The Reluctant Shareholder and Other Tales Surrounding Telalink's Merger Agreement

Thomas Conner • September 16, 2014

As the summer of 1999 neared an end, so, too, did the independent life of Telalink Corporation. A “novel-thick” merger agreement with PSINet was nearing its final draft stage. Amidst the fine details being reviewed and re-reviewed, the Telalink leadership had to settle on a few things before we could sign the agreement and close the deal.

As the summer of 1999 neared an end, so, too, did the independent life of Telalink Corporation. A “novel-thick” merger agreement with PSINet was nearing its final draft stage. Amidst the fine details being reviewed and re-reviewed, the Telalink leadership had to settle on a few things before we could sign the agreement and close the deal.


PSINet and Telalink agreed to a 15% holdback, meaning they would hold on to 15% of the proceeds of the purchase price of Telalink, about one million dollars. If, during the holdback period, PSINet discovered that there was some material deficiency in anything that we represented (say, for example, number of paying customers, revenue, pending lawsuits, etc.), then they could draw on the holdback fund as compensation for our negligence. It was like a one million dollar warranty. We had to negotiate the duration and accounting. When I say “negotiate,” I mean we asked for a one year holdback and they said the deal was off if we didn’t agree to 18 months. So, it was 18 months. We asked for the holdback money to be placed in escrow so that a third party trustee would oversee it and be at liberty to release the funds to us after the 18 month period had passed. PSINet said they would hold the money or the deal would be killed. No escrow.


It was during the negotiation about the escrow where PSINet’s initial arrogance was most evident. Their lawyer was downright snobbish. “Guys, we’re a multi-billion dollar corporation with 14,000 worldwide employees and YOU’RE worried that WE won’t pay YOUR million dollars in a year and a half. What? You think WE’RE somehow going to manage to go out of business just like that and not pay YOUR million dollars to YOU?” 

Anne Arney, our lawyer, calmly explained to us how to deal with this. “It’s like this. Are you willing to do the deal and and not get the million dollars? That’s the risk.”


“Yeah! Bill had already talked the deal up by a million so that would just mean we settle for what we were originally going to agree to. Let’s do this!”


The second issue was more of an internal matter. Do we take cash, stock or a combination of both? For me, it didn’t matter. I preferred all cash but if I got stock, I was going to diversify my assets pretty quickly so either way worked for me. I can’t remember but I think Tim was the same way - either will be fine but cold, hard cash is the preferred method of distribution. Bill wanted stock. All stock. He was willing to ride that stock price up, up, up. Certainly, the past 12 months suggested this was the trend. Several other staffers were aware that we had to make a choice. They were concerned.


“All stock?” asked one of our colleagues. “How’s that going to help me buy a house? I need some cash out of this. Am I going to have to pay taxes? How long would I have to wait before I can sell? What does that cost?”


There were many curiosities surrounding the method of payment. Such curiosities turned into concerns which turned into debates. I’m not sure how it was determined but Tim, Bill and I decided to recuse ourselves from the decision and we asked Bob Collie, Scott Sears and Michele Watkins to arrive at a unanimous decision- cash, stock or a combination? They caucused and rendered a verdict- “We’ll take the cash.” And thus, it was cash for all.


Finalizing the details. it was determined that there were some assets with which to be dealt. First of all, the Nashville Regional Exchange Point (aka “NREP,” although Mr. Southeast Region President somehow managed to call it “NRAMP”) was a carrier-neutral data center that was 50% owned by ISDN-Net and 50% owned by Telalink. While it felt awkward, there wasn’t much we could do about it. So, not only was ISDN-Net NOT going to be merging with Telalink. They were, in fact, whether they wanted to or not, going to end up co-owning NREP alongside PSINet, the very company that did NOT want to acquire them and wanted instead to only buy us. Yes, it was very awkward.


