The Adventures of Nikki and Ali

We try never to do any unless we absolutely have to.

This page is dedicated to my friend Ali! We met on AOL in an Over 40 chatroom and became friends immediately. A lot of people have come and gone from my e-mail address book, but Ali lives on and on. We found that we have lots of things in common and we can even read each others minds.

We have had a lot of fun chatting and getting involved in internet adventures ever since we met. I decided to start keeping a log of some of our most memorable moments.

One of my first memories was the day Ali got her scanner and sent me the first picture I had ever seen of her. It was a great day in cyberspace for me. I was so excited. I even printed it out and took it along to Mom's to show my whole family my cyber friend from North Carolina.

Back in our AOL days before it was unlimited access, I discovered an add on called PowerTools that would allow you to send IM's from the free area. It saved us big bucks! Ali was having a problem installing it and being the computer illiterate that she is (NOT), I called her on the phone to talk her through getting it working. I loved that sweet southern accent. It was a short and down to business call, but definitely a milestone in our friendship.

When I found out I was going to be a Grandma, Ali was almost as excited as me. Thus began the wait and the progress reports. After Kayla was born, the first thing I did was e-mail Ali and snail mail her a picture of Kayla to scan. She still says, "We practically birthed that baby together".

I remember the scare of the Hurricane and hoping and praying that Ali was safe and that her computer wouldn't get damaged so she could get back on-line and let us know that her house didn't blow away.

Our beginning of the "Daisy Adventure" arose out of a conversation we had after her mother was released from the hospital and she had hired someone to clean "Mom's" house. Her mother was a little paranoid that the maid might steal her jewelry. Ali said it was all cheap costume jewelry, anyway. And I quote "You know the kind. Where you go shopping at Woolworth's and find the perfect pin to match your new Daisy Dress!" We laughed so hard that night. After that the "daisy syndrome" was born. We would know when we were over the hill when we had a daisy dress and a pin to match.

When I finally decided to get rid of AOL and go with a local access provider, Ali became the teacher and introduced me to FreeTel and PowWow. I caught on fast and we had lots of fun going on web cruises in PowWow.

After I discovered Geocities and how to create a home page here, I couldn't wait to tell Ali all about it. Our first Home Pages were really pathetic! but to hear us talk you would have thought we were really creative. We were so proud. Ali sent e-mail to everyone in her e-mail address book announcing her new web site. We got my sister Lola all involved in creating her page too.

It didn't take us long to start improving them. I learned how to write HTML and Ali learned how to read and steal source. She is very good at it. We have come a long way.

When my sister Sandi finally got internet access last January we were all looking forward to being able to talk to her on PowWow. She was having major problems being able to download PowWow and her browser was so slow that she said, "I can vacuum and dust the living room before a page loads!" We decided to try "Webchat" to talk to her. Ali was so excited when she finally showed up. She typed "Hi Snadi." And Sandi said, "Who is Snadi?" Ali figured that the name fit. The combination of Snail and Sandi was appropriate since it took her so long to get there. The name stuck! And to this day Sandi is known on the internet as Snadi. Sandi finally discovered that her modem was only 2400 baud instead of 14.4 and got a new Modem. After that, and 6 hours of long distance phone calls, downloading PowWow was a snap and we meet frequently to chat.

After we finally got Snadi all hooked up to PowWow, my brother Jim also got internet access. So I had to go through the whole getting PowWow to work process again. We had a really fun night when Mom was in Colorado visiting Jim. Ali got this wave called gonarea that is to the music of the macarina. She sent it to Jim, and we were having a conversation about the spelling of the real word. Ali said she would look it up in the dictionary. Then she said she only had a catholic dictionary and it wasn't in that one. Mom thought that was a riot. Of course Ali came through as usual. She found it in her medical dictionary.

Ali started applying for awards and we kept talking about having an award to give out. Eventually I created the Daisy Award and a form for people to apply for it. That was a very exciting day when we got the form up on our pages and received the first application. As it turned out we got so many applications that I had to spend all my time reviewing sites and updating the winners pages. Ali spent all of her time signing guestbooks and generating even more award applications. To keep her busy, I gave her the job of making sure the links on the winners pages worked and that the winners were displaying the award. After awhile it wasn't so much fun anymore. At one point she even thought I should apply to be a Geocities community leader because I didn't have enough to do. We had many a good laugh over my frustrations. Well I can laugh about it now! But Ali thought it was pretty funny. Eventually we scrapped the award application and just started giving it to the pages we find and admire on our adventures.

