Alan August, Snarkish Deputy

Alan won't write his own biography

(Note: He finally did! it's below) (This fake one's funner, though!)

Since Alan is absolutely no help is writing his own biography, it is left to us, his beleaguered colleagues, to try to reconstruct as much of his history as we know.

Alan was born in a teepee in North Dakota circa 1950, but was stolen by a dingo while his mother slept. Thankfully, the dingo didn't eat the baby Alan, but rather raised him to hunt and do whatever it is dingos do.

As a teenager, he was in the creek looking for carp to feed his dingo family when a Sports Illustrated team came by to shoot their annual swimsuit issue. Christie Brinkley took an mmediate shine to Alan, and brought him back to her high-rise penthouse apartment in Manhattan. Alan, confused by the concrete, noise, and swirling crowds of people, was arrested in Central Park several times for howling at the moon, for fishing in the Conservatory Pond, and trying to eat an Upper West Side couple's baby.

Eventually, Christie was able to domesticate Alan, who took up photography as a hobby in order to photograph his beautiful playmate. She bought him a kayak and took him to the Hamptons to learn to use it, where he was the hit of the society summer parties.

Tiring of the fast-paced life in Manhattan with an increasingly clingy supermodel, Alan dumped Christie and moved to Rhode Island where he wouldn't look so odd fishing for carp with nothing but his teeth. There he met and married the lovely Barbara, secretary of the Rhode Island Canoe/Kayak Association, who also loves to eat carp.

Alan's photographic talents took him to the Photographic Society of Rhode Island, where he recently won first place in the Color Print, Class A category with his photograph of a juvenile green heron.

Also also runs a web site at Green Heron Graphics (beginning to see a pattern yet?) where he sells t-shirts.

Alan's been an excellent long-time sysop in the Mac support forums on CompuServe, largely because no one can see him munching on carp while answering support pleas from hopelessly lost members, and he's excellent here, too. If he offers to connect his web cam to yours, though, you might wanna decline, unless you wanna watch him munching on carp and the occasional baby.

Alan Finally Comes Through!

Alan bought his first modem in 1989 when he ordered his Mac SE/30. It was for the express purpose of joining Compuserve, whe he had heard a lot about and was intensely curious. Even before the computer and modem were delivered he was told about The Navigator, and OLR (off line reader) for Compuserve. It was many years before Alan ever used any other software to access CI$, as it was affectionately known in those days.

The first few years he spent mostly in Joe Reynolds' Great Outdoors Forum, and mostly in Section 8 (how appropriate!) "Canoe Kayak & Raft," where he learned how real a virtual community can become. Alan also spent a good deal of his online time in Mike Wilmer's Photography Forum.

As his interest in his computer as an object unto itself grew, Alan began to spend time in Neil Shapiro's MAUG® forums -- the Compuserve forums dedicated to Apple II and Macintosh computers, their users, developers, and vendors. These were heady times, these pre-Internet days, and you could meet some of the most famous programmers and writers of the Mac world in the MAUG® forums. Alan was impressed. Who wouldn't be?

Alan eventually joined the MAUG® staff as a section leader the the Mac Community Clubhouse Forum (MACCLUB), eventually becoming its sysop. It was a fun time online.

Unfortunately, in a manner of speaking, the Internet was opened to the public and the online world changed. But Compuserve didn't. And when Compuserve did make changes they were the wrong ones as far as the market was concerned. Ultimately, all the MAUG® forums disappeared and were boiled down to just the Mac Hardware Forum and the Mac Software Forum.

And then there was just one, the Mac Support Forum. Well, the trendline was following a definite direction that showed no signs of changing, so when Alan learned that Binky Melnik, a longtime CIS sysop, had decided to build a harbor of refuge for when the inevitable next round comes, he decided to help her. Both of them being a bit snarky on occasion ("I'm not snarky, dammit, I'm cranky!"), this harbor of refuge became Snarkish.com.