Next, there was the asset known as nashville.net which Bill Butler wanted and still owns to this day. Since that time, nashville.net has been an email service and currently serves as an events app and blog for shows around Nashville. Last was the piece that Tim, Andrew and I wanted- all of the code that was used to manage website content in the websites that we hosted. PSINet didn’t want any of this. In fact, they really didn’t want any of our infrastructure. They wanted our customers. The bottom line for them the would be moving all of our customers on to their services (even if what the customers were paying for was not available in our market). So, when it came time to break away some of the assets, they had no objection to transferring all of the code that had been written over the previous five years to a new company, started by Andrew, Tim and me, called Monster Labs, Inc. - for the price of $100.00. At the time, Telalink was generating about $80,000/month in web hosting fees.


Rounding third and headed for home, there was just one more seemingly simple task and that was to have a shareholder meeting to approve the merger. Without much concern on our end, PSINet insisted that 100% of the shareholders approve the plan. “Who would object?” I thought. “The original investors are going to make about 5 times their money. We had been issuing restricted shares to staff based on performance and some of them would receive quite a nice return for no cash invested. How could anyone be against this deal? This is a no-brainer! We’re almost there!”


Well, indeed, the chickens had seemingly been counted before they hatched. Here’s the scene:


Official correspondence was sent out around October 10, 1999 (certified with return receipt requested) to all Telalink Corporation shareholders announcing that a meeting would be held in the evening (after dinner was served) at the University Club of Nashville, Tennessee to vote on Telalink Corporation merging with PSINet Inc. If approved, the deal would close on November 22, 1999. The proposed details of the merger were included along with a form naming either Thomas Conner, William Butler or Timothy Moses as proxy authorized to vote in their absence. Even if a shareholder was going to attend, we asked that everyone submit a proxy just in case, for whatever reason, they had to change their plans at the last minute. We even named proxies for each other. And so we waited for the documents to be returned (which included postage paid envelopes).


Staff members and local family signed immediately. No sweat. We expected those to be approved, signed and returned immediately. I received a few phone calls from minority shareholders who were curious about what all of this meant. They just wanted to know was this a big happy event or was this a last act of desperation? These were mainly a handful of retired folks, friends of various family members, who put up $2,000, $5,000 or maybe a little more as a favor. “This is a VERY good thing!” I would assure them. “We are so grateful for your support over these past five years and we are very excited that you will be rewarded with a substantial cash return on your investment.” Aside from a few technical details regarding the process or receiving verbal regrets in response to the invitation accompanied by a promise to return the proxy statement right away, the calls were largely of a congratulatory nature.


Every shareholder responded affirmatively by the deadline, about ten days out from our meeting on November 7… except one, a minority shareholder whose investment was near the smallest amount. He had not replied to our request for a response.


“Not a problem,” I thought rather confidently to myself. “I know this person pretty well and he lives and works very close by. I’ll just give him a call. He’s probably just been too busy and needs to be nudged. I will offer to go to his place and pick everything up to make this as convenient as possible.”


The call went something like this:


“Hello, Mr. Shareholder?”


“Oh hi, Thomas!”


“Hey, I just wanted to make sure you got everything and that you were ready to sign off on the agreement and come to the shareholder meeting. Of course, I also wanted to make sure that all of your questions are answered.”


“Yeah, thanks for the call. You need to call my lawyer. His name is _________ and I can have my secretary get you his number.”


“Your lawyer?” My breathing became shallow and my mouth got dry.


“Yes, he advised against this and said you need to work it out with him.”


I nearly dropped the phone.


“Ohhhh, okay, then. I’ll call him right away. Thank y…” My voice trailed off. My heart was beating so fast that I was getting light-headed.

“Don’t worry, Thomas. You’ve got this,” I said to myself. “You’ve dealt with enough lawyers, tax accountants and auditors, IRS agents, state revenue auditors, due diligence analysts, angry customers and difficult staffers. This lawyer can’t possibly be that difficult.”


I called the lawyer.


“Yes, Mr. Conner. I know who you are. I’ve looked over the merger proposal that you sent to my client and he will not sign this or anything like this. This deal is nothing but a ‘get-rich’ deal for you and your friends. My client isn’t getting anything but crumbs. I’m going to look into this a little more in detail but we may need to file a lawsuit against you for fraud.”


