1985
Sketch and Trout.Complex, both in 10th grade at Horace Greeley High School, are introduced.
Sketch starts a band with Jeremy Stone, a next-door neighbor. They create intricate electronic and guitar music about foolish subjects, emulating the popular bands of the time. After trying different names for the band, they settle on "Bovine Ignition Systems". As a result, a lot of their songs end up being about cows, and they start associating themselves with things of a bovine nature. In their small circle of friends, they often recieve cow-related items as gifts.
Sketch and Trout end up attending the same Greek History Class. The class is presided over by Mr. Dorian, an amazingly strange teacher given to extreme non-sequitur conversation points and an almost infuriating obliqueness. Over the course of the semester, Trout and Sketch become fast friends in union against the mind-numbing weirdness of the experience.
Sketch and Trout create EsnesnoN, a humor magazine for the students of Horace Greeley. The magazine is published throughout the year, resulting in three separate issues. The issues include humor pieces written by other students, but the vast majority of work is Sketch and Trout doing artwork and writing. A third founding member, Alex Weissman, contributes a total of two comic strips entitled The Attendance Gestapo.
Among the bizzare and sometimes non-sequitir phrases in the magazine is the phrase Babylon and the Number Seven are the Same Color and What's behind Vault #4?
Sketch attends Emerson College, a Mass Communications college in Boston, MA. Because of his low grades in high school, he is required by the college to take a summer course to gain admission.
While attending Emerson as a Freshman, Sketch is required to live in the dorms with other Freshmen, where his interactions with them are... uneven. His habits of staying up all hours of the day and night and incessantly drawing cartoons earn him several nicknames. One upperclassman in the same dorm constantly refers to him as.. "Sketch".
Sketch's friend Jeremy spots a cow suit for sale in a mail-order catalog; Sketch quickly buys one. This cow suit is the one he will wear on and off for the next 7 years.
Sketch, via the MIT computer system, is introduced to the Internet at large. Access to the net is provided via the well-known and well-used "rms" account at the MIT machine gnu.ai.mit.edu. The account belongs to one Richard M. Stallman, created of GNU Emacs and the founder of the Free Software Foundation. Part of his Hacker Ethic extends to the use of his computer account by people who wish to learn and explore. Sketch begins telnetting around.
Trout.Complex begins attending Clarkson University, in Potsdam, NY. He learns very quickly about these online games called "MUDs", which he passes on to Sketch.
Sketch and Trout.Complex become users on TinyHELL, one of the more successful MUDs of the period. TinyHELL's features include a very large "Nexus", which leads to dozens of locations, some with their own Nexi as well. The MUD also contains a very large, very regimented Hotel for people to build from.
TinyTIM is started on the gnu.ai.mit.edu machine from TinyMUD source code by Sketch and Trout.Complex. The descriptions of the first few rooms are parodies of the TinyHELL topology: Limbo is described as being a room instead of an endless mist, and the Main Area Place/Nexus is described by Trout in intentionally meandering text, urging users to explore even though there were no rooms to explore.
Telgar Weyr, the Pern-Themed location on TIM, has its first Hatching, where players are paired up in an elaborate ceremony with dragons, and in some cases the player's name is changed (hence the preponderance of players with a ' in their names). The Empedocles, under their first MUD name, are in attendance.
Marcia, a veteran of the Internet of several years, hears about the hatching and connects to TIM for the very first time the next day.
The problems of running a MUD on what essentially is a hacked account become overbearing. By this time, the TIM program is becoming a noticable load drag on gnu.ai.mit.edu, and the other users are beginning to seek out the TIM process and kill it.
Sketch and Trout.Complex start downloading the TinyTIM Database to Sketch's home computer to back it up, as well as storing it on Trout's Clarkson accounts. The process that runs TIM is called netmud a.db b.db; Sketch and Trout rename it to dontdelete this process. A user at the St. Olaf School begins targeting the TIM process specifically, prompting the TIM process to be renamed StOlafSucks ItReally Blows. In a last desperate move, the TIM program is moved to the "mike" account on gnu.ai.mit.edu (which, like Richard Stallman's account, had the same password as the account name) and renamed to mail daemon read, but after a while, even this dries up. TinyTIM is nearly defeated.
