About...

I worked for Kaiwan Internet twice. I worked as the tech support guy. Most early Kaiwan subscribers will no doubt remember me as "the non-Asian guy."

My first exposure to Kaiwan was when I lost my account at a local university (I guess I was playing too much on a local MUD) and was looking for some other access alternative. A few people I knew online said they were getting access through a dialup server in Garden Grove, run by this guy named "Luke." They gave me a telephone number to dial in and set up an account.

At that time, Kaiwan Internet was a little bit bigger than a hobbyist operation. Luke was running things out of his home, and there was no tech support or anything else to speak of. When I went to his address to pay my first bill, I guess I woke him up, because Luke greeted me at the door in pajamish shorts, a rumpled button-down shirt, and uncombed hair. I knew then that this was probably going to be the start of a great adventure.

So, I happily used Kaiwan's shell server to MUD and handle E-mail. I was also very active in Kaiwan's local newsgroups, providing a helping hand to users who seemed a bit.. clue-deprived. After being one of the people that vocally complained that Kaiwan's lack of tech support really sucked, Luke issued me a challenge: if you think you can do better, go ahead and try.

This began my employment with Kaiwan. The first couple of weeks I was working in Luke's living room, actually logging in to kaiwan.kaiwan.com at the local console. Within a few weeks, I was moved to Kaiwan's first office on Brookhurst Street in Garden Grove. I was issued keys, a DOS-based machine I could telnet in from, and a phone.

For the first six months or so, I more or less worked alone... answering the phone and E-Mail, scanning the kaiwan.* newsgroups, and handling E-mail. I didn't have much authority to actually do much, but Luke was generally responsive if I said "this is broken." Rachel would infrequently come in and handle billing.

As time went on, I eventually left Kaiwan and helped out a friend start his own ISP. That is actually another long involved story, so we'll skip it for the time being.

Eventually, I found myself out of work again, and also in need of an inexpensive ISP. So, I called up my old buddy Luke again. I walked into Kaiwan's new Irvine office expecting to set up a UUCP account, and I walked out with a job.

Kaiwan had changed somewhat: of course, PPP accounts were now the big thing, and Luke actually kept office hours at Kaiwan's office. I worked up front at first.. and later moved into the small cubical city that housed the other tech support people. The environment was still more or less the same there as Garden Grove, if more people.

I eventually left Kaiwan again. After having been given the role of sysadmin at another job, going back to doing tech support just seemed frustrating. However, Kaiwan was a unique place at a unique time. It was a frontier town of an ISP, at a time when the Internet looked like it was going to change everything. I have fond memories of Kaiwan Internet. It provided basic Internet access at a time when there wasn't a lot of choices. I was sorry to see Kaiwan close it's doors in 1998, the victim of a more corporate Internet world where a small pioneer was fenced in on all sides.

And, that was the most endearing part about Kaiwan, at least to me. Luke said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times back in 1995 that if it ever became "not fun", he wouldn't hesitate to close the doors and move on. The dialup internet business definately became "not fun," and Luke has no doubt moved on to other, more interesting activities.

For me, I moved to be a highly paid system administrator at a dot.com, which more or less went broke in the Great Bust of 2001. I guess I kept doing the Internet thing until it became "not fun" too.

I invite all old Kaiwan subscribers to participate in the Kaiwan Memorial Project. To start with, check out the user registry. Also, if you were a customer of Kaiwan, you are invited to join the webring (details at the bottom of the page). There's also a low-volume mailing list that you can participate in.

Have fun, and if you know a former customer of Kaiwan, let them know about this page!

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