“Ummmm…..I…..exactly….did you say…..uhhh……so…..”? The lump in my throat which had obstructed any discernible word finally shrunk enough.


“Sir, I beg your pardon but there HAS to be a misunderstanding of some kind. I don’t think I believe what I am hearing. Maybe I need to have our lawyer contact you?”


“I’m happy to tell your lawyer the same thing, sir. You can’t just trample over my client’s rights as a minority shareholder and expect him to just agree to anything you tell him to do.”


“Yes, sir. Thank you for your time, sir. Have a good day.” I was in full eeyore mode by this point. My voice was monotone and very soft. I sat at my desk and stared at my computer. “We are soooo doomed” was all I could think.


I got up and walked over to tell Tim and Bill. The solemn message soon evolved into pronouncements of rage.


“WHAT!!!!????” said Anne Arney over the phone. “How could he say that? Who is this lawyer?


I usually remember names but perhaps the sheer hauntedness of the words exchanged with our shareholder’s lawyer was just too severe. Perhaps, just as Lord Voldemort was “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,” I must have convinced myself to block this monster’s name from my memory because I cannot remember….not that I would share such a detail with the public.


I gave Anne the lawyer’s name.


“Him??? Are you kidding???!!!” Anne was incredulous. “I know him. Don’t worry, Thomas. I will straighten him out. He has no idea what he’s talking about. Just wait until I talk to him.”


Anne is usually quite mild-mannered, soft-spoken and mostly calm. Not this time. She was incensed.


For 1.6 days, I brooded and waited by the phone. Every minute felt agonizingly slower than the one preceding it. I couldn’t focus much. Everything we had to do to close this deal. Everything that we had done over the previous five years. Every battle, external and internal, that we had faced. Every risk that we undertook. It had all come down to one minority shareholder’s lawyer slamming the brakes on us. I waited, accompanied by the sound of not much more than my heart beating. Finally, the phone rang.


“Hi, Thomas. It’s Anne Arney. I talked to the lawyer. The shareholder will sign. This is no longer a problem.”


Anne was back to her calm, steady self.


I became euphoric. “He will???!!! What did you say to him?”


“Let’s just say that I was successfully able to turn all of his objections into a clear demonstration of his lack of understanding. Basically, the lawyer didn’t understand that Telalink wasn’t just a passive investment for you and the others but that this was your job for the last five years. The lawyer thought you guys were trying to get a big payoff without investing much in it while his client was only getting a 500% return.” 


 “Without investing much……” Oh, only our LIVES!


I thanked Anne, hung up and told the others. “We’re back on track. NO ONE is to do anything dangerous before that shareholders meeting or the closing for that matter. EVERYONE will be safe, sound and cautious!”


The next morning, I was headed to work. Stopped at a four way stop, I looked in my rear view mirror and who, of all people, got out of the car behind me and ran to my window, which I rolled down. It was none other than our reluctant shareholder.


“I’ll sign! I’ll sign!” he said. “I’m really sorry for the misunderstanding!”


“No problem!” I said. I thought something different. Since then, we’ve had a laugh or two about it.


100% of the shareholders had approved the merger. 100% of our proxy forms were in hand. The meeting would be a formality.


November 7, 1999. A nice dinner at the University Club, Some nice words exchanged. My friend, Jim Brown, who was a local broker for J.C. Bradford, was asked to be present in case, for whatever reason, we needed a licensed securities dealer to be named by the company to act on our behalf for any transactional needs. Anne Arney and Ramin Olson, a recent Vanderbilt law grad and attorney working with Anne at Doramus & Trauger at the time, attended to keep order of things and to answer any legal questions.

There was but one vote.


“All in favor of approving the plan for the merger of Telalink Corporation with PSINet, Inc, say ‘aye””


A chorus of “Ayes”


“All opposed, say ‘nay’”


Silence. Phew!


I thought of my dad and how much I wished he could been there for this moment. There just aren’t too many times in one’s life when you get to experience such a precise moment of affirmation for your work. Somehow, I think my dad could have used one more of those before he died.


The resolution passed unanimously.


