The History Of SteelSnowFlake

The name SteelSnowFlake dates back to my earliest days of working on Prominence I at LLCC. (around 1997 or '98).
The name really has no meaning, in that it only came about because I noticed that arranging steel hex nuts would result in a snowflake pattern if you so desired.
I've always liked making names for the various (and usually over-ambitious) projects I've started (and rarely ended) in my life.

The earliest example that I can distinctly remember was E.F.A.R.S., which stood for "Eli and Fred Aeronautical Research Society." Don't let the name fool you, it was little more than the two of us strapping rocket motors to toy trucks and cars. One such "research vehicle" nearly took Freds' head off, and that was the end of the "Research Society." Fred evidently didn't suffer any lasting damage, as he now works for the Navy (I believe) as a translator.

Sometime after that, John Norton and I went into buisness with "Extreme Design Studios", a sort of random tech company that was basically an excuse for us to get together and play Marathon. Looking back, I was probably the prime mover, and John was a good sport and put up with me.
We did do some pretty cool stuff together though, along with John's younger brother David. We made the short movie "How to Install a ZIP drive" in which we...suprisingly...installed a zip drive. The camera was kind of shaky, and the lighting pretty yellow, but it had all of the basic components of a good how-to film.
While we were still a part of "Extreme Design Studios", we also made some cool T-shirts, some of which I still proudly wear, even though Beth thinks they're ratty. Again, my partners in crime went on to make a name for themselves, with John now working in D.C. for a tech company, and David is in college working on a Comp. Sci. degree.

After that "company" went nowhere (it did result in some cool marathon games though), I started a site through which I could sell my potato cannons.
It was named, imaginatively enough, Intimidator Inc. (although I never actually bothered to incorporate it). I sold a couple of my fearsome designs to guy who was buying some for himself and a nephew.
Intimidator Inc. actually could have gone somewhere if Mom and Dad hadn't been so freaked about the possible legal ramifications concerning selling these rather powerful forms of entertainment. If someone had killed another individual with one of those things, I don't really know what I would have done. Still, I would like to take up building them again, if I ever get the time. At the height of my art, I built a twin-barrel, twin-chamber, electronically ignited monster that could shoot potatos about 300m. Mmmm. Those were the days.

All during this while, SteelSnowFlake had become the name of whatever website I was building at the time.
In those days, I used to build sites for fun, usually because I was bored.

Once I got into IWU, things became a bit more interesting. I started the "IWU underground" which was originally meant to serve as a BBS for people looking to sell their used textbooks.
I went so far as to have all the scripts written, and the site basically done, when I decided to go legit and check with the school.
Well, the school thought it was a great idea, especially once I showed them what I had. Howver, they wanted to take the site and admin it themselves, which is exactly what I didn't want to happen. I said "yeah right" and killed it right there. I've never been particularly good at sharing.
It's a damnable pity, as I believe it was a great idea.

From that creative crater jumped The Jackal Project, a name which I had applied to my bunch of ragtag servers and various networking hardware. At this point I was working for the school and had money to burn, which explains how I ended up with crap like a 24-port 10BT hub.
Still, it was cool to go to bed at night and watch all of the flickering lights of network traffic race around my own creation. More than once I felt like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, screaming "It's alive!" at the top of my lungs.
Gene, my roomate at the time, was patiently long-sufferinga about the whole mess and nicknamed the pile of computer equipment "The Sun", due to the impressive heat and light it created.

SteelSnowFlake is still quite undefineable. I have no more of an idea of what it is than you do. It's just a name, a name I apply to all of my creations. I always wanted to start my own exclusive club, my own secret society. Poor John knew what that was like, I'm sure, as I tried to involve him in my various far-fetched schemes of greatness.

The scary thing is, at that time, kids just like John and I were starting stuff that eventually became household names, like napster or google. I guess I never had the drive or stuck to any one thing long enough. I suppose if I had, it would have been named "SteelSnowFlake".

It might not be google, or amazon, or even paypal. It might not even be big, but it's SteelSnowFlake, and it's home.