Well, the funny part about this site is the fact that we meet a lot of interesting people in our endeavors to learn. All of this started with a Bulletin Board System (WWIV) in 1994 when 14.4 baud modems was a necessity and slick cyber names a must. In the beginning the BBS ran on a Packard Bell 486/25 with Windows 3.1 in Lake Villa, it was during this time that I met Nick and boy did things start to change. We tried running the BBS under OS/2, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and Windows NT. We learned more about operating systems, comm ports, and digiboards than we cared to but when it was all said and done, we realized we actually enjoyed it. Soon we discovered that others enjoyed our efforts also.

We then switch from running WWIV, which was an awesome BBS software package, to running Excalibur. Yes, Excalibur which was a completely graphical BBS package that offered one of the best GUI interfaces at that time, very web like. We were running 12 incoming phone lines with a dedicated circuit to the internet for email, UseNet, and web browsing. This was when we first started dabbling on the internet and learning how to put web pages together. We quickly moved into an ISP role, web hosting, and just about anything else anyone asked for. We learned much about how the internet worked along with networking in general. Hey, don't get me wrong, we made many mistakes but we quickly learned from them and moved on.

Once the internet was in full swing the Excalibur BBS was dropped and we offered full blown ISP features including dialup, web hosting, database hosting, and search engine submission.

At this point we started building websites and applications such as

• NetMeetingHQ
• JobForce Network
• Shoppe Catalogs (We were contracted for this project)
• LakeVillaScouts.org
• HaloRanking

Along the way we have been joined by several great people. We have to say a special thanks to Mike W. for his assistance with Microsoft Exchange Administration. I'm sure many that read this page may remember a friend or two that they met using one of our many learning experiences.

And here we are now. Our current setup is now light in nature, we still take on projects but because of time constraints of our current jobs we are pretty selective.

This particular site was put together to be very similar to where we started, as a way for people to communicate with each other and have a little fun.

Regards,
Greg and Nick