It was time to order some plane tickets and make reservations for a hotel in New York.



November 22, 1999, here we come!


PSINet Adventures- "Why Don't We Just Take Him Out and Shoot Him?"

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In the summer of 1999, PSINet was performing its due diligence prior to the acquisition of Telalink and it provided our first insight into one of PSINet's more colorful personalities - our soon-to-be new boss.

The Extraordinary Events That Led to the Sale of Telalink in 1999

By Thomas Conner • December 5, 2013
Fourteen years after Telalink was sold to PSINet, the story behind the deal offers an intriguing look into how a Nashville-based Internet service provider navigated its way through the "speed-dating" process that ultimately resulted in its acquisition.

Adventures in Marketing, Collaborations, Joint Ventures and Merger Flirtations

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It's kind of like high school- who likes whom; who's doing what to get whose attention; whose parents are allowing whom to do what and when with each other. Except no curfews and everyone wanted the geeks.

Beautiful, Bountiful 1997. Hateful, Ugly 1998

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Telalink was on its way to hitting $1 million in sales that fall. To celebrate, I called a surprise meeting one evening, announced that we had officially become a $1 million company and invited everyone for dinner at Amerigo’s by way of the longest stretch limousine that I could find in Nashville. The million dollar sales mark was such a landmark, and yet, we felt that we were just at the beginning. It was hard to look beyond Nashville with all of the opportunities in front of us.

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The Mind Games of Mindspring

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In which "All-you-can-eat" internet service for $19.95 is introduced in 1996 and forces the Telalink team to become the "business internet" provider in Nashville...and we get free moving labor.

Hooray! We're Number One! Wait....Really?

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This is a story about how some basic accounting and being part of the most intriguing industry in the world paid off for the Telalink peeps.

"Thanks for Calling Technical Support. How Might I Help You Understand How Stupid You Are?"

By Thomas Conner • June 17, 2013
A brief commentary on the evolution of technical support at Telalink Corporation. Just remember that Bill was phenomenal in many other areas.

"The Radius Must Authenticate to the Sparc"