Teddyruxpin offers to move TinyTIM to one of his spare workstations at the Supercollider site in Texas. This offer is quickly accepted, and TinyTIM makes its first major move.
The machine that Teddyruxpin has secured for TinyTIM is an HP Workstation, which the TinyMUD code has not been written for. Stepping in at this time of need, Marcia does the port of the TinyMUD code to HP. This is possibly the first port of a server to the HP platform.
As thanks for her assistance in the porting of the MUD code, and in recognition of her draw as a high-profile TIMster, Marcia receives her wizbit.
Several major events occur to change the course of TinyTIM forever.
Larry Foard (leet) decides that the generic MUD code could use major expansion to allow such things as carrying players, pages that contain messages, and the ability of objects to "listen" to other players and objects and react. He completely hacks over the code and creates a new variant, MUSH. This new variant gains much notoriety in the MUD world, and Sketch and Trout.Complex log onto the beta-test MUSH that demonstrates the code, which is also called TinyMUSH.
At this time, Sketch and Teddyruxpin have a major falling-out, and teddy decides he doesn't want TinyTIM on his machines anymore. He not only demands that TIM leave his machine, but says that he will be retaining a copy of TinyTIM's database so that the game will not be lost forever. After an amazing amount of debate, this is exactly what happens, and Teddyruxpin later puts up his own variant of the TIM db called "TinyWORLD".
While TIM has continued to present day, TinyWORLD only continued to the end of 1991, when it was eventually shut down for being housed on Supercollider-related computers, due to a University of Northern Iowa systems administrator noticing a large number of telnets to a .gov site. (Information courtesy of Alucard)
Forced to finally evacuate the Supercollider and the adminship of Teddyruxpin, TIM is moved to grape.ecs.clarkson.edu, in Clarkson University. This machine is a Zenith Z-1000 Multiprocessor (Containing four 386 chips) running the XENIX operating system. Unfortunately, MUD does not run in XENIX, while TinyMUSH does.
R'nice takes on the task of bringing TinyTIM over to MUSH and onto XENIX. He is successful, and while TIM will continue to be a MUSH from then on in, R'nice will always look at the time spent on Grape as one of complete and utter pain, as the machine is completely undependable and all sorts of dumb hacks have to go into the code to make it run properly.
R'nice also becomes TinyTIM's sole coding wizard from this point on.
The First Annual (and indeed only so far) TinyAwards are posted to Usenet. TIM wins 3rd place for "Best God", Trout.Complex wins 3rd place (tied with random of TinyHELL) for "Best Wizard".
For his work on TinyMUD, R'nice wins third place for "Best Overall Builder".
Coyote meets Sketch and Trout.Complex on Larry Foard's TinyMUSH. He moves to TinyTIM to base as his new home.
Coyote based his character on Old Man Coyote, the Native American entity known for his gratuitous sense of chaos, combined with occasional lapses of sensibility, and fluctuating affection for his people. Over the years, he became entirely obsessed with stories about Old Man Coyote, and became something of an expert on the subject; he still answers several letters each week from grade schools, university professors and anthropologists from all over the world who are curious about Old Man Coyote and the tales he spawned.
TinyTIM holds an on-line Halloween party for its citizens. The theme of the party is to redescribe your character into a new costume. Sketch, who up to this point has been "A guy with one eyebrow" decides to become "A cow with one eyebrow." After the party, indicative of his usual carelessness of this period of TIM History, he forgets to change his description back from being a cow. He never does.
Coyote is made a wizard of TinyTIM.
The very first TinyTIM Party is held at Sketch's Dad's place in Chappaqua, NY. Many cheesy bready things were had by all.
After a very convincing phone call by the attendees, Jost and Black Dougal arrive on the second day of the party, having driven all the way to New York from Auburn, Alabama! For this incredible devotion, it is summarily declared by all present that they be considered attendees of all future parties, regardless of if they actually attend. Jost brings along some Schoolhouse Rock tapes, and the linkage between TinyTIM and Schoolhouse Rock, especially at parties, is begun.
In Palo Alto, California, Marcia hands Nimdok a piece of paper with TinyTIM's address on it. She says "Try it. You'll like it." He files the paper away, intending to check it out later.
