About me and SWNY.Net

Myself, (Jon) Thomas Stokkeland, aka Stoker, started a hobby based business (Sauen.Com) back in June 2001, mostly because I was getting so many requests from local business to set up (online) e-tail stores and systems for them. Now several years later I still do a lot of that, as well as working full time employed as a network administrator for the Seneca Nation (Administration).

Along the way of running my small/hobby company I have met a lot of interresting people, both in the real world and some just in electronic format :) Back in the early two thousands there was a lot of ISPs in the area, even a couple right here in Salamanca, one of them was SWNY.Net. As the regional and national Dialup ISP pricing got lower the local ISP business was not longer very lucrative, and SWNY.Net closed down sometime in 2001. In January 2002 I dicsovered that the domain was released and back up for grabs so I registered for myself, at the time I didnt have a lot of plans for it, I just thought it was a good short name to have. I registered it and set up some hosting (thats one of the things I do) and I didnt think about it but I set up a catch-all for email, so basically all the sudden I started receiving thousands of spams per hour (!), literally all the spam and junk from all the former customers of the South Western New York ISP, so I quickly turned off all email for the domain except a few aliases for myself.

In 2003 I started thinking about what to do with this domain, and I thought to myself to just use it as my own start page for now, so I added a bunch links and sttuff that me and my family use a lot. Short after people started contacting me and asking if I could add this and that, so I changed it around a bit and add more things relevant to the SWNY area, some of the stuff I had been asked about and some other links here and there.

I do have some plans in the back of my head to add more content, stuff related to the area, history and current stuff, about the native american community, business and tourism in the area (If you havent been here, Check out Ellicottville for skiing, golfing and festivas). But I need time to sit down and compose this, so for now it is just a start page basically. Feel free to request links to be added, all I ask for is that they are relevant to the area.

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