Eskimo North / eskimo.com

[daarkjolder]

Wow! This was unexpected. I date to the BBS days. I concur that this is completely out of character for Bob Dinse. My guess is that he got hit with something like a cancellation or reduction in his line of credit at the same time he was in hardball negotiations with the phone people. The rug could have been jerked out from beneath him before he could arrange for a soft landing for the business sites.

Vision Communications leases broadband to Eskimo and their guy will only state that "serious issues" underlay the abrupt cessation of service. Qwest claims to know nothing.

We took our business site off eskimo several years ago, but kept DSL and 56K accounts for everybody's personal e-mail and as a backup. Unfortunately, my wife's law practice was using the 56K backup because of a problem with her ISP, and has lost a great deal of correspondence. We'll work around it.

I take this opportunity to thank Bob Dinse and Eskimo North for 27 years of fun, profit and service; wishing them the best of luck and with every hope for a rebound.


Harry Hamlin

[CharlesA]

Perhaps this will help:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=eskimo%20north

[Ex-Eskimo]

Vision Communications leases broadband to Eskimo and their guy will only state that "serious issues" underlay the abrupt cessation of service.

Damn! After the "working on restoration" message, I was starting to have hope again, but that explanation from Vision doesn't sound very hopeful. If it was a technical issue, rather than a financial one, I suspect they would have given more of an explanation.

[eunuch]

Damn! After the "working on restoration" message, I was starting to have hope again, but that explanation from Vision doesn't sound very hopeful. If it was a technical issue, rather than a financial one, I suspect they would have given more of an explanation.

Regardless of the "How/Why" one thing remains - a lot of us have been left in the cold.

With each hour that passes, holding one's breath seem more inadvisable.

Of more concern is the likelihood of retrieving files from Ex-kimo's servers...

[akmbd166]

Damn! After the "working on restoration" message, I was starting to have hope again, but that explanation from Vision doesn't sound very hopeful. If it was a technical issue, rather than a financial one, I suspect they would have given more of an explanation.

Guess this is one of the best places to get the latest on this eskimo.com thing, unless someone knows a better.
Have been with eskimo.com since early 90s... remembering the periodic meetings with Bob at the local restaurants.
Sure hope this is technical rather than financial... but I fear the latter may be the answer.
Would rather keep the business website there, but need to have it up too.

[dragos240]

This was it's last known ip:
207.54.1.254

[GregA2]

I did some googling around, and I think the answer is it's gone forever maybe along with all our data.

First I found this:
http://seniorobserver.blogspot.com/2...own-drain.html

" Eskimo.com one of the very early Internet providers in the NW died yesterday. It had been having financial problems for a long time but the owner Robert Dinse was sent to jail and his family apparently could not keep it going. Eskimo.com started about 20 years ago. I was connected to the internet through a company that got it's service through eskimo. It was called connected.com. So I have been on the interent for about 20 years through eskimo.

Robert Dinse was convicted of incest and sentenced to 46 months in prison. Dinse tried to keep eskimo alive but prison was the final blow. It had problems for a long time. One of his employees said Dinse could have made a 100 thousand a year working elsewhere but he preferred to keep eskimo going instead. It takes a lot of engineering ability to keep something like eskimo going."

Then I went here:
http://dw.courts.wa.gov/?fa=home.namesearchTerms

And did a search on Robert Dinse to see if any convictions were listed. Sure enough:

Along with some recent financial case connected to Citibank, there was this:

http://dw.courts.wa.gov/index.cfm?fa...18BB0C2D09D4DD

Which confirms the blog post - 3 counts felony incest, guilty plea, sentencing happened on 10/26/09.

Maybe it's a different guy, but that doesn't seem likely. I imagine the family is going through far to much emotionally and financially to be able to help any of us at the moment.

Maybe it would be possible for some of the group of us to pick a representative to approach the family - make a backup of the drives and somehow farm out backups to all the members.

It sounds like someone has been in contact with a former employee? Maybe they'd have some idea about the chances of getting our data and how to proceed?

[dragos240]

Well. It's dead alright >.>.

[akmbd166]

I did some googling around, and I think the answer is it's gone forever maybe along with all our data.
It sounds like someone has been in contact with a former employee? Maybe they'd have some idea about the chances of getting our data and how to proceed?

Wow !!!
Very sad if true.
Not sure what to do.
Guess will wait for a day or 2, and then try to figure out another place to put the website.

[Don Rothwell]

In reply to you all. I also found a home phone# for Robert D. and an address. The phone # was disconnected. We live in Shoreline, so we took a run over there around noon today. It is a house in a residential neighborhood. There were boxes piled in the living room window, rotting pumpkins on the porch and two cars in the driveway,but It didn't look
like there was anyone there. We didn't go up to the door. It also didn't look like there was enough equipment there for it to be his place of business.....there was a TV antenna on the roof! Can't believe there wouldn't be cable! This is a puzzling mystery. We have been with Eskimo for at least 12 years and always try to "stay local" and support small privately owned business. This afternoon we caved and started email accounts with Comcast. I hope the truth behind this unfolding saga comes out soon.