By Thomas Conner • May 20, 2013
My first day at Telalink Corporation, October 11, 1995, was fascinating. I had not been in the office for more than an hour when I received my first phone call. Actually, my desk, computer and phone were not actually set up yet so Mary Watkins, Bill’s mother, took the call. “It’s someone from the Winchester Police Department. Evidently, the neighbor whom you paid to clean out your basement and garage broke into your house and stole a window air conditioner,” said Mary. “The policeman wants to know if you want to press charges.” One of my neighbors was battling a drinking problem. When he was sober, he was a great guy. When he got drunk, he became somewhat mischievous. I gave a hundred dollar bill to another neighbor who agreed to be the escrow agent. If neighbor #1 (the beer lover) cleaned the basement (it was really a cellar. This was a century old house that had belonged to my grandmother) and hauled off all of the trash, neighbor #2 would transfer the $100 to him. Neighbor #1 performed to expectation. Neighbor #2 paid neighbor #1. Evidently, neighbor #1 then proceeded to liquor store #1 and perhaps liquor stores #2, #3 and #4 where he proceeded to convert the $100 into another form of liquid asset. He imbibed the rest of the day and found the courage to claim a small window air conditioner as a bonus. Neighbor #2 was able to watch neighbor #1 break into my house and find his way to a second floor bedroom before the commotion erupted during the air-conditionerctomy. “No need to press charges,” I said. “Tell him to put the AC back and stay out of my house. I’m about to rent it out and if he does something like that again, I’ll have to take a more punitive approach.” Sadly, my new renter proved to be a colorful enough character in her own right but I will save that for another day. Much was happening at Telalink in those days. Joel Moses was dedicating his weekly column in the Nashville Scene to all things Internet. He was giving Telalink plenty of good coverage and Channel 4 (WSMV) traded out commercial spots (“Internet! Twice the Speed! $35!”) in exchange for their own website and access. In fact, not long after the web came along, local news stories about porn on the web were gaining in popularity. It seemed like Tim, ordained by the Nashville media as the foremost authority on Internet porn, was always on the news, discussing the latest trends in the more salacious content on the ‘Net. Bill once commented that he knew that we were on to something when pornographers, gamblers and churches all wanted on the Internet. By this time in the story, Tommy was out, although he was still in. Still an equal shareholder with Tim and Bill, and still a resident of 110 30th Ave N, Tommy decided that this was no life for him and he opted to take a full time job with Vanderbilt. Not long after I arrived, we all agreed that the best arrangement was for me to simply buy him out. That would free him of any responsibilities as a principal and it would validate the importance of my position, not only as the financial officer, but hopefully as leader, negotiator, organizer, and strategist. For example: Issue #1: ITS Communications found out about Telalink and approached Bill about reselling Telalink service as its own service in the Nashville market. Telalink would get paid $10/month per customer. ITS would sell and support the service. While this sounded like an easy deal, ITS sold the hell out of the service and, if I am not mistaken, they sold it unlimited internet access, a still-new concept. Telalink customers were only allowed 30 hours a month but that was soon doubled to keep up with the competition. You see, unless we had an available phone number for every customer to be able to dial into our service at the same time, the first hapless soul to dial in when all of the lines were occupied would get a busy signal. Remember the early ads “no busies?” So, part of the challenge was to limit usage and kick people off after a certain amount of time online. We also gambled that not everyone would dial in at the same time. However, when ITS private-labeled Telalink service, the model was nearly blown up because they were selling accounts faster than we could add phone lines and ITS support was terrible. Back then, customers needed a lot of help, and some luck, to get online. Telalink had created an installer kit that got users set up and it included a free version of Netscape Navigator. ITS customers started to figure out that they were actually just dialing into Telalink and, because they could not get adequate assistance from ITS, they would just call us. Bill was not happy with the arrangement so I read the contract that they signed. It looked pretty simple to me. All we had to do what was give ITS 60 days notice of our intent to cancel. So, I wrote a letter to ITS, referenced the agreement, sent it overnight and added that we would only agree to renew at $35/month per customer. We got an instant response. They argued that this was the same price at which they were selling the service and this would kill their model. We agreed but showed no signs of letting up. If I