And then we found the Dover's Fridge! Snadi found it first and told us all about their page. We hung around the Fridge often. We admired the award they give out and yearned to be able to display it on our awards pages. We became egg hiders in their World Wide Web Easter Egg Hunt. We spent many hours cruising web pages looking for those dern eggs. And Ali had a lot of them. But the night the egg contest was over Ali ended up working late and missed the deadline. She could have gotten an honorable mention too, if she had gotten them in on time.

The Friday night in March, when my step-father died, sister Lola was on PowWow talking to Ali and my PowWow wasn't working and Lola's phone was busy, so I had to e-mail Ali and tell her to have Lola call me. Snadi had gone to Laughlin, Nevada that weekend, and nobody knew where she was staying. We couldn't contact her until Sunday night. After that Ali insisted that we let each other know where we will be in case of emergencies. We made her give us a phone number where she could be reached when she went to her family reunion this summer.

We found out the Dover's were among the ENJOY Award winners and were in the running for the ENJOY Award of the Year. We voted every day faithfully. Never once did any of the Dover's ask us to vote for them. Ali started keeping track of the vote count whenever it was updated and she became suspicious that our votes weren't being counted.

Now, you have to know Ali to realize that when she thinks something isn't right she goes out of her way to make sure the problem gets corrected. She contacted Frank and Frank over at ENJOY and asked what was up. They assured her that everything was fine and our votes were being counted. She contacted the Dover's and warned them that things didn't seem right. Ali was still keeping track of the count. At least 11 of us were voting daily, but when the page was updated, half of the votes were missing.

Then one day someone left an anonymous entry in the Dover's own guestbook telling their guests not to vote for the Dover's, but for World Kids, because it was a better site. That was the final straw for Ali! We started planning a campaign to generate votes and win the ENJOY Award for the Dover's.

We asked Pa Dover to send us a little fridge that we could display on our pages. We invited our visitors to go meet the Dover's and then come back and vote. Clicking the fridge would take you to ENJOY to vote. That way anyone who hadn't met them yet could decided for themselves. We also visited the guestbooks or e-mailed every one of the egg hiders who participated in the Dover's Easter Egg Hunt. We told them to take the fridge and display it on their own pages to remind them to vote everyday.

We left those little fridges in every guestbook that we signed. They showed up on web pages everywhere. And Ali and I got the Dover's Cool Fridge Award that we had been admiring for weeks and weeks.

After someone flamed Frank and Frank about their inability to count (No! It wasn't Ali, this time!) the votes finally started adding up in huge numbers and by the end of the Contest, the Dover's had almost twice as many votes as the second place World Kids!

While the fridge campaign was in full swing, lots of other stuff was happening too. Ali discovered that Jeffrey had stolen our award and was making fun of us and several other award givers on his "Pointless Page". He also had a link to our winner's page with the caption "People Dumb Enough to Apply". Jeffrey shouldn't have done that. It made Ali "madder than a red headed wet hen". She wrote to his service provider demanding that they make him remove the graphic from his page. And I wrote him a letter thanking him for the link and providing his visitors with a way to get off of his "Pointless Page" and find something interesting to look at.

Jeffrey found this very amusing and put both of the letter's up on his page. He removed the graphic, but put in a link to the graphic at my site. So I changed the names of the graphic and the winners list, so they went nowhere. It took Jeffrey awhile to discover this and he just linked up again, with a smart remark about being invincible. On June 15th, I created an award just for Jeffrey and renamed it so when people click the link on his page, it goes to Jeffrey's Award instead of the Daisy Award. As of today he still hasn't discovered this.

Unfortunately some people who didn't upload the "Daisy Award" graphic to their own servers, but linked to my site, were suddenly displaying "Jeffrey's Award". This caused quite a stir. It was very funny. Even my own sisters got caught up in this. Actually that was my fault because I put the Award on Snadi's page personally and told Lola to link to it that way. So we had to go through 120 Award winner's pages and make sure they weren't stealing bandwidth and linked to the Award at my site.

