Sinekow.org

Newly Digital

This entry is for the Kalsey's Newly Digital Project.

I remember when I first saw a computer, and to this day I still wonder how I got here. My brother owned a Commodore 64 when he was a teenager, and me being the ever present little brother, I had to know what he was doing, and how to play with his new toy.

I don't remember a lot about his C64, but I do remember Zaxxon3D, and Mail Order Monsters. I would play those games every chance I could get. (Load "*" ,8,1)

Next came a Leading Edge PC clone. More games followed, but I also learned the wonders of Microsoft Works when I needed to do a paper for school work, as both my regualar penmanship, and cursive was "atrocious" (coined in my fourth grade yearbook from my dad heheh).

Next came my Dad's 8088, which proffered my use of Microsoft Works for school work, and gave me a chance to practice my Geometry (damn I loved that CGA Mini Golf).

Next was our AST 486 25mHz PC, Wolf3d led the fight, followed by Doom, Works changed into Microsoft Office (student discount still made that overpriced), and DOS paved the way for Win 3.1

The Comtrade Pentium 100 was next. Lots of FPS games came and went. Windows 95 was the next big thing, and I finally got on the Internet. AOL first, then Internet Michigan which was bought by Voyager.net which was bought by CoreComm. The Internet was still vast even in its relative infancy in 1994 and webcrawler was my tool for finding all that great information about Monty Python and the like.

For my birthday while I was a sophomore in High School, my parents bought be a Toshiba Laptop (Satellite 115 CS), which was essentially as powerful as my Dad's Comtrade. I spent many nights just futzing around online, playing games, chatting on IRC and then eventually ICQ, which was the only instant messenger I used until college.

I flirted with Linux with my first self-purchased Computer (Pentium 166 mx)and sufficiently burned myself out of computing for a while. I later reformatted that machine to be my primary Windows box, and I took it with me to college.

Northern Michigan University stated a program to make sure that every student had access to a computer, and so in my sophomore year I got my Intel Celeron powered IBM Thinkpad 1300i which saw my first real programming, and was my base of operations for almost my entire collegiate career.

I was a Network Computing Major, and I carried that computer with me to class every day. It allowed me to take great notes when necessary, program when class warranted, and let me screw around when class got boring. There I learned Java, C++, Perl, PHP, mySQL, and I fell in love with Web Application Development.

After that lease ran out, I got a new Thinkpad from NMU (IBM ThinkPad R31 Series 2656-NU4). With that new computing power I had found myself unable to unplug for even a day. I wrote my entire Senior Project on that machine. I wrote all my papers, did all my projects, and still managed to enjoy myself while using computers. I had to turn that computer back in when I graduated. Luckily, it was the first computer I had owned with a CD burner, so I was able to backup all my "life" to transfer it to my next computer.

My graduation present from my parents was a new Dell Inspiron Laptop. We only have dialup access at my house, so surfing the Internet at the level I was able to at school isn't possible, but I still manage to get my daily Internet fix. All I manage to do with my time is read RSS feeds, post to my blog, and chat anymore.

Posted by sgowell at June 1, 2003 12:55 PM | TrackBack