Hi all-
I've posted a bit about myself on the project websites, but I'll give a little more detail. My name is Ariel Benzakein; I grew up in Cincinnati, OH (why the Demo BBS has a 513 area code!) and currently live in Lancaster, PA. I got into BBS-ing in 1984 at age ten, and stopped somewhere in the late 90's, probably 1997-ish. I was fortunate enough to see most of the evolution of the boards and the highs and the lows.
The first board I set up was Fido, in 1985. I badly wanted to join FidoNet, but I annoyed the local network controller (forgot what they're called, it's been a long time!) and he wouldn't let me on. From there I ran many different boards, and the final one was running on Excalibur, was a pay board and basically an ISP with 6 lines and an ISDN Internet connection. Eventually I got tired of it and left the BBS scene entirely, then the scene itself essentially dried up.
I wrote a number of shareware programs over the years (a few of them are documented on the "History" page on the website - Z-Tel and NewsEd). One fellow ATDT SysOp even found an embarrassingly bad "ANSI movie" I made while I was in 7th grade that someone posted on YouTube! (Thanks, anonymous Youtuber! lol)
I have a lot of projects going on right now. I'm pursuing my PhD in Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University (I have to travel to Spokane every few months for that), I'm writing a novel (about halfway through), I work in an executive job, and I have this project. As you can imagine, I'm pretty busy, but I'm loving all of it!
I had a 25 year career in tech, mostly leading customer-facing teams (Customer Success, Services, etc.) but after three layoffs in a row, I decided to do something different. Feel free to look me up on LinkedIn and connect! Outside of work and my various projects, I love reading and writing, PC gaming, tennis (playing and watching), football (watching), movies, and more.
Anyway - looking forward to meeting all of you too!