User:WilliamPinyon

Born in December of 1962 in a quaint Navy town called Pensacola, Florida. I cannot complain about my childhood. My parents made sure my brother and I never wanted for anything. I was privileged to get a decent education. I attended Pensacola Christian School during my grade school days and Santa Rosa Christian School until I graduated in 1981. Why the Christian schools you may ask. Well, my father graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. Upon completion of his degree he secured a job in Dayton, Ohio. One thing my dad loved to show off at work was his Playboy calendar collections. One day he decided to show the calendars to a new employee and upon seeing the calendars he began to say things to my father about how sinful those calendars were. He convinced my father and mother that smoking, drinking and looking at dirty magazines was going to send them directly to hell and accepted an invitation to go the Dayton Baptist Temple and hear the pastor speak. My parents became interested and after repeated visits to the church they adopted the lifestyle of the Independent Baptist, Bible thumping, Fire and Brimstone Christians. My dad discovered a bible school and church in Pensacola, Florida and was convinced that the Lord instructed him to leave the job for which he had been trained. He was to sell his home, pack up their furniture and just move to Florida with not even the hope of a job prospect. I am still amazed at how quickly they cut their ties with long time friends and moved to a totally unfamiliar place. To this day, they have not had contact with any of their old friends. They committed themselves to sending their kids to private schools in hopes of achieving a Christian based education.

My interests have always been with Space, Science and Technology. When computers started showing up on the scene I begged my father for one. I walked into my room one day and there sat a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1. It was a BASIC in ROM system, 48k of memory, two double density floppy drives and the operating system was called TRSDOS. There was no hard drive and anything you wanted to save went on a floppy. As a matter of fact, the system had to boot from a floppy. I buried my head into the computer and began figuring out everything that the system could do. This computer and my trusty Commodore 64 got me thru high school and the start of college.

Shortly after graduation from high school I started going to Pensacola Junior College. It was at that time I met another guy in the class that was working at Pensacola Naval Air Station installing main-frame networks and connecting them to Personal Computers. He was able to get me an interview and then a job working in the same group as him. They started me off doing COBOL reporting; but, I was in the door and that was all that mattered.

I worked many other government and professional contract thru the years and continued my education in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics at the University of Maryland.

In 1989, while living in New Orleans, I was contacted by a representative for a government installation called USAKA, United States Army Kwajalein Atoll. The guy calling me told me of a remote island, 2 miles long by ¼ mile wide and it was 2,400 miles southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii. The Kwajalein Atoll, which is grouping of islands that form a central lagoon, is part of the Micronesian Islands in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. He told me of the Cray and DEC Computers connected to Super Satellite and Tracking dishes. This technology was in turn connected to some of the most sophisticated networks and computers available to the U.S. Government at the time. The main purpose of the island was tracking and testing of inbound warheads and space shuttle support for N.A.S.A. I went out there for a two year contract; but, liked it so much that I stayed for another two years. The working conditions were wonderful and the island itself was more than I could have ever imagined. We usually worked until 3:30 or 4:00 Monday-Friday and after work we were usually on a dive boat heading out to one of the reefs or wrecks, golfing, water skiing or fishing.

During my tour at Kwajalein, I gained a lot of the experience I would need in my next project and my maturity level really went up over those four years. I had put my resume out there and had a couple of leads when I returned to Pensacola; however, nothing that really excited me. Well, about a month before my departure date from Kwajalein my boss came in and told me that someone from the Kennedy Space Center heard about me from someone that supported our project on Kwajalein. Upon calling him he told me about a really good position being one of four Network Administrators at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. I could not believe my ears or, the opportunity that was again being presented to me. After a few days of talk it was agreed that I would be going to work in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

In May of 1992 I arrived in Florida and started working my dream job. There were two places that I had always wanted to work; Disney and N.A.S.A. One dream down and one to go. The job turned out to be better than I had planned. I had access to almost any thing I wanted to know and access to places of the Space Center that most people only dream about. One of my favorite things to do after work was drive home via the road along side of all the launch pad complexes. It was very inspiring when the Shuttles were on the launch pads being prepped for their mission. I was a part of the team and felt like a part of the team especially when the rockets roared off the launch pad shaking everything in sight. I worked in the Central Information Facility which was just outside of the safety perimeter and we would go up to the roof and watch the launches from there. At that vantage point we were four miles from the launch pad.

