Chapter 7 Frequent Flyers

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Dean was now very short on money, and after Aunt Rachel told him there was still a mortgage to pay, he felt even more strapped for cash.

Peter's old man needed at least two to three thousand US Dollars to get out of jail, a set expense that was non-negotiable.

The mortgage of 820 US Dollars... honestly, even if the house on Charlotte Street was successfully rented out, Dean didn't think he could collect that much rent each month.

Right now, housing prices in Youngstown had fallen by thirty or forty percent compared to before, and the rental market was equally bleak.

In his heart, Dean had decided that as long as he could rent it for 500 US Dollars, he would go to church and light a candle for Jesus.

And concerning the matter of renting out the house, sooner rather than later, Frank was already looking for potential tenants.

He was the manager of Eagle Moving Company, and there was a significant overlap between people moving and those looking for housing, so optimistically, it wouldn't take a week before a potential tenant was found for Dean's house.

Of course, Dean didn't have the habit of leaving everything to others, he was also making plans for the future.

"Jerry, let me use the computer." Dean couldn't wait to speak as soon as he entered the room.

"Come on! Dean, I'm about to beat this level. Besides, we had a deal, the day is mine, and the night is yours," Jerry complained, eyes glued to the screen, without turning his head.

"I'll just make a post, and if you let me have the computer now, I can turn your game character into Superman," Dean tempted surreptitiously.

"Cheats? Those legendary cheats with unlimited bullets and unlimited items?" Jerry turned around, eyes shining brightly.

"That's merely a small aid developed to enhance the gaming experience. Don't be so crass, Jerry," Dean said, dissatisfied with Jerry's directness.

Using Feng Ling Ying Yue's methods, could that be considered cheating? It was clearly just a necessary means to enhance the joy of playing the game.

"It's yours," Jerry said without quibbling about the right words, readily giving up the computer.

"Tomorrow, I guarantee you'll have the time of your life." Dean gave a reassuring look and deftly entered the URL, opening Youngstown's local BBS.

[House for Rent! Single-family four-bedroom house in South Youngstown on Charlotte Street!

Believe me, you definitely can't refuse a house with a garden lawn and backyard, especially in the south of the city!

Attractive pricing, please contact me by email if interested, first come first served!]

No nonsense, Dean marked the post with a big "For Rent!"

He emphasized the location advantage of the south side, as a good community environment is often the first consideration for most people when choosing housing.

Having edited the post, Dean hit send and also took the opportunity to browse the BBS.

It must be said that the forums of this era were still very primitive, filled with dense text that looked monotonous and dull.

As for the topics of discussion, they were either entertainment and sports news or local gossip.

There wasn't even basic forum categorization; everyone just huddled messily in one forum, each saying their own thing.

Finding the information you wanted among so much content wasn't easy, Dean frowned slightly.

But it was understandable, after all, even the internet hadn't been born yet. He was still using a network based on Ohio's Amerinet LAN.

Right, this was like a big LAN. Amerinet was established in Ohio, with services provided only to Ohio users.

Although there was a larger network provider in Virginia, American Online (AOL), and a joint venture between IBM and the Columbia Company called Prodigy, their data was not interconnected.

In an era when network communication protocols weren't unified yet, everyone was doing their own thing, physically isolated from one another.

For example, Ohio's Amerinet currently had around eight or nine hundred thousand users and thousands of different BBS forms.

However, as networking was still so new, whether the operators, BBS creators, or users, their understanding and use of the network were very basic.

The exchange of information in the forums was the most widespread use, but beyond that, there was nothing.

No ads, no information categorization, no portal websites, and certainly no commercial transactions, everything was in its infancy.

In this way, Dean's BBS-based post for renting out the house even stood out in the entire forum.

Only five minutes had passed since he made the post, and people had already started responding.

Dean clicked to see, "Cool!", "The south is a good place; I used to go to Mill Creek Park there quite often. I really miss the old days."

Although not everyone needed to rent, they couldn't resist their curiosity when surfing the net.

It was a habit to leave a message in every new post.

Well, let's say they were helping to bump my thread, Dean thought as he exited the BBS, no longer concerned with the rental post he had just published.

The chaotic internet environment on Amerinet gave him another idea; while there were many kinds of electronic bulletin boards, there were no specialized classified information websites.

All the information was chaotically spread across the web, and if someone wanted to filter out the information they needed, they had almost no other method apart from the corresponding BBS.

Could he create a simple website that didn't need to be too complicated but just categorize the information into directories?

Thus, web users could click on the entries under the corresponding directories to further obtain more comprehensive information based on their needs.

As his thoughts briefly strayed to the viability of this idea, Dean discovered it really didn't seem like a difficult task.

Skills? He was fully capable. Sources of information? The variety of BBS forms on Amerinet was abundant.

There was no need to be overly ambitious at the start; he would focus on Youngstown, specifically providing various local consultation services.