We accidentally discovered a couple of pages located in Geocities Neighborhoods that were in violation of the rules. Being good citizens, we reported them and had their pages removed. One of those pages contained links that warped you to other Geocities locations. Snadi and I were convinced that it was not a nice page from the beginning after the guy left a satanic sounding wave in Snadi's guestbook. It was written in Portuguese and we couldn't read it. We talked Ali into checking it out. We almost had to force her to investigate, but once she got started, she left no stone unturned. She is quite the detective.

We find ourselves helping people start their own web pages quite often. There are some very trusting souls out there who even give me their passwords so I can go and fix their pages. They eventually change their passwords so I can't go in and leave them little surprises. Ali, Snadi, and Lola always warn them, but they never listen until they get something added to their page. I put the devil on Lola's hot page and later put a fan in there to cool things off. I added a counter with comments and a daisy award to Snadi's page. I left a flasher on Keith the Cop's page. The flasher was Ali's idea and I was dumb enough to take the challenge. Luckily he wasn't upset, but he did change his password immediately.

The Dover's also started a new contest called "The Dover's Dern Crossword Puzzle" the end of May. Ali and I, and my sister Sandi were "clues", and my sister Lola, and nephew Tim were hiders. This contest looked impossible to complete in 2 weeks, but Ali and I went to work and spent a week finding the answers. We joked about winning the top prizes, but didn't think we really had a chance.

By the end of the first week we were almost done. And we were still looking for the person on the Dover's page for 56 across. I thought there should be a Hal Dover somewhere. Ali put a note on the Dover's Fridge just for Hal, so she could use his name in the puzzle. We had a good "wet your pant's" laugh over that. We finally found the owl, which was the right answer, later that night. We sent in our answers and waited and waited for the next week to end so we could find out who won, the three prizes. We had quite a celebration when we discovered that we both won, along with Doris. I won the graphic from Diana Dru, which is displayed on my front page. Ali won the CompuServe CD-ROM clock.

The ENJOY Contest ended June 30th. The Dover's Won! And they put up a Toast Page to me and Ali for all of our help. They made us honorary Dover's. We had another cyber celebration! Sly wrote us this poem and made us cry!

Ode to Nikki and Ali

Ya's put them fridges here and there jus ta show our Pa ya care. Many emails did you dare ta send ta almost evrywhere.

You was determind in yer quest and never took no time ta rest... even sometimes was a pest tryna show that we's the best.

Even Ben, Ilene and Rover seen yer heart had done took over... So we thinks ya'd like ta know yer now an honor rary Dover!

(c) 1997 Sly Dover, All rahts rezerved.

Now we are about to embark on a new adventure. This time the internet isn't involved except for helping us make the plans. In May I requested my vacation for August 11-August 17. I got mine approved, but my husband didn't. I was disappointed, because we were going to go to Colorado to visit my brother Jim and his family. Instead of canceling my vacation, I asked Mom if she wanted to go to Colorado with me. We planned to take her car and have a good time. And to stop and smell the daisies on the way.

On July 19th, Ali gave me a very big surprise. She said she was going to fly to Grand Junction, while I was there to meet me in person and then go on to the Grand Canyon! I was ecstatic. We both were. We started checking dates and making plans. She decided to fly into Grand Junction Sunday night and spend two days there and then go on to Las Vegas. The Grand Canyon turned out to be too far away. (I wonder who moved it.) When my sister, Sandi, found out Ali was going to Vegas, she decided to meet her there and show her the sites. Sandi lives only 5 hours from Vegas. Ali made her airline reservations and we were waiting to talk to Jim about a motel or hotel close to his house where she could stay. When he found out she was coming, he invited her to stay at his house. My sister Lola was feeling left out of all the plans and wishing she could come too.

We surfed the net looking for the best deals on lodging in Vegas and Ali got her and Sandi a great price at a popular casino because she was going to be there for so many days. So everything was all set. The plans were made except for the lists of what to pack.

On July 31, Bob finds out he gets to take his vacation after all. So as I was planning to call my brother to tell him to make room for one more body, Lola calls and says her Bob decided to let her go to Colorado with us. Now Jim has to make room for two more bodies, but he is as excited as we are. This is going to be a great vacation!

We plan to take lots of pictures and videos and when we get back, I'm sure you'll hear all about the trip and what a great time was had by all. So stay tuned!

