Originally posted by HuwR
The original crash which resulted in the losing of the dates was a few months before I came along. I joined in sep 2000, not sure at what point I took over the hosting, could probably dig that out of the database somewhere
I didn't even know there was an old original access db, so can't help there.

When the DB crashed the forums got rebuilt with a new database. For some months there was a link/url to go to the "old" forums to see the pre-crash stuff, since the data didn't get migrated to the rebuilt site. There was a lot of interesting stuff in there about the original development of Snitz.
If you ever should find the old .mdb and were willing to share it I'd love to re-read a lot the old posts.

Ah good I wasn't making it up then! My gosh the internet was a different place back in 2000 and before. NTK was in full flood, BOFH was newish, there certainly weren't any wikis or content platforms like drupal or WordPress. In fact in 2001ish I had to make a publishing platform for a company as there just wasn't what they needed on the market. Geocities was still alive, and we used altavista to find stuff.
Great to see a heap of old names are still here, guess it's as much an old boys social club as a support forum for forum software any more. Nurse will be round with your cocoa later...
There are elements of the IT world I do miss though, I loved every job effectively being research and development. The work I do now is far less demanding mentally, but generally good fun. Sometimes it's working in a stadium or arena putting on some fun shows, other times it's out in Arabia with a bunch of circus performers, huge air conditioners, and enormous tents... Trying to stop the thermal trips on the projectors from cutting out mid-show.
Nothing demanding, but having a methodical mind helps. Actually often it doesn't because you're working with non-technical people who have illogical systems. When you've got 200 cast and crew to deal with, 18000 meals to get to The right people, visas to assign, passports to collect and process etc., you come up with elegant solutions naturally. Issue primary key personnel numbers for instance, and do likewise with walkie talkies and other assets, then barcode passes sao you can keep track... But in reality it's a massive fudge of nontechnical workarounds for people who don't understand data.
For instance one woman will update a spreadsheet of flights (lots of changes of course) without versioning, without (informative) formatting, without fixed other for names, with inconsistent spellings etc... And I have to derive other information from a DELTA of that. I've spent my own money on a licence for Beyond Compare (a great Diffing tool if you ever need one) just to stand a chance with these 30,000 data point sheets. It could all be so elegant with a proper workflow system, but there is zero chance of getting it adopted.
But I still think like a techie, just one disillusioned by the nontechnical world I have to operate in!