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  DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-labdjsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology

  Oct 23, 2026, 10:50 PM

  where’s the inevitable sad turn, Sundog, where’s it all go to shit, that’s what we’re all waiting for.

  well, we folded for a big check from the regional telephone company that had decided a few years later that maybe there was in fact something to this whole “normal people using the internet” thing they’d been pointedly ignoring. like, twenty years of forward revenue per subscriber type big check. my partners were business guys, they understood finance and stuff, hell, one was a certified public accountant as his “day job”. they said it was the best idea ever, so out we went. of course, my partners were all retirement age-ish anyway, whereas I was young and spry. if it had been my majority, I’d probably have stayed in it and ignored the check to keep doing the thing and would have lost the thing anyway in the next few years as broadband exploded and I had no connections to that world (yet).

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  DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-labdjsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology

  Oct 23, 2026, 10:52 PM

  but I think back to that little ISP and how we ran it every now and then, and I try to see any glimmer at all of that operational style in the current tech industry, and if it’s out there it’s obscured beyond the reach of my vision, that’s for sure. and that makes me sad. and I hope we see more small, constrained, focused business again in the future because it can be really cool.

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  peter hessler @openbsdphessler@bsd.network

  Oct 23, 2026, 11:00 PM

  @djsundog this is one of the reasons I'm still positive about doing open source. My code can contribute to someone building a small business to solve their and their communities needs. And with luck, they understand their limitations and stay within them.

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  DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-labdjsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology

  Oct 23, 2026, 11:07 PM

  @phessler the very first program I ever wrote for cash money was a newspaper delivery route management program for our paper delivery person. he had a few hundred houses on his daily route, billed either weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or annually, and each week he either needed to write out a payment due bill on tri-copy carbon paper pads or he wrote out a thanks for being a subscriber note if it wasn’t a house’s billing cycle. took him about 12 hours every week just to manage the billing part. I told him I thought a computer program could print it out for him a lot faster and he said he had a computer he got his kid for college that the kid left behind, so I wrote him a qbasic program to manage his route - all the crud stuff, ordering so he could print a route list for when he’d take a vacation and have a guest delivery person covering for him, exactly the right bills each week came spitting out the printer. he gave me $1500 for it, and told me he’d give me another $1000 for every copy of it he sold to other delivery drivers if I’d let him do the sales. paid for my first car with that basic program. no reason things like that can’t happen anymore if we can get rid of the corporate soul suckers and beat them back into submission.

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  coldclimatecoldclimate@hachyderm.io

  Oct 24, 2026, 7:00 AM

  @djsundog I have enjoyed this thread greatly as somebody who was a consumer of early regional internet in the UK

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  Mark Kruegermarkkrueg@treehouse.systems

  Oct 25, 2026, 1:58 AM

  @djsundog I enjoyed your reminiscence. My local ISP, www.sonic.com, is a bit like that still today. Lately they are growing a bit from being only local, so we will see how that goes. You’re right that it’s incredibly rare to find businesses like that anymore.

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  Aaron Mahlerhalfpress@halfpress.com

  Oct 25, 2026, 10:35 AM

  @djsundog loved reading this as much of it felt as if I could have written it. Same timeframe, same scale for our little ISP and similar efforts speaking to groups, writing guest articles in local publications and tons of personal, hands-on teaching and support time in people’s homes and offices. The sellout to a telco also happened, but was after I had left.

  I look back on it all very fondly and, like you, look for modern versions of a similar approach and have a hard time finding examples.

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  Luke O.loppear@social.coop

  Oct 24, 2026, 1:39 AM

  @djsundog similar timeframe early rural ISP here, and in part I know the positive nostalgia I have for it (beyond the personal nerd enthusiasm of the team (not even all guys) and baling-wire aesthetic) is because I left while it was still all going small and up, no sour taste. Helped rescue a.similar tiny fixed point rural wireless ISP a decade later and it was much more of a struggle all around as the broadband big players were firmly on the move. Disillusioned myself fully a couple years later building marketing platforms for those cable behemoths. But that early youthful feeling, still something I cherish.

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