I first learned about the internet in college in 1995. Shortly after, I started experimenting with HTML and web design until about 1999 during the internet explosion. During that time, there was no such thing as introduction to internet classes. So I had to rely on rouge trial and error, but HTML was easy to learn. There was a computer lab that ran a Solaris server. There was also an old VAX mainframe. I saw four guys carring out one of it's hard drives.
Each student had the potential to create their own homepage, you know, the old www.myserver.com/~johnSmith/ type of site. My first homepage was just a single page. It wasn't much, just a few HTML tags; one short page. That first page remains forever lost...
In 1998 to about 1999 I was trying to find employment bouncing from one temporary position to another. (It is often called freelance web design or colsulting.) Out of fustration, I attempted to create a business web site to try to tap in to the enormous potential that resulted from the internet explosion of 1995. But it was a failer.
Then in spring of 2000, I switched to a different format and decided to keep it a personal hobby site. I started to include programming. This included UN*X shell scripts and basic PERL scripts as CGIs and as SSIs.
History:
Nov. 25, 1998 regestered sbltech.com with networksolutions.com
Nov. 27, 1998 sbltech.com site created
Mar 21, 1999 regestered fusionplant.com with networksolutions (or probably regester.com)
Domain names sbltech.com and fusionplant.com paralleled from Mar. 21 1999 until 1Q 2000 when sbltech.com was removed