August of 1994 was a very special month for me. It was the month that I would meet the man that would change my life forever. His name is Steven and he is the most incredible person you would ever want to meet. I was living in an apartment in Cape Canaveral and another friend of mine, Randy, was moving into the complex so I went down to see how things were going. Steven was there helping paint the new place, wearing the hottest outfit and of course my curiosity was piqued. We did not get to talk; but, the next day I called Randy and asked him everything he knew about Steven. He told me that it was Steven's birthday and that they were have a party for him where a group of them were getting together to play games. He invited and I accepted. Steven and I wound up on opposing teams sitting across the table from each other. Over the course of the night Steven and I hit on a lot of different conversations and I realized that this was not just another good looking guy; but, he had some brains in his head. As I got up to leave he asked me for my phone number which I willingly provided.

The next day as I was walking into my apartment the phone was ringing and it was Steven. He called to asked me out to dinner telling me that his next day off would be in two weeks and if I wanted to go it would have to be that night. We had an awesome night of Mexican food and conversation. He went to his house and I went home completely giddy inside. The very next night he called me as he was getting out of work and wondered if it would be o.k. if he came by my place on his way home. I said, "Of Course" and after about two hours of talking we again parted company and went to our respective beds. He called me before the end of the next nights shift and again asked if he could stop by on his way home. Again, I obliged and looked forward to another moment of seeing his face. He never left and is still here today.

My boss walked in my office one day in early 1995 and said "Bill, we have this new technology that we want to work with and want to know if you would be interested in the project." I asked what the project was and he said they wanted to bring something called "Internet" to the Kennedy Space Center. Now, I was very familiar with FTP and USENET on the Government and Education networks; but, they were talking about an International Network that would allow hundreds if not thousands of people access to common information all at the same time. It completely boggled my mind why no one else in our group had wanted the project as I was the most junior.

At the same time I was working at the Space Center I had setup a single line dial-up B.B.S. (Bulletin Board System) using the Wildcat B.B.S. software. People could connect, one at a time, to share information and pictures. Unless you had multiple phone lines there was no way for people to interact and no way for more than one person to connect at one time. What I was learning at work, could it be done at home? I did not know; but, after some searching I found a local Internet Service Provider that would give me a continuous 28k dial-up connection from home for $200.00 per month. With this connection I would be able to setup a little web server on my P.C. My first site was an information site for Gay and Lesbian Resources in Florida. It was a decent site and I knew where to promote it in order to get some traffic. Well, something was missing and someone suggested that if I was trying to reach the gay people why not give them what they want and then maybe they will stay around and look at the other things on the site. Of course he meant pictures of naked guys and I was not agreeable to this at first. After all, I had the dream job at the Space Center and was starting to slowly build sites for other people and businesses. I thought that if anyone found out I was doing anything related to pornography they would not want to do business with me. After a couple of day's consideration I put up 25 pictures on the site and posted 5 other pictures from the set to the USENET Newsgroups. Within one hour there were 35 people trying to get to the pictures at one time. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that 35 people trying to download pictures from a 28k modem website was not going to happen quickly and the server shortly became over burdened due to the inadequate Internet connection. We needed more bandwidth and we needed it quickly. We found a place in Tampa that had ISDN connectivity and they agreed to host the image portion of our site and our HTML pages would remain where they. It only took two hours for us to max out his connection, leaving ourselves in the same position as before.

We continued to bump up the connection speed and the servers as the demand grew and today we have a capacity of 2 DS-3 pipes at 45 megs each and 34 servers running a multitude of different applications all to support the Badpuppy system and the 450+ websites that we host.

Badpuppy grew into its own company very quickly and I knew that I could not continue working my job at the Space Center as well. Steven and I both quit our jobs the same day and we have never looked back.