August 18, 1997

The vacation is over. We had a wonderful time. Ali is just a riot. Her personality is exactly the same as her internet personality. The only thing she lied about was the size of her butt. It isn't nearly as big as she thinks it is.

Mom, Lola, Bob and I were a little behind schedule getting to Grand Junction and Jim was getting worried that he was going to have to meet Ali's plane all by himself, but we got to Grand Junction in plenty of time. I put on my daisy dress and Jim, Lola and I were off to the airport. Ali's plane was about 40 minutes late.

We had a terrific first meeting. We recognized each other right away. Ali probably couldn't miss me in that daisy dress if she had tried.

We spent Sunday evening eating, talking and laughing and even spent some time on the computer talking to Sandi on PowWow.

Sunday night Ali and I stood side by side in the bathroom and removed our make-up together. Now if that isn't getting to know each other, I don't know what is. The next morning we put the make-up back on together too.

Jim took Monday off and played tour guide. He took us all to the Colorado National Monument. We walked on the edge of cliffs and enjoyed the "Little Grand Canyon." It was a spectacular site. It sure took my breath away...or was that the altitude?

Some of us learned some things over the next couple of days. Lola showed Jim and Ali how to make a mean margarita. Tammy taught us all how to line up our purses on the dryer so the house was always neat. Bob learned not to sit in the front seat of the van when Jim was driving in the mountains. Jim taught us how not to use the video camera (when a deer is posing for you, it is wise to turn on the record button if you expect to see it on the tape.) Lola learned to keep her mouth shut when we were video taping. Ali taught Richard how to read and steal document source to create a home page. Nikki taught Richard some shortcut keystrokes to do it even faster. Mom learned that there is no such thing as leftovers with this crew. Ali learned that next time she should not Fly United.

I had a wonderful time. This was truly a memorable vacation. I hope we can do this again sometime soon.

This is a picture of Ali and My Mom taken at the Colorado National Monument.

Click here to start the slide show of our vacation album.

October 11, 1997

This was a sad day in Cyberspace for Ali and I. We found out our friends the Dover's pulled the plug on "The Fridge" and went "fishing" or "headed back to the hills". We will miss them! Some of our greatest adventures revolved around them. Pa, wherever you are, we wish you the best of luck!

October 12, 1997

We rejoiced to find out the Dover's cancelled the fishing trip and the fridge is back in all it's glory. Being the great web site housekeeper that I am, I had already deleted all of the Dover links from my Home Page. Today I happily put them all back.

November 2, 1997

We have been putting on some extra weight in our middle age so we have a new motto. "Girls just wanna have thighs." Ali and Snadi and I devised a plan to exercise together online while chatting in PowWow. Ok so we aren't going to be talking to each other while we do it, but we will all be here with PowWow running working up a sweat at the same time for at least a few minutes each evening. This is the honor system and those two darn well better be doing what they say they are doing. We have even recruited a couple of our other chat friends to join us. Hey Gerri...you can get up now!

Jan. 9, 1998

I found out today, on very short notice, that my company is flying me to NC to the Microsoft Campus for some training for 2 weeks. I fly out on Jan 11, 1998 at 11:10 am. The Microsoft Campus is in Charlotte, NC, about 4 hours from Carolina Beach, NC. Ali is in Carolina Beach. This is just too close to pass up. Ali is planning to drive to Charlotte to visit me next week. And I might drive to Carolina Beach next weekend to see her home and visit the beach. This is a great opportunity for me and a great chance to meet Ali in person again. I'm sure a good time will be had by all. There will probably be more picts to follow. This time we will make sure we get one of us together.

Apr. 18, 1998

Here it is, April already and I am finally getting around to putting together the pictures of my trip to North Carolina. Naturally, Ali and I had a great time. She drove up to Charlotte the day after I arrived and spent a couple of days. Then on the weekend, I went to the beach to visit her. Her hubby took me sight seeing on Sunday because she had to work. Then the next week, Ali came back to Charlotte and we had some more fun. If you want to hear the stories about the pianobar, how two Ali's can be on PowWow at the same time, Tequilla Night and the Zebra man you will have to ask one of us. It was funny, but I think you had to be there. Anyway I got some great video of the beach and Ali singing, and of course pictures.