Community services, events, local news, housing, personal items for sale, and even some local job opportunities could be listed.

Put plainly, it would be a free city service, focusing on local information mining.

If the feedback was good in Youngstown, then when the next semester began, expanding the operation to bigger cities like Cleveland and Columbus was not impossible.

With a larger population there, the demand for classified information websites would be even greater.

The more Dean thought about it, the more feasible it seemed, and to be honest, he still didn't know how he could use this model to benefit himself.

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After all, current federal law prohibited conducting business on the internet, but being the first mover was an advantage.

Dean was thrilled about the new idea in his mind, but he did not take immediate action.

Because he had more important things to deal with, he was short of cash!

Not to mention, he at least had to settle the few thousand US dollars his dad owed. Besides, he also needed some savings to plan for the future.

Transferring schools, creating a classified ads website, which one doesn't cost money?

Working part-time was out of the question; a part-time job's income of 50 US dollars a week was already not bad.

So to earn a considerable income, he could only take an unconventional path.

Dean decided to be a bad boy for once.

Pulling out the MCI phone card that Frank had given him before, Dean flipped it over to the back, where there was a string of identification numbers exclusive to MCI company.

This number usually starts with 1-800, and it's free for anyone to dial because it connects to the telephone company's server.

After dialing this number, one would enter the access code as instructed by the recording. Only then could they proceed to the next step, which was dialing the number they needed.

The entire process was just like how most phone cards on the market were used, like Dean did the other day.

So what did Dean need this phone card for? He opened a small piece of software he'd written the night before, an auto-dialing program.

After entering MCI company's dial-in number in the corresponding address, he then set the next command to require a 6-digit random number.

After doing all this, Dean turned to look for his cousin, only to see an eye-watering scene.

"F*ck you, Jerry! Don't jerk off to 'Penthouse' magazine in front of me!"

"If you're into that, I don't mind inviting Aunt Rachel and Uncle Frank to come upstairs and watch together."

"Oh… oh… OK~!" Jerry, who had already finished, casually threw the magazine aside and started looking for tissues on the bedside.

Seeing his practiced movements made Dean's head hurt. Lucky he didn't share a bed with him; otherwise, sooner or later, he would be disgusted to death by this guy.

"Jerry, you should get a girlfriend," Dean suggested sincerely.

"I just broke up, Dean~" said a now drowsy Jerry, who had settled down on the bed.

"Mother F*cker, don't sleep yet, what about the thing you promised me?" Seeing that he was about to enter post-orgasmic bliss, Dean grew anxious.

His own plan to make money was still unsettled, yet this guy was living like a teddy bear.

"What?" Jerry lifted his head groggily.

"The modem number, from your school." Dean reminded him of the thing he had explained a thousand times over the past few days.

"Oh, right here." Jerry fished out a piece of paper from his pants pocket, "I got this from a classmate who works part-time in the school computer lab in exchange for two movie tickets."

Dean eagerly took the piece of paper and only relaxed after seeing the numbers on it.

"Don't forget the cheat… oh no, the assistant you promised me."

"Guaranteed to send you to heaven, so much so that you'll never want to pick up 'Penthouse' again," said Dean confidently, now that he had what he needed.

However, Jerry did not respond to him. When Dean looked over, he was already sleeping like a log.

Ignoring him, Dean excitedly entered the number from the piece of paper into the program.

Alright, the last step was complete. Now was the moment to witness a miracle.

First step, confirm the telephone company's dial-in number, no problem.

Second step, the first verification of a 6-digit random number, Dean used the access code from the phone card in his hand, as it was known and usable.

Third step, Jerry's school modem number, confirmed to be correct.

Lightly pressing the Enter key, the code ran in sequence, and soon enough the terminal modem responded.

"Holy shit! I knew it could work!" Dean clenched his fist in excitement.

The validation he had just undergone proved his scheme to be practical and workable.

Dean's program had only one purpose, to try out usable 6-digit random access codes.

Each phone card had a unique access code, which was necessary to make a call. In terms of future understanding, this would be considered the secret PIN of the phone card.

Manually cracking the PIN was too inefficient. As one of the earliest geeks of this era, Dean naturally thought of using a computer to do the job.

Write a program, let it dial continuously, switching access codes every few seconds until it connected.

The school modem number provided by Jerry served as the response terminal.

Dean knew that the modems in the school computer lab ran 24/7 and they had an auto-response feature.

Thus, whenever the randomly switched access code worked, meaning the call got through, the modem would respond and be recognized by the software.

The software automatically dials → enters a 6-digit random access code → the modem responds, a perfect loop is formed.

As long as the software recognized the terminal's response, it meant a usable card PIN was cracked.

The usable PIN would then be automatically written by the software onto the computer's floppy disk, recorded down.

The software would automatically perform this action every few seconds.

Taking advantage of the night when the school servers were unused, the software operated uninterrupted, while Dean was responsible for going to bed.

Bingo~! The era of automated workers had officially begun.