Happy 25th Birthday, Joke A Day

[Ray]

Good lord.  A quarter century.

January 1, 1997.  I had had this idea kicking around for a few weeks that no one had ever tried to make money telling jokes on the Internet.  Maybe I should give that a try, huh?

Sad to say, I haven't any goddamned smarter in the past 25 years, either.

Earliest snapshot of JAD that the Wayback Machine has.  From a modern design standpoint, I gotta cringe.  I have gotten a lot better at web design than way back then.  I no longer use notepad to code every single character.  (Yeah, I did that back then.)

Less than a year into it, I was getting over 5000 new subscribers a week.  I guess I was an early beneficiary of things "going viral."  As you can tell by that counter on the Way Back Machine page, though, the website had only had 155 visitors in four months.  

Did anyone here ever use that silly assed 900 number to buy a Deluxe sub?  I just tried calling it myself from both my office phone and my cell.  Got told in both cases I wasn't allowed access to that number.  Curious that I banned people under 18 from being on Joke A Day, but in that very box featuring the 900 number I say, "If you're under 18, get your parents' permission."  

Anyway, happy 25th birthday, Joke A Day!  

[MalcolmR]

Jan 1, 2022 13:51:13 GMT -5 Ray said:

Earliest snapshot of JAD that the Wayback Machine has. 

Good Lord, if that was the quality of jokes back then, Ray, I'm surprised you managed a second day, never mind 25 years!

Happy Birthday!

[Ray]

Jan 1, 2022 14:26:34 GMT -5 MalcolmR said:

Jan 1, 2022 13:51:13 GMT -5 Ray said:

Earliest snapshot of JAD that the Wayback Machine has. 

Good Lord, if that was the quality of jokes back then, Ray, I'm surprised you managed a second day, never mind 25 years!

Happy Birthday!

Ha!

That reminds me of the story of George Bernard Shaw writing to Winston Churchill:

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend . . . if you have one."

Churchill's reply:

"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."

[frodi]

Crikey, I'm feeling old. 25 years ago I was still using a dial up modem. The computers in the pharmacy where I was working were very advanced using ASDL.
Nice to know that you are still kicking around Ray. Keep the pecker up.

[Drea]

Woohoo, happy 25th birthday to JAD!!!!! I honestly can't imagine my life without the many dear friends I've met because you made that decision to start up a joke website. Thank you, Ray. <3

[Jim]

It would still be a few years before I found the site. No other website had such a huge impact on my life.

Just think, I was a freshman in college when I joined the forum and now I am almost 40.

[Gimpy]

Wow! 25 years and it seems like it was 5 instead. A 25th anniversary gathering somewhere?

Ray, I did HTML in notepad and it was truly a bitch. Microsoft came out with Frontpage Express and I was forever thankful. I did purchase of couple editing programs and haven't touched web stuff in at least 5 years.

[Jackie]

Happy Anniversary Ray!!! I didn't discover Joke A Day until I read about the AOL.exe virus. I had to email the genius who came up with that and was amazed when he actually responded. I visited that website every day but it wasn't until after 9/11 that I subscribed. I forget exactly what it was you posted on the website on 9/12 but it made me want to become a JAD subscriber. Then when you started the forums of course I was all in.

[martycanuck]

25 years, quite amazing! I think I was about 8 years late finding it. There was a built in link on my first Dell Axiom handheld computer.

[Ray]

Jan 2, 2022 10:52:22 GMT -5 martycanuck said:

25 years, quite amazing! I think I was about 8 years late finding it. There was a built in link on my first Dell Axiom handheld computer.

Huh.  That's . . . strange.  Some Dell hardware geek must have stuck it on there.  "Here, let's spread dick jokes to the masses . . . "

[Ray]

Jan 1, 2022 19:10:16 GMT -5 Gimpy said:

Wow! 25 years and it seems like it was 5 instead. A 25th anniversary gathering somewhere?

Ray, I did HTML in notepad and it was truly a bitch. Microsoft came out with Frontpage Express and I was forever thankful. I did purchase of couple editing programs and haven't touched web stuff in at least 5 years.

I was such a complete and utter idiot.  I think I learned from HTML for Dummies.  And it was an insult to dummies everywhere that I trying to write HTML code.

I had to code every page because I was so stupid.  So I'd copy an existing page, replace the parts with what I wanted, and then add that to the directory.  It was fine as long as I kept the number of pages down.  Because every page was its own entity.  The menu, for example, was coded on EVERY single page.  If I added something to the menu . . . I'd have to go into every single page and replace what I changed.

About 2 years into it, I had some literal kid wrote me.  He was 13.  Honest to God.  He said, "Don't you know about SSI? Server Side Includes?  Duh."  I hadn't a clue. 

That one trick is what made JAD's site what it was.  I could put the header, footer, menu, all in their own separate text file and then call that file from the page itself with one line of code.  If I needed to change the header / footer / menu / etc., then I just changed that one text time.  I had to rename every page with a .shtml suffix so that Apache would recognize it as a SSI-enabled page, but that wasn't difficult.

It's amazing the stuff I've picked up in the last quarter century.  I haven't coded a site fully "by hand" in . . . yeesh, 15 years, probably.  I picked up Wordpress and never looked back.  Frequently, though I'll need to make HTML changes / CSS changes to a template within Wordpress so I'm grateful I had all those years of experience in writing it.

