Gratitudes part 1: a 90's story of online love and music

In the mid 90's, I was young and bored and had access to the internet via the family computer. It had a 386SX processor, a turbo button, and ran Windows 3.11. Dialup internet, of course. Privacy when using the computer? Rarely. What did teens do online in the 90's? We made websites on Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, and a bunch of others. Super nerds like me played MUDs and other text based games (that's a different post, someday soon). ...and we chatted of course, in chat rooms, or via the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) program. Yes, we later used stuff like ICQ too, but mostly it was AIM. I was really into punk music at the time (still am). I frequented all the webrings and was subscribed to at least one email newsletter that shared around news of the hot new "underground" bands. One time in a chat room, I met a cool punk girl. Many, many years later I still remember her screenname: burtongurly. I don't think I knew this at the time, but Burton is a popular maker of snowboards and…