The Story of Tweez

Tweez Home Story of Tweez Short Stories

In 1993, I met Louise. She was a technician at the company where we both worked. We became instant friends, and eventually soul mates. But in 1993, our friendship was strictly "work buddies"

Louise was much "cooler" than me; she was up on the latest music but also liked old jazz. We had the same ironic sense of humor too. But the thing that we shared most is our determination to finish college. We both had a rough start with school but we also both knew the importance of an education. I tutored Louise in math, and she tutored me in life. It was a good match.

Around 5 years later, Louise got divorced and we both found employment at other companies. We lost track of each other for about a year. The job I had moved to turned out to be a mistake and a year later, I found myself applying for a job where she worked! We had lunch together after my interview and with her recommendation, I got the job! We were friends again.

We had gone through a lot in the time we were apart. She was just finishing up with her chemo-therapy for breast cancer when we became friends again, and I was going through a divorce. We needed friends and we found each other at just the right time.

Since we were both single, we started spending time together outside of work, but we also vowed that we would never be more than just friends...

As you probably already guessed, we soon became an item. We supported each other in so many ways and spent as much time together as we possibly could. And in the late 90's, we moved in together; and from that point on, my soulmate became, my "Weezie"

Louise (Weezie) and I went to the computer museum in Boston. I remember they had an exhibit that featured the latest micro-processor, the Intel 486. It was special in that it had a flat memory space, multiple caches and, incredibly, a built in floating-point math co-processor. I only mention the coprocessor because we named our first boat "Floating Point" and the named the dinghy, "Co-Processor"

Nobody got our humor... not then and probably not now :0(

As we were making our way to the exit of the museum, there was one final display. It was a dozen computers all "on-line" (a new term for us back then). To us, the internet seemed like a gimic. So we asked the educator standing there for a demo. "What do we need the internet for?" Louise asked him.

The man asked Louise what she did for a living. Then he pulled up about a thousand job openings that fit her job description. She was hooked. "GET ME THIS" she said to me. And within a week, we were connected.

I'm a Software Engineer. That means two things: "Software" means that I have the ability to learn new programming languages and write programs with them; "Engineer" means that I think I'm smarter than everyone else! So I decided we needed our own web site, and I would design it. (You should note that it's now 25 years later and I'm still trying to design it!)

Keep in mind, this is before Facebook, before MySpace, and before most people had ever heard of AOL. This was new. So I figured this would be a great place to keep pictures and stories that I could share with my family and friends; sort of like one of those annoying Christmas cards that includes a one page letter of everything that nobody really cares about except you!

So I found out that all I needed to do was come up with a website name (also called a URL). In those days, people weren't that skilled at using search engines so you often needed to enter websites by hand. You know, the thing that starts with "www.". Now imagine how many people would visit your website if you required them to type something like: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" every time they wanted to go there. So it was in everyone's best interest to have a short URL.

My first idea was "Weezie.com" but oddly enough, that was taken. After attempting various combinations of our names, we were able to get "Tweez.com" - The "T" is for Tom, and "Weez" is short for Weezie. (Tweezie was already taken).

Tweez lives on. Weezie passed away in 2018 from her breast cancer that returned. We had almost 30 years together. Over the years, Louise used the Tweez site a lot more than I did. Her career (and education) in technical writing required her to learn how to design websites. She used it mainly as an on-line resume.

I'm currently revamping the whole website so that I can post stuff for various groups, such as my neighbors fighting the new housing development going in. I know, it would be easier to just use a Facebook group like a normal person, but I just can't part with Tweez. It's not just that a short URL is worth money, it's sentimental. I'll keep the URL for as long as I live, whether I use it or not!