About

It all began in 1995, on a beautiful sunny day, in my home-town of Venice, CA. I was roller-skating on the boardwalk, weaving through the pedestrians…

The Venice Beach Crowded Boardwalk In Summer Editorial Photo - Image of california, lounging ...

…when I happened across a sock lying in the sand. No buddy-sock nearby. No one to care for it. No one to keep it with its counterpart.

The Wet Sock | Those are the worst.

I said “Well that’s sad. If only there was a way to partner it back up with its other half. Something akin to the missing-children, milk-carton campaign.”

Etan Patz and the Missing Kids on Milk Cartons - The Atlantic

Then I thought, a website would be perfect for that. But in those glory days of the WEB, not everyone had access to the internet.

The data flowed through dial-up modems over copper phone wires; 14.4k modems were widespread.

Modems & ISDN / Router @ Computer-Retro.de | Vintage by Gutschy

A select few had internet via DSL Digital Subscriber Lines.

Digital Subscriber Line - DSL Definition and Diagram

Remote banking was done via direct-dial-modem to the Citibank server, in downtown Los Angeles.

History of Online Banking: How Internet Banking Went Mainstream | GOBankingRates

It was fast! It had a text-only, tree-structure, dumb-terminal interface garnering a black background with white text.

The functionally was limited. You could only pay one bill at a time. It was great! I loved it! Not too many of us were using it; we were a daring bunch.

Then the GUI Graphical User Interface came along. It was all bad. Things were slow, painfully slow. It was nicknamed the “World Wide Wait.”

The world wide wait slow internet business decals, decal sticker #11504

It was so slow that I kept a collection books handy so I could read while I waited.

Displaying Cartoon Picture Of Stack Of Books | imagebasket.net

It was either that or do the equivalent of watching paint dry.

Watching Paint Dry – (Blog) | anonamos3021

Needless to say, at the time the idea was conceptualized, technology wasn’t capable of such an undertaking. It was an idea whose time had not yet come.

While sheltering in place for COVID19, I have been taking stock of my collection of buddy-less socks. As I was sorting and searching through my array of lonely socks it dawned on me that now, now would be a good time to fulfill the vision of LostSock.net.

So today I am asking for your support.

Today I’m asking you, for the good of all sock-kind, please go to the (crowdfunding) or Sponsor page and join me in this movement.

There’s no contribution too small, and there should be no sock left behind!!!