recall, we were able to triple our ITS revenue for about 4 months while slowing down our phone line orders to a more reasonable level, not that Bellsouth was cooperating with our requests anyway (see paragraph 5 of http://www.thomasbconner.com/post/2013/02/28/whats-an-internet-again.582282). ITS decided to leave us and we were happy to dissolve our association. Suddenly, we had plenty of capacity to grow our customer base. Issue #2: As I recall, Bob was traveling back and forth to “Convent Place” quite a lot in my first few days at Telalink. Part of the reason was related to sheer brilliance. Telalink worked a deal with Charles, the owner, who had converted an old convent into an eclectic assortment of offices, yoga, banquet space, etc. The deal was that we would feed the entire building with a big pipeline of dedicated internet access and then break out lines to individual subscribers throughout the building. It would be a very cool amenity- one of the first “wired” buildings in Nashville...and Telalink’s margins would be very attractive. The not-so-brilliant part was the idea that we would move half of our personnel to Convent Place. Now, at the time, Telalink occupied two condos, conjoined by an enclosed upstairs landing. That’s a total of two kitchens, 4 bathrooms and total of 7 rooms (one was already our server room) that could be used for office space/work stations. Why would we need to split up our team and occupy space in another building? While it first appeared that we had no room, it was also true that Tim and Timmy still lived there. Bill moved out and his bedroom became our shared office along with Scott Holden, “aka Splotchy.” To learn more about Splotchy, go here . In addition, Vanderbilt friend, Dave Tempero (currently IS Business Manager for Network Systems at Nintendo), had his consulting business, Sector 3, operating out of one of the rooms. Finally, there was one more consulting company called Nvision, owned by Shawn Yeager, and I really never knew him or what his company did. He was sort of like Lazlo from Real Genius. Ever so often, I would see Shawn come and go with nothing more than a “Hey, how are you?” and then he would disappear. My point was that it seemed really important to me that we should try to work near one another (i.e. in the same office space), at least until I got a little more familiar with the basics- the who, what, where, when, why, and how of Telalink. In other words, it might be time for some other folks to move out so that we would have enough room for Telalink staff. No move to Convent Place. Issue #3: No insurance. None. On anything or anyone. All I can say is that the first insurance sales person who cold-called me was a lucky man. Until I could get a business commercial liability policy, workers compensation insurance and health insurance coverage for everyone, I went to bed dreaming of catastrophes, injuries and other unsavory workplace disasters that would render Telalink to the status of defendant or debtor. Issue #4: No staff meetings. What I remember were one-on-one conversations and debates between Bill and Robert Beckett, Bob and Robert, Bill and Bob, Splotchy and “the fat guy,” as he was occasionally called and almost everyone had some kind of crude comment to share with Tim in the event that Feisty (Tim’s cat) pooped on a cable or someone’s work area. Izzy, the other office cat, was generally well liked, as was Feisty, but Feisty was unbelievably artful in her fecal distributions throughout the office. I decreed that we would have weekly, face-to face meetings and, accordingly, would take notes. This proved to be a challenge. First, Bob spoke too fast. Secondly, it seemed like everyone spoke in code with letters: TCP/IP, HTML, ISDN, T1, T3, FTP, 56K, 28.8, Bitsurfr, blah, blah blah. At one point, in the midst of a spirited debate between Bill and someone, probably Bob or Robert, his passionate argument boiled down to one Shakespearean moment when he declared, “The Radius MUST authenticate to the Sparc!” He even used hand gestures. I had scribbled indecipherable comments throughout our first staff meeting but there was one thing that resonated, “The Radius must authenticate to the Sparc.” I thought to myself that if there is one thing that you take away from this meeting today, you will believe with all of your heart and all of your soul that the “Radius must authenticate to the Sparc.” The moment came for the scribe to report what was said earlier about something so I re-read my notes. “Bob said something about something that I did not understand. Bill disagreed. Robert disagreed with Bill but said Bob was wrong too....Let’s see, something, something, something and, oh, Bill says, ‘The Radius MUST authenticate to the Sparc.’ That’s really all I got.” Everyone laughed. It must have been funny. Don’t ask me why. Seventeen years later, I still don’t know what they were talking about. By the way, Robert Beckett is now Services Technical Leader for Cisco Systems. You can see him, still talking code, here.  Our meeting adjourned and we reconvened at either Harvey Washbanger's or Rio Bravo. I forget which but it HAD to be one or the other.

