«  Thu.11.30.2000  » 7:21 pm EST        35°F (2°C) in Ann Arbor Calendar of Updates As you can see, I've started another new feature here in the News section. Now it's much easier to go back and find your favorite updates of all time with the calendar I finished this morning. The link to the calendar will appear in all future updates; however, I am not going to link it to all 137 updates previous to Tuesday's, since that would (a) take forever, and (b) disturb the historical integrity of those old pages. I've always been big on leaving old updates untouched, as they were created; they are part of the history of this site. Speaking of the site — as long as I'm waxing historic — I forgot to mention this on Tuesday, but the two-year anniversary of the creation of Larry's Phat Page passed last Friday. The world hasn't been the same since November 24, 1998 ... In all seriousness, though, I can hardly remember some of the stuff that's come and gone on this site since that date. The original site was two pages, one for a short description of me, and one to sell my idea of a "Bursley Invitational" track and field meet. I figured I could get publicity and race registrations done online, so I decided to take advantage of the web space provided to me by CAEN. Slowly the description grew; eventually I downloaded a simple graphics design program and created a "Larry's Phat Page" graphic for the top of the front page. As the list of links at the top grew unwieldy, I added a frame on the left side of the page and moved the links over there. Several background color changes later, I settled on what I had for a while. I would go on to version 3.0 in early November 1999; the entire front page went graphical, with only five links. In mid-summer 2000, I became interested in making my site look exactly the same across all browsers and operating systems; this desire slowly manifested itself on several pages, before I made everything fully compatible with the release of version 4.0 on August 3, 2000. A lot of things have come and gone here since November 24, 1998. Of course, the track meet stuff disappeared as soon as the idea went up in flames. The "Detroit Links" page, which I made during a time when I was still proud of the city (ahem, ahem), is long gone today. The Online Wing-O-Meter, companion and eventual successor to the door-message-board Wing-O-Meter, died a quick and painless death after the Red Wings' elimination from the playoffs in May 1999. The Friends page, with pictures and links to web sites or e-mail addresses, was toast with the advent of version 3.0. The Catholic Central track page didn't last any longer than the Shamrocks' 1999 season. Finally, the most recent death was the "Why EECS 100 Sucks" page; the University stopped offering the course. On the "in" side of the equation, the very News section you're reading right now was created on March 1, 1999. The Feedback section was created shortly thereafter. Many of the other sections in the current version 4.0 were 3.0 inventions, such as the Me page, the College page, College Hockey page, Miscellaneous page, the message board, and a few others. Enough history lessons. You may not think that two years is a very long time, but in Internet time, 1998 is the cyber-equivalent of the Pleistocene Age. Even the fastest late-1998 computers were dogs compared to my machine (a slow one for late 1999, when I bought it), and are true dinosaurs compared to the new Pentium 4 machines coming out soon. It's amazing how time goes by.