EeepZork!

“EeepZork!” dates back to 1997. Back in those dark days when you were awesome with your 56K modem and AOL account. Everyone remembers that wonderful sound of the modem “handshake”, that horrible “nails on a chalkboard” sound. People still wince whenever a fax machine connects, I know I do.

So back to EeepZork!

I was in college at the time, and one of my roommates, Sir. Jason Rinka and I shared the upstairs of the house a bunch of us were renting. With only one phone line, it’s safe to say that the line was always busy as it was first come, first serve to get online. If you were slow, you’d have to wait for someone to log-off and then hit that “Connect” button with a swiftness.

Well, Jason and I were drunk one evening in my room trying to find something to do. So naturally we went online. We were imitating the sound of the handshake when at the very end, we both went “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppp Zoooooooooooorkkkkk!” as the connection was established (if you think back to those days and how the final seconds of the handshake sounded, you’ll hear it as well).

So thus EeepZork! or EeepZorked! or even EeepZorking!, was born. Basically in our house, instead of asking someone if they were online, you’d ask them if they were “EeepZork!” or “EeepZorking!”.

Yeah, not so much behind the name, and very dorky at that, but the name stuck and continues to this day, alive and well in a world without modem “handshakes”.

All praise the “EeepZork!”