A brief ode to Seinfeld’s Frank Costanza, terrible computer salesman

All the relevant tech bits of "The Serenity Now," translated with Romanian subtitles because that country also loves some good computing.

Frank Costanza had always been a visionary: bras for men, holidays for the perpetually annoyed, old TV Guides for hoarders. Maybe you could call it destiny in retrospect, but of course he'd eventually pivot to startups.

In October 1997, computers had already become a proven commodity. Incoming freshmen on college campuses owned 'em in droves. And for the masses, AOL had existed for a while and already passed 3 million users two years earlier. (As a matter of fact, Ars Technica would be founded in just over a year.) The market didn't exactly look ripe for the taking. But when you possess the kind of perseverance to never take your shoes off for others-whether at their homes or in a swimming pool-then to hell with what conventional wisdom says.

And so, as chronicled in what I've always presumed to be a documentary called Seinfeld, Frank Costanza got to work. Well, first he sat on his couch and channel-surfed through cable.

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