My Thoughts on Computers

I suppose that this topic is quintessential in understanding who I am as a person. My interest in computers has been the driving force behind my decision making for a very long time.And, It is without a doubt that I can tie who, what, and where I am to one experience that happened many many years ago. From the very first time I laid my little six year old eyes on a computer my world changed, in that very instant my mind was made up. I no longer cared to be a Paleontologist, or an Archeologist, there was no doubt I would work with computers. At four I knew the word Paleontologist that's how into dinosaurs I was and in one instant that all changed. Now I wanted to be a Computerologist? Computerer? No, I didn't know what it was called but I wanted to be it. I'm not exactly sure when this moment occurred. It was in 1989 or 1990, and the computer that won my heart was none other then an Apple IIe, a computer that was as old as I was. They put the 5 1/4" floppy into the drive and let it spin up. I can remember the smell of that computer, I'm not sure how to describe it, something like dust, and aged plastic, but I've always associated it with old electronics. The disk it was loading was a LOGO program. You could give programming instructions to a little triangle and it would draw shapes. The first thing I ever did on a computer was program a "turtle" to draw geometric patterns and I loved it with all my soul. It was the most amazing, incredible thing I had ever seen. I don't know what I had it draw, and it doesn't matter. I am positive that this experience completely changed my life.

From that time on when i was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I would say, "A guy that works on computers." I found every opportunity to use computers as often as I could. We didn't own a computer at the time, but I had friends who did. I remember playing the classic death simulator known as Oregon Trail. I was always a banker and I'd buy a wagon load of ammunition, no shoes or blankets for my kids it's a dangerous world and we needed to shoot it! I usually killed little Timmy in the first river we decided to ford. Little Sara Jane was next. She would be well on her way to death by dysentery or cholera before Fort Laramie. And by the time we got to Independence Rock we were all dead a door nails. Looking back I suppose the banker was a poor choice. After all he had lived his life in a posh inside job with the best amenities the 1840s had to offer. That is, until his mid-life crisis forced him to pull his family away from the relative peace and comfort of the East to satisfy his selfish need for accomplishment and adventure by making an ill planed campaign across the frontier to the land of Seasonal Disaffective Disorder. And, in this foolish attempt to feel alive he subjects his ill-equipped family to the rigors of frontier life only to die tragically at the hand of unassuming parasites contracted while drinking out of a dirty river he never should have tried crossing in the first place. It all makes sense now.

When I was a little older my parents brought home an IBM computer, I don't know what kind of hardware it had, but I remember the orange monochrome monitor. The most entertaining program it had installed was a toss up between Word Perfect and DOS. It did  have a keno gambling game, which might sound like it could be fun but you have to remember that nobody ever wins at keno. So, it was just a way to watch your number of virtual dollar amount reach zero while feeling a vague sense of shame, guilt, and despair. So again, I say Word Perfect was probably the most entertaining program on the computer, I mean, you could change fonts! I remember writing a couple terrible short stories about baseball cards.  My parents would praise my attempts at writing with compliments and encouragement, but I know that after reading my youthful attempts at literature they were probably trying to figure out where they had gone wrong and what possible chance I had to lead a normal life with such a handicap.

It was not long after this, that on a snowy Christmas morning that I received one of the greatest gifts of my life. I woke up, and there on my desk beside my bed was a very old, very used, very familiar Apple IIe computer in all it's green monochrome glory. It had a box of hundreds of 5 1/4" program discs with it. And, with some embarrassment I have to admit I used that little green box into the late nineties.

In school, I had the chance to learn Geography, History, and Astronomy all while chasing a brown haired vixen in the red trench coat. She lead me through time, across the world, and even out to space, and naturally, I followed. I very vaguely remember learning math from aliens, or monsters, or something. I'm not sure which. I ran around catching misspelled words in a butterfly net for trophies. Now that I think about it these old games sound more like the musings of the criminally insane, but they kept my computerer dream alive. One day I would understand these magic boxes and in that day I would be able to make my own magic. I played Doom, and Wolfenstein. I killed Nazis and demon space monsters without remorse or sympathy. I flew planes...eventually... once I finally learned how to keep from crashing on take off, but I never could learn to land the blasted things. I'm of the opinion that it was impossible. I am sure that the landing gear was rigged with explosives and set to detonate the second they touched the ground. I played chess which was really unfair since at the time I didn't even know how the pieces moved. I fired bombs over mountain at very specific angles and velocities. I played anything I could get my hands on and even though I was always well behind the times, I loved it. Every bit of it.

My first memories of the internet came from fifth grade.The internet capable computer was found in the corner of the gifted classroom. Yes, in my youth I was a certified genius, I had been tested! The computer was running some sort of Prodigy service, and from what I can remember all we could do on it was take tests. As you can imagine it was never very popular. I preferred using my time building complex geometrical shapes with yarn and straws, and other sundry gifted projects. However, in sixth grade, also while in the gifted program I used my genius level intelligence to help our school librarian learn how to use Netscape Navigator to find Hubble pictures from NASA.

At the ripe young age of 12 or 13 a friend and I entered chat rooms on AOL for the first time. What fun was had pretending we were older and cooler then we actually were, and talking to other people pretending to be younger and less creepy then they actually were.  From what I remember we would be asked our a/s/l, and we would respond with some lies that would make us seem interesting then try to keep the lie going for as long as possible, which as it turned out was forever, because everybody else is doing exactly the same thing. There have been more lies told in chat rooms since the early 90's then in all the rest of the world since time began.  In hindsight, I cannot tell you how many soon to be registered sex offenders we chatted with, after all we were young and innocent, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number was "all of them".

I learned to program from a friend with a copy of QBASIC on a 3 1/2" floppy. I took classes in high school on how to program in C++ and Visual Basic. Once I graduated I attended college and studied Computer Science. Everything was going to plan I was doing everything required to achieve the dreams of my youth, and then it happened. It was the end of my junior year in college and it struck me that I no longer enjoyed what I was doing. The magic was gone. I had learned too much. I was too far in and now all my dreams came crashing down around me. I looked around and I now knew the limitations of computers, the various ins and outs. I had just enough knowledge to destroy what made them special and not enough to do anything with it. I continued on anyway. I finished my degree. I got a job shortly thereafter "working with computers", now I am a professional Computerologist, whatever it's called. I have accomplished my childhood dreams. Maybe with time I will will rediscover the joy and magic of my youth or perhaps I should have been a paleontologist.