Eric S. Smith has been an Internet participant since September or October of 1994, when Trent University (in idyllic Peterborough, Ontario, Canada) gave him an account on Ivory, a VAX 4000 (?) running VMS. His first exposure to th.e network was through Gopher.
Mr. Smith considers himself to be a Usenetter, primarily, and has been posting regularly for years and years -- since before Deja News started its database, actually.
Currently a user of Win95 and Lin.ux on his home PC (which is now a Pentium 166 MMX with too little disk space), he is gravely annoyed that computer hardware and software aren't as cool as they should be. He opposes the fraudulent practices of the "Church" of Scientology..