Career: A long story that keeps going

Starting With a Toy

I got this for christmas when I was about 6 years old. It only took me about 30 minutes of playing with it to hit up against the 16 command limit of the poor little things RAM. Still, it was a blast. I got a couple for my nephews (and one for myself, of course) when there was a mini reproduction made around 2010. Of course, I regret that I never did get the transporter (sold separately as the commercial says).

Chicken Grease and Apple IIs

Apple II computers were EXPENSIVE in the early 1980s, at least for my family. My mom knew I had an interest in computers, and working for a school district in the mid-west, signed me up for week long summer computer day camps where I went from about age 9-13 doing all 4 levels of Apple II BASIC programming along with some exposure to Apple OS, Big Mac Macro Assembler, and even some early BBS access.

After turning 14½ where I lived, I could get a job and work towards owning a computer of my own. The summer before starting high school I started my first real job at a fast food chicken place making a cool $3.75 an hour. Frying & breading chicken, cleaning up, making mashed potatoes & what-not. Coming home smelling of chicken blood, batter & fryer grease. Summer camp was over at this point since there were no more levels to take, but I was pleasantly surprised by an offer to be a teachers assistant to the program. And not just a volunteer, but a PAID position at $4.25 an hour! After a adjusting my fast food schedule, I got to compare working weekdays 8am-4pm helping "little kids" debug their Apple BASIC programs in an air conditioned lab for more money with burning my arms on fryer grease & sweating afternoons and weekends for less money. It was no contest. I knew I was leaning towards a career working with computers.

BBSes & PCs in High School & Community College

Before the internet was easily available to consumers, socialization through computers largely happened through computer bulletin board systems (see A brief history of BBS systems). This was a great way to connect with others, trade shareware or public domain software for many. This was also a great way to pirate computer games, (see phreak & hack if one were to ENGAGE the "dark side" as opposed to say... studying it. For purely academic purposes, of course.

I bought my first modem less than half a year after I got my first computer - the IBM PS/2 Model 30 pictured above. It was a bit limited, but I eventually I also added a better graphics and sound card. By the time I was getting close to High School graduation, the system was getting too limited for a number of the games I wanted to waste time with. I bought a used 286 and was starting into a hobby/addiction of home built PCs. By the time was done with community college and heading towards I got a used 386 and started down the path to real hands on computer work there were 5 1.4MB floppy disks that would leave quite an impression on me: disks 1-4 were the boot, root & compiler disks for MCC Interim Linux 0.99.p8+. Disks 5 was a little game called Doom. Doom was simply amazing. A computer game like none I'd ever played before. It was fun, and scared the hell out of me. Linux was simply amazing. A computer operating system like none I'd ever used before. It was fun, and it scared the hell out of me.