Marcia becomes Weyrwoman of Telgar Weyr, making her one of two leaders of the prominent role-playing group on TIM.
Nimdok creates his character on TinyTIM. The name Nimdok is chosen because after several frustrating tries to create a name he chooses "The name the computer made me use." His name is based on a character from the Ellison novel I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. This is his first MUSH and first Character.
Nimdok creates a character on TrekMUSE, a role-playing game based on the universe of the original series of Star Trek.
Nimdok becomes a Wizard on TrekMUSE.
R'nice begins a long, predominantly popular tradition on TIM: April Fool's Day, where the nature of TinyTIM changes for just one day.
This first April Fool's day is Reverse Wizard Day. All the players were given full wizard powers, and only the usual Wizard characters were mortals. The result was an amazing-to-behold social experiment; left to run free, the players generally took the time to torture and taunt the connected not-wizards as thoroughly as they could. The wizards ended up hiding inside a programmed cardboard box, but the players, unleashed like furies on their own Database and well aware their reign of power would end at midnight, sought them out.
The first April Fool's Day festivities are brought to a grinding halt when a player blithely @DESTROY's Limbo. Limbo's place as #0 in the Database is a constant that nearly every routine on TIM depends on without actually checking if it's still there, so this completely ruins the specially-constructed database. R'nice has to be fed copious amounts of pancakes to cheer up. Generally, however, the day is judged to be a success, and code is put in to protect Limbo evermore.
Black Dougal and Jost get together and decide to host a TIM party in Gulf Shores, Alabama! Go look it up on a map... That sucker is DUE SOUTH! Not content to just be in someone's house, they got their hands on a beachfront condo with two massive bedrooms and invited all of TIM down. This so inspired some of the wizards that a van was rented, and Sketch, Trout.Complex, R'nice, Kimble and the ill-fated Trippy drove all the way from Maine and points south to Gulf Shores for a distance of thousands of miles! (1600 miles to be exact). TONS of TIMsters showed up for this one, and Marcia flew in for x-tra fun. Events included TIMster Assassin, Encore until the wee hours, and some sort of odd prize ceremony that Sketch and R'nice and a few others dreamed up in the wee hours. Anyone who can remember the prizes and the awards, let us know.
Marcia won a TIM Mug for travelling the farthest to come to the party. (CA)
TinyTIM moves from cheetah.ece.clarkson.edu to its own machine, a Sparcstation 2 called foof.dorm.clarkson.edu, christening the new .dorm subdomain at Clarkson University. The move is relatively painless, and the machine works spectacularly. Unfortunately, the machine has a bit of a history that catches up with it later in the year.
In a fit of Nostalgia, TinyTIM reverts to the original TinyMUD DB, which was made publically available at the time. R'nice hacks in the original TinyMUD code to make it work on the yay machine, and modifies the code so that any player amassing 10,000 pennies on the game would immediately become a Wizard. In what would become a theme on April Fool's Day, a good portion of the users cry foul at "their" DB and characters being taken away from them, and make their unhappiness known. Other players, however, remember their time on TinyMUD with nostalgia and actually explore the database. Some even log in as their old characters!
The Empedocles, TinyTIM's first paratwa (two bodies, one mind) become wizards.
OOPS! The foof.dorm.clarkson.edu machine is ripped out of the wall at Clarkson University, due to the discovery on the part of system administrators that the machine (bought by Sketch under less-than ideal circumstances) was actually very happy at its old home, where it was an important and functioning workstation for a Major Educational Institution. The Major Educational Institution wanted it back, and got it.
Obviously, this small discovery makes absolutely no parties involved delighted, and as is the case in such situations, the law is brought in. The legal schenannegans that ensue take up the next year and a half for Sketch to muddle through, and, of course, everything is resolved with no-one completely happy and no-one completely unhappy.
Sketch is asked never to go anywhere near the Major Educational Institution again, and probably can't get elected to Public Office.
Thanks to the unwittingly quick thinking on the part of Empedocles much earlier in the year, TinyTIM has a backup of its database on tape from around March of 1992. Empedocles had backed up the database at the request of a user who had lost a project, and the unintentional backup was used when TinyTIM secured its next site.
