March 4th, 2020:

	I might have to change the name of my Gopher hole.  I was musing 
aloud on Mastodon, and my most recent toot went something like this:

"My after-work routine has become:

Log into my favourite BBSes & get my QWK packets
Read messages & upload reply packets (if any)
Fire up my newsreader and check my subscribed newsgroups
Check my favourite Gopher sites to see what's up

Then I think to myself, 'What the Hell year is this?!'

#oldhabitsdiehard"

It's true - I reflected on what has become my routine, and it seems I've 
gone back to the same after-work routine I had 25 years ago, only with 
less pornography.  30+ years ago if we consider BBSing only.

Looking at my recent internet habits, I find myself on the web less and 
less frequently.  In fact, I hardly ever open a web browser at all 
anymore, not even Lynx!  The few times I do, it's usually to access a part 
of the Fediverse (Diaspora, Lemmy, etc) that lacks a decent app, or to 
view a RSS feed that's only a summary.

If I do "need" to use the web, I'll usually do so via Surfraw and Lynx, 
but I try to avoid it whenever possible.  I find I don't miss it.

I joked about this earlier, that maybe I should change the name of my 
Gopher hole to The Backroad *From* Civilization.  It certainly seems I'm 
doing my best to get away from it...

--

In other news, Lars Lehtonen is looking to spur a Usenet revival via the 
soc.misc newsgroup.  I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I *think* he's 
trying to get people to cross-post their usual discussions to soc.misc and 
use it as a sort of aggregator to find other newsgroups with actual 
discussion and not just Solution Guide spam or the 100-year Flame War.

See the soc.misc thread called "Crickets" for details.

--

Speaking of the past, I went out of my way to track down a copy of 
Sidekick 2.0 for MS-DOS.  I've been on an MS-DOS 5 kick lately, and have 
been adding productivity apps to Angry Red (my Toshiba 5200) to fool 
around at work.  Angry Red already had the PFS:First Choice suite and 
ThinkTank installed when I got it years ago, but I don't really care for 
them.  I'll be hunting around for better (Lotus Smartsuite, maybe?).

I had a few Windows 3.1 apps, but they're slower than a tranquilized snail 
on the Toshiba, and limited by the 2 megs of RAM installed.  So I've wiped 
most of them.  Will see what else I can find in the DOS 5 world...