This was a long time ago, so I don't remember the exact details, but...
A couple went as a pair of penguins. And they had a half-dozen friends dress up as National Geographic photographers, following them around.
(Oh, this was probably when March of the Penguins had just been released.)
TCP/IP was... part of the BSD project? PDP-11 or VAX?
Our museum mostly collects minis from science & academia, so it leans REALLY heavily DEC.
As a hobby. I set up a tek-4015 running geometric fractals (trees, snowflakes, etc.) in an art gallery type installation once, about 20 years ago.
It's mostly linux now (except for most of the actual networking gear) but it wasn't 20 years ago, so the internet is certainly "possible" without linux.
I ran a "midrange" Sun at home for about ten years. The electric bill was painful, but I never had to turn on the heat in the winter.
Blues Brothers 2000
My ex-wife was a medical nightmare, so I got really used to be around ambulances, ERs, etc. As a result of that, I'm calm in (some) emergencies. I'm the guy on the phone calmly explaining the situation to 911 while I watch a pool of blood slowly creep towards my feet.
Also, I can splice bezier curves together seamlessly, while typing in the x,y coordinates by hand.
Freelance heating engineer.
Religion is used as a scam by many people. It is also used in other ways by other people.
Cisco 2600 router.
I kept turtles back in the 90s. I had a fantastic setup: a blocked off room, with a kiddie pool in it, with ramps leading in & out of the pool.
In 1990 I was running a very tiny Unix clone at home (Coherent on a 286 PC w/ 1 meg ram) and... I don't remember if I couldn't get a standard reader to compile on that or what the problem was, but anyways - I wrote an email/usenet reader for my own use.
33 years later, I'm still using it to read my email every day.
Also, I think I've had my pasta strainer since the 90s.