Dude I joined before the invite only by accident and they accepted me without telling me so I went most of the invite period fighting to get an invite and right before they opened up I went to tell one of my friends the story of how I couldn't get an invite and they accidentally made one of their test servers for signing up show up on Gmail.com and after seeing a story on Call for Help about the upcoming GMail Service from Google I went to GMail.com and there was a sign up site, and I created an account that most of the way through just stopped working. As I was sitting at the computer and had my browser open I went to Gmail.com and signed in with those credentials to get in and they worked. As for when they opened I am 55 years old and in the past 10 years I have had Acute Kidney Failure that took a little over 2 years to recover from, which had me well into Covid, and when the government here said "Take off your masks" someone in my 'bubble' caught it and gave it to me, with lead to long covid, and then a reaction to one of the covid shots that I am still dealing with the effects 4 years later and then a year after that I got covid a second time in spite of masking the whole time. Late 1990's and 2004 seem so long ago to me they may as well be the same, as they don't even feel like they are in the same century as me anymore. But you are right, I got the decade wrong. In my mind it happened when I was studying IT and about to graduate and not after, but now that you mention it it had to be because of the show I saw it on.