This site was control.spies.com, a small machine within the confines of Apple Computer Corporation. As a favor to Sketch, TIM was given use of the machine indefinitely while it looked for a new home. TIMsters, having been without TIM for months, jump at the chance.
KA-BOOM! After only a short time as a functioning entity, the control.spies.com machine goes down. Sketch frantically calls and e-mails the system administrator, only to find that he has moved to France. He says he is unable to fix anything from France, and that he'll be back in January to put the machine back up. Small cities can be lit by the anger of the wizards at this news, but there is nothing to do but wait.
KA-BOOM AGAIN! The System Administrator returns from France, and informs Sketch that everything was lost. The English Language fails to describe the reaction among the wizards. The System Administrator offers to make a space for TIM on a neighboring machine that is not dead, wiretap.spies.com. The wizards, amazingly, agree that they have no other choice.
TinyTIM triumphantly returns on wiretap.spies.com, thanks in no small part to Empedocles now-regular tape backups of the DB. The TIMsters rejoice like maniacs. It also marks TIM's last major data loss.
After a period of much courting and overture, Nimdok leaves TrekMUSE and joins TinyTIM as a wizard. In his first full day as a wizard, he succeeds in bringing the game down by invoking a wizard-only command to cause an emergency shutdown. This dubious achievement haunts him as an inside joke for years.
Around this same time, overtures are made to Chuckles of TrekMUSE to join TinyTIM and his old partner Nimdok, as part of a move to completely discredit TrekMUSE as a game. Chuckles declines.
The TinyTIM Party in Seattle, Washington is held on Whidbey island. Wizards attending: Sketch, Nimdok, R'nice, Empedocles and Marcia. The party is a raging success, and is attended by many members and wizards of TrekMUSE as well.
Sketch, having lost his Database Number of #253 when he was @TOADed several years previous, spontaneously decides that as a wizard there is no reason for him to settle for #4587, as he had been doing. After some Houdini-like machinations, he becomes Database #500.
Emboldened by the success of the TinyMUD April Fool's Day of the previous year, Sketch and R'nice hatch a plan very early in the morning to replace the TinyTIM DB with an even more ancient ancestor of MUSH: The original Adventure program. Written by Crowther and Woods in the 70's, this program more than any other is considered the intellectual and derivative father of Text Adventures, and Multi-User Text Adventures, MUDs. Sadly, this was not known to the vast majority of TIMsters who logged in that day, and just saw a simplistic environment and their beloved TIM gone.
A special room had been built some way into the Adventure, which described what was happening and containing testimonials of the last three years of TinyTIM, but it was simply not reaching anyone, as all the players kept quitting before even trying to muddle through.
One player in particular stayed in the first room, and proceeded to explain to all incoming TIMsters - appropos of nothing - that this database was up because "the wizards are cleaning the TinyTIM database and needed to put something up." Most people are led to believe this take on reality and disconnect, waiting for the "real" database to be put on. Eventually, this self-appointed Clarion of TIM wanders into the special Testimonial Room, and begins explaining with all the same fervor of the previous declaration, that this database was put up to celebrate TIM's birthday.
The System Administrator leaves Apple Computer to work for General Magic. The new system administrator takes over and informs TinyTIM it should start looking for a new home. TinyTIM does an amazing impression of The Thing That Wouldn't Leave, and isn't actually kicked off of wiretap.spies.com until well into May.
The Wizards decide they simply can't take this anymore; TinyTIM has grown so large that most functioning workstations on the Internet can't run it without a significant load deduction, meaning a dedicated machine, meaning a highly unlikely chance of finding another free site. It is decided that TinyTIM will have to buy its own machine. Negotiations are started, used Sun ads are perused, and much communication goes on between the wizards. Eventually, a Used Sun Dealer (The Concorde Group) is chosen.
This leaves the issue of a site. Additional negotiations with many folks result in the offer of a young gentleman to put the machine up at McDonnell-Douglas Corporation in Houston, TX. The wizards, gleeful to get the chance to put TIM back up (at this point the machine had been down more than up for over three-quarters of a year, the usual life-span of most other MUDs) agree to send it down.
The machine is purchased, and is named yay.
TinyTIM RETURNS! With the new name of yay.mdc.com, TinyTIM enjoys a great new home far from the tragedies and pain of the previous year. Nestled deep within a military contractor, the Wizards plot a new awakening for TIM.