To see the business part of my trip click here.

If your browser doesn't support Java, click here to see the pictures of Nikki and Ali, or here to see the business ones.

Mom is also on the internet finally. She let me order a nice new Gateway and then took my Packard Bell and let me have the Gateway. Thanks MOM! Sure is nice to have you online.

Ali and I have both been interested in Genealogy since before we met. I talked her into getting Family Tree Maker Software to enter her family history and now we spend hours surfing the internet for our ancestors, and enterning new names into our databases. We even discovered some of the same names in both of our histories. We haven't figured it all out yet, but we figure we are actually distant cousins. I will let you know if I ever get done entering all of these names.

August 19, 1998

Ali auditioned (via a vidio tape made while I was in North Carolina last winter) for a singing job at a wedding next May. My sister thinks she will do a good job as long as she doesn't drink tequilla before the wedding. She hasn't accepted the job yet, but if she does, and if Lola ever sets the date, we hope to see Ali in North Dakota next May to sing at Lola's wedding. She will get another dose of partying "Hopkins Style". I hope she doesn't expect me to clean house just because she is coming.

January 9, 1999

We haven't had any really exiting adventures for awhile, but Ali did get really good news just before Christmas. Her son called her to ask for her help in determining the results of the home pregnancy test. Yep! She is gonna be a Grandma. We are looking forward to the big day. Ali won't be coming to ND for Lola's wedding now after all, since having to finance her son's move to GA and buy a very expensive faucet for Roy for Christmas, but I'm sure we'll get together again one of these days. We still chat almost daily on PowWow.

And speaking of Lola...the wedding plans are coming along nicely. She called one day to inform me that she ordered the flowers and I am helping her make the corsages for the wedding. I have never made one before, but there is a first time for everything I guess. Now I could write a whole book on this wedding story, but I don't have time right now. After the hall is rented and the DJ hired and the invitations are ready to print, and the flowers are here....she all of a sudden doesn't have a judge to marry her. But our brother has connections. He just happens to have a good friend who is a judge who happens to be free that weekend. That was a close call. The whole family will be here for the big event. Except Ali! :-(

Mar 15, 1999

Lola just informed me WE have a lot to do before the wedding. Only 6 1/2 weeks left. I can't wait for this event but it is a lot of work to be the sister of the bride.

Last week Ali found those Dover's hiding out over on www.xoom.com. They thought they could hide out on the internet and we wouldn't find them? It sure is nice to have the fridge plugged in again. "I love ya Pa!" Ya'll is fambly. Ya told us so when you made us honorary Dover's.

May 22, 1999

The wedding of the millenium was a beautiful. I have lots and lots of pictures to scan. There are 11 rolls of film taken by my sister-in-law, Pam. She did a great job. You can see some of them here.

August 20, 1999

Just got the Word that Ali became a Grandma at 1:20 AM this morning. Her new Grand Daughter, Hayleigh Carin, weighed in at 7 lbs.12 oz. and was 20 inches long. The new parents opted not to get a preview so we all had to wait to see if she was a boy or a girl. When she didn't make an appearance by her due date, August 12, we decided she must be a girl and was either having a bad hair day or couldn't decide what to wear. Ali left for GA early Wednesday morning so she would be there when they induced labor at 4:30 PM. I checked e-mail every hour yesterday thinking there had to be a baby by now. Poor Mommy had to have a C-section in the end. But all is well now, and Ali says she is beautiful. Grandma's never lie about a thing like that. Now we are waiting for pictures as soon as Ali can figure out how to hook up the digital camera to her laptop.Ok she got it. Check it out.

December 12, 1999

Ali is packing for her move to her new home and new adventures in GA. She just couldn't bear to be so far away from Hayleigh. There were some other factors like being tired of evacuating when there were hurricanes coming. I am just glad that when internet friends move, they stay in the same place on the screen in PowWow. The only thing that will change is the e-mail address needed to call her.

March 19, 2000

Ali is all settled into her new home in GA and has been enjoying doing "Grandma Duty". Unfortunately she has not been feeling well lately and has not been very adventurous. We're hoping she will be feeling better soon. In the meantime I have gotten my aunt and a couple of cousins hooked on PowWow so I have someone to chat with. Welcome Dianne, Donna and Deb.

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