Tell me, where is geekdom bred?
On second thought, I'll tell you: in the home. Saw a picture of this high-tech piece of equipment the other day, and found myself gasping and agape. The Sinclair was the first computer my family owned. I was five. That's the kind of environment that spawns a man like me, whose interests are abstract but can't keep his hands off of thinking machines.
Remember playing catch with your dad? Or going to the game? I spent many summer afternoons in front of the Apple IIGS with the old man, reading lines of code out of PC magazines. When we got a Macintosh SE, a friend came over with his machine and we networked them, just to say we did it. The young geek tales, they are multifarious.
You can see how I just can't help but be what I am, and can perhaps see why I've been trying to install a decent Linux distro on a seven-year-old laptop. Old habits.
And when came the influence of the Electrical Transducer?
ReplyDeleteAnd, boy, were our parents worried that we might break something trying to get those computers networked.
ReplyDeletePeter: Around second grade, and it was the Electrical Transduzer.
ReplyDeleteDave: Between a Fortran programmer and an electrical engineer? You better believe they were worried.
All you guys with your fancy computers. I was so psyched to finally get that old beast, the Kaypro 2x. No sledgehammer-susceptible plastic case for me, thanks. Just all-in-one monochromatic bliss.
ReplyDeleteWe did finally get a 286... in '92, I think.
Is that what we played Paganitzu on?
ReplyDeleteYeah, Paganitzu was on the 286. We didn't even have a sound card. I was so blown away when I finally tried Commander Keen on the Kooontz's PC, and it played music during the game!
ReplyDeleteThe only good games on the Kaypro was good ol' Star Trek and Ladder, a very cool Donkey Kong clone with interesting levels and entirely ASCII art.
That computer had a 200 meg hard drive. I thought we'd never fill it up.
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