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September 2020

We Ain't been Slack

Microwaves101 Twentieth Anniversary

Slake M'Thirst introduces Savanna Nix to perform the Tell, in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Here we will provide our own slightly boring "Tell" of Microwaves101. There's no Highscrapers, no Pox Eclipse, no Mr. Dead, no Sky Raft and no Great Leaving here... but maybe a little turbulance.

Early web design

Below are examples of our front page from 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015:

The domain Microwaves101.com went live on 31 August 2000. Thus we can claim that this site started in the prior century (year 2000 was 20th century we are in the 21st). We can even declare that the site dates back to the prior millenium!

Note that Wikipedia did not go live until 15 January 2001. We can boast that we put up the earliest "successfull" example of a totally free on-line encyclpedia. Perhaps Nupedia was the original on-line free encyclopedia, but its concept prevented it from going anywhere.

If you are sick of hearing people boast, be sure to vote on 3 November. At least we never boasted about "acing" a dementia test.

As you can see by the images above, we did change the site periodically. We're really happy with what it looks like now, thanks to input from all of you and to the good programmers at EverythingRF! Thanks also go to the web designers at IEEE-MTT, who put the snazzy Smith Chart background on the page for us a few years back.

Some early stats

Things get a little bit foggy here, as we didn't use (or didn't save) statistics for the first year or so. But we can tell you that by January 2002 (after 18 months online), we were getting over 2,000 visits per month! The visitors typically stayed less than a minute, and they only viewed one page, but it was proof that there was interest out there in the attenuator calculator, acronyms, and transmission lines. The Unknown Editor started ranting back in August 2001 (and you can still read all of his diatribes over at the Amazing Unknown Editor Archives), and the first Microwave Mortuary contribution came along in 2002.

We Ain't Been Slack, Captain Walker!

What about that quote, "we aint' been slack, Captain Walker?" that opens our What's New page? It is a slightly tweaked part of the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome script. If you have never seen the movie, you lead a boring life. (Hint, you can still rent it through Netflix if you let them mail the DVD to you). Full movie script can be found on Script-o-Rama.

The situation is described well on this fan wiki:

https://madmax.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_Walker

https://madmax.fandom.com/wiki/The_Tell

To summarize, some feral kids have been living in The Crack of The Earth since their escape plane crashed during the Pox Eclipse (nuclear winter). The plane's captain, named Walker, and all the remaining adults left the kids to find help and presumably died in the desert. Enter Max Rocktananski, beat-down ex-cop and recent surviver of a duel to the death at a place called Bartertown.

Here's the script, leading up to the "Tell of Captain Walker"

Max: Who are you?
Slake: We are the waiting ones.
Max: Waiting for what?
Slake: Waiting for you.
Max: And who am I?
Slake: I think he be testing us. This a testing, Walker? You reckon we been slack?
Max: I don't know. Maybe you've been slack.
Slake: We ain't. We kept it straight. It's all there.
Everything marked, everything 'membered. You wait, you'll see.

The "civilization" is a $hit show. So hearing "We ain't been slack" is kind of like hearing "ignore this mess, we are too stupid to know any better"!

Check out the Unknown Editor's amazing archives when you are looking for a way to screw off for a couple of hours or more!