TinyTIM comes into possession, with the help of Marcia and Russ, of the tim.org domain name.
Citing professional and personal differences with Sketch, Coyote requests to be dewizzed. It is done and he is added to the Hall of Wizards. His presence is missed strongly enough that it is decided TIM needs two wizards to take his place.
jima and zoe are made wizards. The ceremony involves a large box delivered to the Nexus, marked Fragile.. Wizard Inside. As per usual, the spirit of TIM becames frenzied as the week runs on. The surprise of two wizards causes much celebration into the night.
Disaster Strikes! An article in Internet World mentions TinyTIM, and gives the address as yay.mdc.com. A McDonnell-Douglas executive raises a red flag with his colleagues, and a quick internal investigation reveals that the TinyTIM machine was never actually authorized for its network connection through MDC corporation. The plug is pulled on the machine and the charitable employee responsible for the machine's hookup is summarily fired.
The wizards consult each other in an emergency meeting and decide that Nimdok, the oldest of the wizards and the one with the most emotionally-stable-sounding job, should negotiate with the administrators at MDC. The head systems administrator at MDC explains that he would like to get the machine out of their hands, but that it'll have to undergo a security clearance, including a full scan of the disk drives for any sensitive information. Nimdok quickly agrees to this.
The yay machine is returned to Nimdok via UPS. The wizards accolade Nimdok for his fine work. Nimdok inspects the machine for any damage (there is none) and sends the machine along to its newfound home in Connecticut, deep inside an authorized computer room that knows what the TIM machine is and what it will be used for.
The TIM machine goes back online at its new home, and finalizes its official address as yay.tim.org. It is agreed that in the future it will be referred to in all cases by this machine name, to avoid confusion and politics. Sketch affixes a special label to the bottom of the machine:
TinyTIM: The World's Only Federally Inspected and Approved MUSH.
TinyTIM announces that it is changing themes, and goes down. It is replaced by SitcomMUSH, a MUSH based on Situation Comedy Television Shows. Fred_Silverman (the program director of NBC) is the God on SitcomMUSH, and a studio audience is added to provide a constant laugh track. Players are given Ratings instead of Pennies, and for once, the vast majority of TIMsters really enjoy themselves and get completely into character.
R'nice is featured prominently in an article on Klingon Speakers in Time magazine. This article marks the beginning of a continuing string of radio, television, and print media appearances regarding his unofficial title of "World's Best Klingon Speaker".
Tired of having to hand-adjust the "Groups" in the Clock on the Wall, Sketch adds the feature of Cliques, where players add what groups they belong to on themselves, and the Clock adds and correlates them automatically.
Bob Q. Funk asks Sketch if he can add HELP JIVE to the Help System. Sketch agrees, and the completed file is added. Bob Q. Funk rejoices, very likely alone.
KhaOS, a lawyer from Singapore, hears about TinyTIM from Amberyl's MUSH List, giving the list purpose and fame well beyond its scope. While waiting at the TIM login screen to come up with a good name, Sketch notices the odd connection and shouts out "Hey! You from Singapore! Log in!" and he does.
Sketch registers the domain cow.net, for an Internet Service Provider business he starts on his own. He negotiates deals for telephone and net connections, and arranges for office space in the South End of Boston. His dial-in phone number is 1-617-COW-TOWN.
The TinyTIM Database goes down and is replaced with SartreMUSH, a MUSH based on the play No Exit. The implementation of this french play is a single room, where there is no escape. This doesn't stop the resourceful TIMsters from building massive structures within themselves and in Objects they create.
The NEWS file for the MUSH is as follows:
Well, after 5 years, it's time for out-with-the-old and in-with-the-new. So, farewell, TinyTIM, we shall miss you. But on to the future...
Welcome to SartreMUSH, the revolutionary new on-line existentialist drama! We hope you will enjoy it. Just a quick note or two:
Obviously, in keeping with the theme, there is no room digging. Because of this, the restriction on opening exits only in rooms you own has been dropped. You can open an exit in the main room, if you like, but only to be used as an @installed exit. We ask that you not clutter up the main room with your exits.
And remember: Hell is the others!
