Archive

A preserved copy of a web site for a business that closed in March 2005. Nothing here is live — no services are offered, no email is monitored, and nothing is for sale. How this was recovered

Geeky Computer Services

Ludington, Michigan · 2003–2005

Geeky Computer Services was a real, licensed, DBA-registered computer business. It fixed PCs, built web sites, and wired up small offices in Mason County. It was founded on September 30, 2003 by a fifteen-year-old, and it shipped twelve releases of its own web application in ten months.

The domain lapsed in March 2005. This page is the business rebuilt from its own source code, twenty years later.

Home page, May 2004

Leave It to the Geeks

Welcome to Geeky Computer Services. We are a newly founded business out of Ludington, Michigan. Specializing in computers and technology, we offer many different services to businesses, non-profit organizations, and of course, the home users. Some of these services include web site design and setup, PC repair, PowerPoint slide show creation, document conversions, and more.

Why we started

Geeky Computer Services is a newly founded business out of Ludington, Michigan. We started September 30, 2003. Since then we have been working to help small businesses, non-profit organizations, and the home user benefit more from computers and technology.

We formed our business with a few goals in mind. Firstly, we wanted to get a good start and being to know more people that we can help. Secondly, make it a customer driven business, allowing all the new people we have met to truly customize the services that they need.

Also, we believe if you want the job done right, then find the right people to do it. That is why we started this business. If you need PC help, a web site created, networking computers, or anything else that is computer related, should you not find the people that specialize in computers? The ones that make computers their lives and more? GCS is made up of those people, the computer geeks. Like our motto says, “Leave It to the Geeks!”

Five categories

Services

Every word below is from the original site. The catalog behind them ran on an Access database with a login, a request queue, a payment ledger, and a printable quote sheet.

PC Services

Computers are one of the greater aspects of life, well, most of the time. Computers can be quite a hassle, especially if you are new to the game. Although, with this great technology, there are its bad points. Computers crash, get virii (plural of virus), and otherwise don’t do what we always want them to.

Geeky Computer Services understands the hassle (we have to deal with it every day, who would know better than us?) you have to put up with. So, when your computer goes down who do you call? Why us of course! GCS will look at your computer absolutely free. … We know how important a computer can be, that is why we work hard to try to get them back to you within 2 business days.

With this great of service, who needs more? As long as you have GCS with your computer, nothing could ever bring your day down. Like we say, “When all else fails, leave it to the Geeks.”

Web Services

The Internet: a vast, wild, untamed virtual tangle of information. The Internet has become one of the most important parts of our lives; we use it on a daily basis. Checking email, instant messagin friends, browsing web sites, and downloading music* are just some of the things the Internet is used for. Although, a question still remains to you. How can I use the Internet to be productive for me?

Geeky Computer Services is here to answer that question for you. We provide web services aimed to help anyone from a big corporation to a sole person.

* Note: GCS does not endorse, promote, or otherwise encourage the downloading of copyrighted music.

Networking Services

Communication is an essential part in today’s life. With this need to communicate, Geeky Computer Services has decided to come in and help. Targeting the homes and small business, GCS has decided to help people communicate within their own circles. Communication is vital, especially in our smaller areas. Without communication in our small areas, where would the larger ones be? Gone, the smaller blocks are needed greatly in any infrastructure.

Publishing & Media Services

Desktop Publishing is one of the hotter topics of computer aided design. Creating graphically driven media for attracting people. We offer many different variations, such as Business Card Design, Logo Design, Brochure Designing, and much more. We also provide the service of consultants, finding the cheapest (yet best quality) company to turn our designs into physical productions.

Custom Services

To cover every aspect of computers and technologies on one web site is nearly impossible. As a matter of fact, it truly is impossible. We recognize the inevitable fact, and that is why we created Custom Services. Custom Services is more of a theory than a service. We had this idea, “What if people need something done that we don’t state on our web site or anywhere else?”

Custom Services is where you design the service. You give us the details of what you need. After that, we will evaluate your proposal and decide whether it is feasible or not. This is just another example of how GCS puts you in charge of what you want done.

