: )
I remember hesitating to sign up because an email address was required (due to the trolls, as I recall– A+Bert? Ash?).
It was the dark days of the Clintons and their FBI files, and I wondered if FR would be secure if the Feds decided to shut Jim down.
Obviously I decided to stick with Jim.
In 1999 I penned a vanity that I titled "Bill Clinton is There". I googled that essay recently, when the left was beginning to spin the sex stories; it's on my FR Home page now.
I remember days when I'd go into work early (I worked in the media back then) to get a look at day's stories. I was able to recognize and chronicle the bias in AP stories, because I could post versions to FR throughout the day.
Some days the only posts on FR were mine and maybe one or two more. Lot's of vanity posts in those days too. I remember Arthur Wildfire! March had the same signup day as me. I could be wrong but I think I ran into him at a Clinton protest in Chicago that I happened upon one time...
Anyway, congrats and thanks, Jim!
FReeping since the WhitewaterBB days; logged in since Dec 3, 1997. Freeper #143 or thereabouts...
I’ve often wondered whatever happened to Ash, the most infamous Freeper of all time.