I just completed a video for a square dancing group up in Northeast Ohio.  I had to pull together what I've learned about Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Davinci Resolve, photography, and videography, typography, along with HTML, Wordpress, and a bunch of other programs.  I'm actually pretty tickled with the way it came out.  For someone who's never had any formal training in those disciplines, I gotta say, "Huh.  Not shabby."  It'll be boring as hell to you if you're not a square dancer, but check it out if you're sleep deprived.  Click here.

[Ray]

Jan 1, 2022 15:17:02 GMT -5 frodi said:

Crikey, I'm feeling old. 25 years ago I was still using a dial up modem. The computers in the pharmacy where I was working were very advanced using ASDL.
Nice to know that you are still kicking around Ray. Keep the pecker up.

Yassuh, still kicking (and screamin').  

Dial-up.  Yep, thought I was shit-hot when I got my 56K modem.  Then my work had me install an ISDN line.  Ooo baby baby.  I'm in the fast lane, now!

Any of y'all old enough to remember Bulletin Boards?  They were, for the most part, locally run, though there were a few national ones, not many.  Not for awhile. 

On the modems of the day, you'd have to set your communication protocols when connection to a BBS.  Like, are you downloading with XMODEM, YMODEM, OR ZMODEM?  7 bits or 8 bits.  And a whole bunch of other crap.  There used a magazine called Boardwatch.    It was run by the Editor Rotundus, Jack Rickard.  They reviewed different BBS software, computer hardware, online geek-ery in general.  My two favorite parts of the magazine were articles by John Dvorak . . . and the letters pages that Rickard would see to.

If the situation called for it, Rickard had absolutely no problem with telling those who would write, "You're a fucking idiot."  (Or words to that effect.)  Frankly, I stole his style when I started doing JAD's letters page.  I was told more than once, "Oh my God, at work when dealing with idiots, I *wish* I could say the stuff YOU get to say!"

On another topic, Rickard had a good internal indicator whether a tech product would succeed.  He called it The Mommy Test.  Basically, if his non-computer geek mom could figure out how to do something, the product would would sell like hot cakes.   (I remember a long article he posted about his mother trying to configure WINSOCK for Windows 3.X or something.)

Rickard was also was a pilot.  He had a saying, "Planes do two things:  eat money and kill you.  The more money you throw at the first, the less likely the second will happen."

Don't know about keeping the pecker up, but I'm resembling Rickard's Editor Rotundus lately . . . 

[martycanuck]

Oh yeah, I was part of a couple of local BB’s in the 90’s. Just little local ones.

[Drea]

On November 3, 1997, I received this email:


__________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Joke A Day Free membership mailing list!
The World's Largest Daily Humor Mailing List
www.jokeaday.com/
__________________________________________________________

Questions Questions Questions:

(Q) How'd *I* wind up on this list?
(A) Either you or someone who thought you liked a good
laugh put your name on the list. If you're asking this
question AND you put your OWN name here -- please seek
professional help.


(Yep, I still have the email saved. )

[graham]

Jan 2, 2022 13:25:23 GMT -5 Ray said:

Any of y'all old enough to remember Bulletin Boards?  They were, for the most part, locally run, though there were a few national ones, not many.  Not for awhile. 

On the modems of the day, you'd have to set your communication protocols when connection to a BBS.  Like, are you downloading with XMODEM, YMODEM, OR ZMODEM?  7 bits or 8 bits.  And a whole bunch of other crap. 

I got into Fidonet BBS back around 1990 using my Commodore Amiga and a 12/75 Pace Linnet Modem.

12/75 meant 1200 baud down and 75 up.

(For those who don't know, that's 75 *bits* per second. Not kilobits, not megabits, *single* bits!!)

Eventually I got a Argus Stentor 14k4 (14,400 baud) modem which was way faster AND used Zmodem for a higher level of compression.

Also, for those who remember her, Caroline Bourne was my girlfriend at the time and I introduced her to Bulletin Boards before she joined JAD :-)

[Nathalie]

I came to JAD at some point in 1997 as I remember being pissed at not having internet during the ice storm of January 4, 1998. First thing I read was my JAD stuff. While I liked the jokes, it was the letters and Judi awards I enjoyed the most. I couldn’t be in a foul mood after getting my dose of JAD.

When the forums began, I was so afraid my English wouldn’t be good enough and Maussa John or yourself would reprimand me or something! Boy, was I ever careful with every word I chose and wrote. Lol.

And as Drea said, I couldn’t imagine myself without the many friends I made because of you Ray. You brought so much love to so many people! Thank you so, so much 💕

[brandon]

I am still waiting for my daily jokes with my lifetime subscription. I may have to update my email address though.....

[mank]

Jan 5, 2022 17:33:38 GMT -5 brandon said:

I am still waiting for my daily jokes with my lifetime subscription. I may have to update my email address though.....

All I can say is... Let's Go Brandon!

[davef]

Wow, 25 years! Thank you Ray for starting this! I have only met one JAD'er in person, but I consider all of you friends! We've shared joys, sorrows, laughs, but what I've enjoyed most is the way we all support and help each other. Thank you to everyone of you for being my friend!