Teacher Tech logo — a lightbulb

Spring 2004 · the second brand

Teacher Tech

Solutions for Educators

Geeky Computer Services is now offering lower prices and education specific services for educators. We want to help the schools get a grasp of technology even more than they have now. Offering things such as teacher web sites that will allow students to look up lesson plans (as well as help teachers manage them) and downloadable homework assignments. There will be many more services coming soon. In the catalog, services marked with “Teacher Tech” are included in this. These services are specifically meant for educators only!

A high-school sophomore had spotted a vertical, given it its own brand, its own logo, its own pricing tier, and its own flag in the product catalog. Teacher Tech launched roughly nine months before the business closed.

From the availability pages

The fine print

This is the part nobody expects. The service contract was written out in full, published on the site, and explained — including why the business could only legally operate in one county.

x. Payment of fees. In order for Geeky Computer Services to remain in business, payments must be made promptly. Delinquent bills will be assessed a $15 charge if payment is not received within 10 days of the due date. If an amount remains delinquent 30 days after its due date, an additional 5% penalty will be added for each month of delinquency. … Regardless of the place of signing of this agreement, the client agrees that for purposes of venue, this contract was entered into in Mason County, Michigan, and any dispute will be litigated or arbitrated in Mason County, Michigan. Please pay on time.

The reason for this to be in the contract is that our business is under DBA licensing. Because of this limiting business license, all conduction of it must be done in our county. This is just to protect us from any legal actions that may be taken and to prevent a contract from becoming void (meaning we lose payment and you on service). We have looked this over many times, and until GCS becomes a corporation, this is the method we must use. It should not be any inconvenience to you, but if it is we are sorry for it.

Twelve releases in ten months

Version history

GCS was versioned, zipped, and archived on every release. It started as hand-built HTML with a Netscape 4 detection script and Flash navigation, and ended as an ASP.NET 1.1 application in VB with member accounts, a service catalog, a request workflow, and a payments page.

Version Date Notes
1.0.02003-10-13Static HTML. Flash service menus, Netscape 4 fallback, an ASP.NET “Web Store” alongside.
1.1.12003-10-20
1.2.02003-11-03
1.2.52003-12-13
1.2.92004-03-01
2.0.02004-03-30Rebuilt as an ASP.NET application; hosting moved to DiscountASP.NET.
2.1.02004-04-22
2.1.12004-04-26
2.2.02004-05-06
3.0.02004-05-30The redesign promised on the home page as “done by June 1st.” It shipped May 30.
3.0.12004-06-21
3.0.22004-07-30The last release. Ten months and twelve versions after the first.

Things to Do

Shipped in version 3.0.2 as a plain text file at the root of the project. This is the whole list, and none of it was ever done.

catalog.aspx: Allowing linking to print.aspx for easy print features
requests.aspx: allow linking of ServiceID field to print.aspx for viewing and easy printing of features
General: Add more examples to the catalog, let users see what things could look like
catalog.aspx: add, "Suggest a Service Feature"

The companion file, Things To Fix.txt, was empty.

Captured 2004-05-28, 15:11 UTC

The site, as it stood

The Internet Archive crawled geekycomputerservices.com exactly once, on May 28, 2004. That single capture is the only outside proof the business was ever really online. Restored here with the original image slices from the source archive.

The Geeky Computer Services home page as captured on May 28, 2004: orange and navy banner, orange sidebar navigation, and the headings Leave It to the Geeks, Teacher Tech, and Under Construction.
Note the last line: Last Updated on Monday, May 24, 2004 5:14 PM. And the notice above it — “we are currently updating the web site … The site should be done by June 1st.” Version 3.0.0 shipped on May 30.

2026

The story of this page

Geeky Computer Services was hosted at DiscountASP.NET under the account name geekycomput. The hosting was cancelled on March 13, 2005, and the domain registration expired four days later on March 17. From founding to shutdown the business ran about seventeen months, roughly ten of them with a live web site.

Everything you have just read survived because every release was zipped and kept: twelve archives, from Version 1_0_0 through Version 3_0_2, carried forward across two decades of machines. The words are all from those files or from the single Internet Archive capture. Nothing here was rewritten, modernized, or invented — the typos, the “instant messagin friends,” and the plural of virus are all original.

Some things have been deliberately left out. The customer database, the sample invoices, the client names and phone numbers, and the home address and phone number that were printed on the 2004 contact page are not published here. The rest is exactly as it was.

The person who wrote all of this was fifteen years old, and went on to spend his career building software. This was the first version of that.