through work.

It's nice to have done those builds because I learned a lot but I don't like working on computers much anymore. I can do it if I have to like I did with the fried Sony but I'd rather not have to.

Stan Meissner