It all sounded like cozy family fun. Why not put up a Web server so that the aunts and uncles and cousins and everyone could archive their photos, stories, videos, oral histories, and significant dates into one place. Then those of us who are retired, between jobs, or trying to build some computer skills could create Web sites, photo albums, documentaries, or whatever to share with everyone else. It would be a cheap server, since we don’t need tape backup or mirrored drives; hey, it doesn’t even have to be up except on weekends.

First, of course we had to register a domain, which immediate raised the question, are we a .com, .org, or .net? We settled on .net, but then had to figure out which patriarch was the truest ancestor. Suddenly it looked like all the families might have to have servers, or maybe we would have to register several domains. Trouble was brewing, believe me.

Aunt Patsy was firm that whatever name we chose, it had to include both the husband’s and wive’s name. This narrowed our scope somewhat, since some of the patriarchs had more than one wife. Yikes! Uncle George saw a way through this as long as the first wife’s name was used, and she died of natural causes.

Pete works out at Los Alamos, and he immediately complained that we were going to put up a Web site without sufficient security. Pete takes security really seriously, or started to after the FBI spent several hours alone in a room with him, asking about removable hard drives they found in a local landfill. We started to think maybe we should just have an IP address, anyway, since the domain thing had two branches of the family at war. Actually, they were already at war, but. . . never mind.

Dave used to work for a large aerospace firm, and he really needed to get some Web designer experience, so he dredged up a server from a failed .com. We had had our family reunion, so he scanned in a thick pile of photographs. He did this really slick family tree, usually with a picture of mom and pop at the top, organization chart wise, and then each of the kids underneath. Susie and Wendy are two sisters from one branch, and Wendy threw a fit when she found that there was one more picture of Suzie than her on their page.

Jill didn’t like the pictures from the reunion, since “this wasn’t her”. She sent pictures taken from her junior high dance, showing her in a “more appropriate” setting, which combined elements of Britney Spears and KISS. She also asked that she not be referred to as “Jill” anymore, the correct name was “Jitter”.

Somehow one of the pictures that was submitted wasn’t really a picture of her; it was limited to a close up of a spoon piled high with white powder. None of the kid brothers had any idea where such a picture would have come from.

Even the IP address idea wasn’t working out, since Pete had figured that at least two other people had remote access to the server, and used his copy of PC Anywhere to log on. The hack strategy consisted of using various people’s names, given their pet names for passwords, until he got Henry and his cockatoo Splendicious. Who could have guessed? We decided to make the whole thing strictly dial-up, which triggered a complaint from Kathy in Alaska. Solution: she could FTP stuff to one of our other computers, then we’d copy it onto the server.

One of the things that was clear was that tape backup was silly, so we installed a DVD recorder to archive various directories. Copies of these are distributed to three different households that appear to be particularly good at keeping things over long time periods. When we pulled into Millie’s garage, I noticed our jewel case DVDs sitting on the shelf next to dear old Gramp’s TRS-80. This being Idaho in the winter, I remember getting icicles on my moustache just looking for the scraper.

Frank, the lawyer in our family, warned us not to identify the city and state where they were located if they were going to also have a picture of their cheerleader daughter on the site. In fact, this whole idea was dangerous. Dave, in the meantime, found a job, but only after two prospective employers had obviously suppressed amusement at his Web designs. His job now is maintaining robots used for cutting and welding quarter inch steel. Since he’s out of the house all the time, the server is used to store still pictures taken at 15 second intervals from security cameras around his property.