32 additional megabytes are purchased by the wizards and installed in the yay.tim.org machine, bringing the total memory of the machine up to 64 megabytes.
Trout.Complex and Cranberry's first child is born. John Joseph Rescigno II.
"He was 7 lbs, 1 oz, 19" long, labor was 17 hours, and boy did it suck. So, be happy or something. Foof!" - Trout.Complex
Coyote indicates to TinyTIM that he's interested in becoming a Wizard again. After fleetingly short debate, this request is gladly granted. This makes Coyote the first TIM Wizard to be dewizzed and rewizzed. Coyote begins updating his previous TinyTIM creations with new code.
zoe resigns as a TinyTIM Wizard, citing the need to concentrate more on her writing career. She is dewizzed in a quick ceremony.
Her last shout: "You will have no trouble finding me, just follow the trail. :)"
KhaOS travels from Singapore to America, staying over with Sketch in the Bovine Citadel of Love in Cambridge, MA, becoming the second furthest a TIMster has travelled for a Party. (The winner is F'rajoke, who came from Australia.)
In a fit of programming bravura, R'nice completely and utterly outdoes himself and programs in The Great TinyTIM Flood of 1996. The code is changed entirely to accomodate "leaks" and "water flow", where water actually seeks out down exits, finds the "lowest" parts of TIM, and then begins filling up rooms with water, all the time sending waves in all directions, scrambling content lists and making it harder and harder to move.
The code accounts for an amazing amount of situations, and over time, the Players, seeking higher and higher ground (the code also would seek up exits and send water up through them), eventually settle on making small craft to float in, attempting to communicate with each other by yelling and seeking higher and higher ground.
Eventually, the amount of water in the database slows the server down to the point of non-functionality, but the players emerge back in the old database drenched, and splitting with laughter at the sides.
jima is dewizzed from TIM as a result of inactivity.
To choose TinyTIM's newest wizard, or more accurately to bring along the theme of choosing the already-chosen wizard, TinyTIM creates the Wonka Wizard Bar Machine. This intricately-programmed machine had the name of the chosen player and would dispense Wonka Bars that would eventually recover a Golden Ticket to claim a TinyTIM Wizardship. In some scary parallels to the original Charles and the Chocolate Factory, TIMsters range in reaction from Cynical Dismissal (after buying a few bars), to intense frenzy (one player, Lysander, purchased over 900 Wonka Bars).
Ultimately, the wizard-to-be (without knowing he was to be chosen!) finds the Golden Ticket, and Chuckles finally joins the TinyTIM Wizard Council of Seven on May 13th.
KhaOS forsakes TinyTIM for the purposes of getting married. He ditches the online world and moves in with his lady. Destiny makes bad noises.
Disaster Strikes! TinyTIM is a sudden and unsuspecting victim of a vicious attack upon its server. A system cracker gains access (through the usual combination of technical expertise and random guessing) to the root account on TIM. Not content with the prize of breaching TIM's security, the cracker proceeds to entirely delete the hard drive that TIM resides on. This having been done, the vmunix program, the vital core of the server that TIM uses, is also deleted. Finally, Sketch and Trout.Complex's personal user directories are removed. Sketch logs in at the end of this attack to find seven years of work turned to dust. TIM (which by this point has crashed from the lack of system files) is, as far as the world is concerned, dead.
TrippyMUSH, buddies from way back, once again open their doors to wayward TIMsters and let themselves get bloated with refugees, all wondering what will happen to TIM.
The TIM wizards set about discerning a recovery plan for the TIM program and machine. Backups of varying degrees of usefulness are on other sites, but the most recent backup of the TIM DB that was not on site is several months old. The wizards resolve not to let a vicious attack mean the end of TIM or a noticeable loss of data.
A data recovery service is tapped to attempt to extract the TIM DB from the deleted disk, but after shipping the disks to them, they return them saying there is nothing they can do. Things look very bleak indeed. Luckily, the older DB is still existent, and other important components are available.
R'nice, however, has markedly different plans. Gearing all his considerable programming ability and expertise, as well as his intimate knowledge of the TinyTIM Database Structure, into the task of recovering TIM, he dedicates two straight weeks (doing nothing else) to the project.