Interns Respond

By Thomas Conner • May 3, 2013
was really glad to get some feedback from the Telalink intern graduates following my last post . There were a few posts in response on my Facebook wall that I thought needed to be merged into my blog so that’s what I am doing today. Before I do, though, I was listening to a story on NPR about how women novelists in the US were being classified in Wikipedia ( http://n.pr/16eApbn ). I was only half listening when the word “Kaldari” rang out and I realized that Ryan Kaldari was being interviewed! Ryan was one of the original “unofficial” MLK interns who attended UC Berkeley before working for Sitemason for many years. He left us to work for Viacom and he now calls San Francisco and Wikipedia his home. One day, I’ll write about how, as a student, Ryan wrote a $2.00 counter check to Rio Bravo to pay for his soda but he either forgot to sign the check or wrote so illegibly that no one could figure out how to contact him, which was only necessary because the check bounced! The Rio Bravo team knew the Telalink crew well enough to venture a guess that the $2 mystery check writer was somehow associated with them. And now, let’s hear from some of Ryan’s colleagues from MLK. First, Paula Pfleiger Thrasher writes: “I think I mentioned in the other post, not quite the full story on how the internships started. Carl Tashian was the first MLK intern, but I think he may have even started before the first official school co-op internship thing for school. Carl can fill in details there. I didn't start until October-ish timeframe in 1995. I had originally lined up an internship downtown that fell through right as the school year started, then ended up instead working out at the McClures in Belle Meade in the receiving department doing data entry on bill of materials/invoices/etc. I did that for at least six weeks then my boss got arrested for tax fraud. Plus it was mind-numbingly dull. So I was looking for a new internship when Carl invited me to Telalink. I started working help desk, and there was a paid employee called Rich (I think - I forget his name? Anyone else remember?). He was kinda passive aggressive and a little jerky. At that time Bill (Butler)/Bob (Collie) were sick of answering customer calls so they put up with him. He eventually quit (got fired?) and at one point the entire help desk team was pretty much me and Bill's mom (Mary Watkins). Crazy. Then we hired Scott (Sears) and later Marc (Powell). I never wrote any real sexy or famous sites, but I did write that dang support website complete with filemaker database backend (I think? can't remember) along with a little homegrown ticket system. Didn't make Time magazine though - ha.” [editor’s note: I am not disclosing the name of the jerky guy but I can state that he was not fired. He left for another position with another company] Daniel Templeton writes: “I was at Sun until it became Oracle and about a year and a half longer. I'm now two Years at Cloudera, the leading Hadoop distro provider. I did indeed marry Cari, and she's now been at Google for six years.”  Finally, Carl Tashian shares this fantastic memoir: Starting around 1993-4 I had dialup Internet access via CTRVAX and later via PPP from Vanderbilt's CS department. I paid by the CPU hour or something. Which at first was expensive, but once I moved to PPP it was actually the wrong way to bill things, so I could be on all day and would barely pay anything in terms of CPU. And perhaps that is why, at some point, Vanderbilt limited access to the university community and shut down outside accounts like mine... But I was hooked to the Internet at that point. I was running a MUD and writing code for it, running a BBS w/UUCP that needed nightly Internet access, I was playing with the first generation of web browsers, I was a newsgroup junkie, and I couldn't imagine giving all that up. I think I got an AOL account for a minute, but that didn't work out--it wasn't close enough to the metal. So I found Telalink. It was exactly what I wanted, but too expensive for me. Something like $40 per month? Way out of my price range. So (and I honestly think this is the first time in my life that I'd ever done this) I cold-called Telalink and invited myself over. I came up the back stairs and climbed a ladder to the roof, where Bill and Bob were grilling up some food and working off of RoofNet, which was really just one ethernet cable snaked through an open window. Anyway, that first meeting was a little awkward, because I was a shy kid so new people were a challenge. But after chatting a bit we went downstairs and I remember Bob showing me around-- the Linux boxes, the Cisco routers, ISDN modems, etc. It was definitely a wonderland for me, and the fact that Telalink had a 256k link was a huge draw. I remember telling Ryan and Paula about it. Anyway, I'm not sure how it came up but I started spending more and more time at Telalink. This felt like it was way before the official internship, which would have been from Sept 1995 to June 1996, where I worked about 25 hours a week at Telalink. Tim, Bill, Bob really stayed out of our way as interns, gave us full access to everything and pretty much let us explore our curiosities as long as we didn't get in the way too much. I think in particular Bill is a great leader in that way--very trusting. And that's how the HTML guide came to be--just by being curious and having the time to follow it through. It felt a lot more like a real job during the Official Internship period. I think it was Ryan, Paula, and I. At some point, before we hired Kelly Setzer, it seemed like all of the web & DNS servers were my responsibility. Bill gave me a pager. I took it very seriously. I'm sure I made a lot of mistakes, and I remember, when Kelly came on board, realizing that he was a Real Sysadmin. I learned a ton from him. Telalink was a great learning environment across the board, life-changing for me. And I think things like the HTML guide got me into college, ultimately. Because I wasn't that psyched about school, didn't take it seriously, and didn't test well. I wanted to make things people would use. Still do. BTW the Telalink Virtual Tour website is still up ( http://tashian.com/virtela/ ). I it threw together by scanning some pics from an old book on telecommunications from the school library. It’s stories like these that remind us just what a frontier it was back then but, maybe even more importantly, what great relationships, vocations and contributions came out of this “internship” community. So much passion to learn and create. I hope that we can get some more stories from other Telalink graduates. I also wonder where and how these stories are happening now.
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