I couldn’t believe some of the stuff that I was finding. Some materials were from machines that haven’t been around in any form for decades! That’s about twenty minutes less than forever, in terms of technology. Much went into the shredder, and much more went into the recycling!

But there were some things that might make you smile if you’re a dinosaur like me. Or maybe they’re interesting to a historian. I haven’t got the foggiest, but they seemed too good to throw away. And honestly, these are just the tip of the iceberg; sometimes I feel like I live in a museum.

First up is a third edition copy of Getting the Most Out of the Internet, which was what Earthlink handed out to new subscribers. The think that caught my eye when I saw it was that it was authored by Sky Dayton himself.

Getting the Most Out of the Internet

Fascinating. But the next one is even better. There was a printed newsletter called Inside the Internet. I’m not sure when they started and stopped publishing the self-proclaimed ‘rocket science for the rest of us’. Nobody does things like this anymore, it’s far easier to simply publish on the Web. But this is January 1995 we’re talking about, and things were way different back then.

Inside the Internet

Notice the holes for storing issues in your binder – they’re stock, I didn’t put them there! There are articles about Gopher and Veronica. And a bit about TIA – remember that beast? With it you could run SLIP over your shell account, enabling you to run things like a graphical browser. I think I used it back around 1993 or so to run the some of the first non-console Internet apps seen within sacred walls of D&B, where I worked at the time. It goes without saying that this long predated D&B’s online presence, which was initally created by my friend Tom Thornbury. In fact, there wasn’t much commercial presence on the Internet back in those days at all, believe it or not! Finally, did you notice the price? $5.95 for a few pages? Hardly buys much more than a gallon of gas these days.

I hoped you liked that little trip down memory lane. Did you smile?

I’ve been a believer that water poses little harm to electronics, provided that the water’s clean and you dry thoroughly to avoid corrosion, but I never would have guessed at this. I mean, cure powder-coat in the oven? Sure. Confidentially destroy CDs with the microwave? Absolutely. (But air it out carefully afterward, and don’t even think about breathing the fumes!) But a keyboard in the dishwasher? Yow.

Wash your hands. Shut down your laptop; you don’t want it to accidentally power up while you’re working. Dip a corner of the cloth in your solution then squeeze most of it out between finger and thumb. You want the cloth to be well-moistened but not dripping. You do not want droplets of solution to sneak under the bezel.

Pick a corner to start and lightly scrub the screen with the moistened cloth. Then, before the area dries in the air use your dry cloth to polish it dry. Periodically re-moisten your cleaning cloth as needed, and don’t forget to shift to an unused area of the cloth as it becomes used. And don’t let it dry out!

Work your way over the entire screen surface a few square inches at a time. Resist the temptation to do more square inches than you can comfortably clean before it dries in the air on its own. Overlap your cleaning areas slightly and you’ll find that you’ll polish/dry the area’s edges seamlessly. Take your time!

You can use the remaining solution and your cloths to clean the other plastic surfaces of the laptop. Pay attention to the keyboard and other buttons, palm rests and the track pad surface (if you have one of those).

Now that your screen is nice and clean, how do you keep it that way? I keep a can of compressed air nearby to blow the dust off every now and again. You can also use a small camel hair brush – like what photographers to brush their lenses – to gently brush dust off as it accumulates. Never touch the screen with your fingers! You’ll leave oils from your skin which will trap dust on the surface. With a little care you can avoid time consuming whole-screen cleanings for months and months.