netbadger

When the Internet started I was there. Many years later, when the World Wide Web started, I was there. I used to be known as the Badger. Long before there was an Internet, there was GEnie the General Electric Network Interface which allowed people from all over the world to talk across computers. They charged by the minute. Long Before there was GEnie, there were BBS'es. This stood for Bulletin Board Service. Various computer literate individuals around the world would take their IBM PC and XT compatible computers and buy four or five modems. The earliest of us started with 300 baud modems. We had to pay for four or five phone lines, so each modem could have its own line. The BBS'es operated like the discussion boards on Web sites do now, but this was the very first time that people could use their computer to communicate with other people on computers.

Insert audiovisual of the scene from 2001 a space odessey, where the ape throws the bone into the air, and it morphs into a spinning space station, complete with the Also Sprach Zarathustra sound theme.

I was one of those originals who crawled out of the caves, casting off the yolk of punch cards and COBOL, with keyboard in hand. I was Badger. In a state called Florida, in a county called Volusia, and in a city called Daytona Beach, I started the first computer BBS system in Volusia County. And we communicated. I started so far back, that I was able to get the domain name badger.org. I had barely missed getting badger.com. I was Badger. I still have Badger.Org, but have converted it into what the world expected it to be. A non-profit Web site about the animal Badger.

My artwork ranges from Web Design, which is what I made my living from, before becoming disabled. I was a photographer and into 3D Modeling, Raytracing, Watercolor painting, and creating skins for Windowblinds, as well as cursors, bootskins, and other art for Stardock products.

Years later, I return to dA. This time around, I am starting a gallery of my work. In my old profile picture, I was probably around 275 lbs. I managed to work my way up to 400 lbs., before doing something drastic, before it killed me. I had gastric bypass surgery on 5/16/2013. By one year to the day later, I had lost 200 lbs. That was the most anyone of the over 1000 people who had gone through the program, had lost in one year. Three months later, I had lost another 20 lbs, and was told the maintain that weight for a while. I am fluctuating between 180 and 185 for three months now. I am trying to get my health insurance to cover a procedure, that would remove all the loose skin, which they tell me would be around 25 pounds. When the surgeon first set a goal of 165 lbs. for me, I thought he was crazy. It was around junior high, when I last weighed that little. Now I am a year away from sixty.

The reason I mention this in a profile about my art, is because there were complications. Three times I nearly died. They told my family they didn't know if I would make it through the night. I had at one point, to be put into a medically induced coma. Through other medicinal mistakes, I lost touch with reality, and had to be tied down for days at a time. These experiences have changed me, and I am sure they will change my art. CyberMona was the last image I completed before getting to the darkest part of my medical journey. Naw, it's been picked dry, was mostly done before I got sick, but finalized afterwards. We shall see together how these experience changes my art. You will be able to tell the difference in the copyright notice. All of my pre-sickness work has my middle initial between my first and last name. My post-sickness work will have either badger or netbadger between my first and last name. I would use my primary handle of badger, but a character in a recent award winning TV series called "Breaking Bad", will probably be what everyone thinks of. The character has to be one of the stupidest meth-heads to ever be written. My nickname precedes him by 30 years, but netbadger is a simpler way of differentiating myself from him.