By the end of R'nice's efforts, he has successfully written a program that extracts TIM's database from a deleted hard drive, and pieces together by hand the stray and errant parts of the Database that were not automatically recovered. The end result is a pristine Database of TIM from 12 hours before the attack meaning almost no difference in the state of the DB for the users of TIM!
After several days of intense testing by the wizards, TinyTIM returns as good as new to the Internet. Users once again find the game up and return in droves. Within a few days, TIM is back up to 40-60 players on at any one time during the day and night. Much celebration and rejoicing takes place, and users slip into their old characters and habits without missing a beat.
Not content with just returning TIM to a pristine state and the days of work already put into TIM in such a short time, R'nice insists on continuing the tradition of April Fool's Day. TIMsters, sure that there would be no way that TIM would be able to catch his breath after being down for so long, log onto Chutes and Ladders MUSH, where the entire MUSH is dedicated to an online, multi-user simulation of Chutes and Ladders, with playering moving between the squares and rolling dice when it's their turn. The chutes work, the ladders work, and improbably, the users love it so much that the game stays up for two and a half days.
His marriage now over, KhaOS returns to his true calling, TinyTIM. There is much rejoicing, and KhaOS begins throwing himself completely into the game.
R'nice announces that he has built a time machine that's interfaced with the TIM code. The skeptical TIMsters are hauled into the Nexus, where they do witness a miracle of sorts; R'nice has turned TIM into a giant MUD client, that will connect to other games and log into them! For the next day, TinyTIM makes an enormous amount of games freak out by spontaneously moving the entire TIM populace from one MUSH to another, taking them over before disappearing as if they'd never been there. TIM's somehwat insular reputation in the MUSH world is even more established as other games claim everything from hacking to machines crashing because of this prank. All told, several dozen games are "time-travelled to", and TIM even gets a few new users because of it.
TinyTIM's Lag Day Celebration is held at Aerin's house in Melrose, MA. It is attended by many far-flung and unusual TIMsters, including a first-ever attendance by sabu and both KhaOS and Jost, who surprise the hell out of everyone later in the year. Highlights include the First-Ever TinyTIM Trivia Party Challenge, and The TinyTIM Singers. Also, it rains so much that anyone who goes anywhere other than the house completely regrets it and gets soaked.
A Mighty Pile of Spam arrives in the TinyTIM Nexus and sits around for a week, most noticably having a sword in it. TIMsters are invited, in a big ceremony, to attempt to pull the Sword from the Spam. When all is said and done, Jost and KhaOS emerge victorious and are both made Wizards of TIM.
EsnesnoN, the Humor magazine that Sketch and Trout.Complex started together, celebrates its tenth year of existence. As the magazine's first issue was called the "10th Anniversary Issue", it is decided to put out a special "Premiere Issue" at the Class Reunion. After 4 hard days of work, the old editors shove out 120 copies of the special-edition rag for the reunion over Thanksgiving.
With the last of Woody's North Carolina (Woodystock) parties now over, Jost and nessa rush in where fools fear to tread and have the first TinyTIM Hotlanta party, held just outside the city of Atlanta in Georgia. To celebrate, an extremely bald Sketch is stopped in his rental car, handcuffed, and thrown into a paddywagon, before many scary cops explain it was all a silly mixup. R'nice rents a motorcycle and nearly gets his butt killed on it. And the crew of TIM rent a Hummer Limo that rides merrily throughout the area, scaring people.
R'nice claims that he's finally fixed the Time Travelling box from last year so that it'll work. He herds everyone into the Nexus again and turns the box on, only to have it blow all the lights out on TIM. So, TIMsters stumble around in the darkness for a good day and a half. Everyone keeps bumping into things, nothing can be set LIGHT, and it's generally hard to find things.
Because of the oncoming threat of Hurricane Floyd, Nimdok takes TIM down overnight to make sure no damage occurs to the TIM machine. With this necessary action, he brings to a close TinyTIM's longest uptime in it's existence: 5 straight months! Also worth noting is that TIM had been restarted at the beginning of the year because of a code addition, so technically, the uptime could have been for even longer. TIM demonstrates how stable it truly is.
Thanks to Scott Goehring's MUDlist, which ran from 1991-1994, which helped nail down rough estimates of the locations of TIM through those years.
