Well, today was a little interesting. Because of a certain event at around 1 PM, my computer now thinks it is Wednesday, December 31, 1969. But that is another story for the end of this blog.
It's time for me to sit down with a big ol' bowl of Exploding Broccoli Treats (the treat that explodes in your face, but not in your mouth!) and to relate unto you faithful readers how I came to be so interested in technology.
It all started with a Speak And Spell (not the Depeche Mode album). You remember those, right? We had this most awesome one, that had a feature I found hilarious at the tender single-digit age. I learned that if I pressed the "apostrophe" button, the little device would robotically report, "Apostrophe!" If I hit the button again, another "Apostrophe!" would come forth. And again. And again. And again. I thought the word "apostrophe" was the funniest word in the whole world. I hit the apostrophe button so many times, the little Speak And Spell would just sit there on the floor, saying, "Apostrophe! Apostrophe! Apostrophe! Apostrophe! Apostrophe! Apostrophe! Apostrophe!" until the batteries died.
My Dad was also a freelance technology columnist. So, in order to keep up with the pace of technology, we got new computers all the time. My first computer was a 1980 IBM Clone - complete with monochrome screen, 64 Kb of RAM, and 2 Megabytes of hard drive space. My favorite game was a DOS 2.0 game called "Beast," a game where you were two ASCII triangles jammed together, and you had to move ASCII blocks to crush the beasts that would come after you, the "H"s. I suppose I came to love computers because all of the computers were in the only air-conditioned room of the whole house.
Next came the discovery of Apogee (r) and their distribution of DOS games. Such classics like Commander Keen (tm), Duke Nukem (tm), Doom (tm), Alien Carnage (later known as Halloween Harry (tm)), Wolfenstein 3D (tm), Moraff's Dungeons Of The Unforgiven (tm), Jill of the Jungle (tm), Monster Bash (tm), Blake Stone (tm), Rise Of The Triad (tm), and Jazz Jackrabbit (tm). I think I liked most of these games because it was fun to make the characters run into walls. I had a very sophisticated sense of humor back then.
After that, I sort of drifted around, not really caring about computers all that much (other than for games), and it went on until more and more people commented about how I was able to solve their problems with just a few keystrokes. It was like a bad movie. Somone has a computer problem, some kid comes up and hits a few keys, and the problem is solved. After a few years of being the computer kid, my Dad and I got together and built our first computers.
And the main reason why my computer thinks it is December, 1969, is because there was a power out at my place, which, of course, fried every clock powered by the walls. And now, for your entertainment, I will "Bork" the previous paragraph.
"Effter thet, I surt ooff dreeffted eruoond, nut reelly cereeng ebooot cumpooters ell thet mooch (oozeer thun fur gemes), und it vent oon until mure-a und mure-a peuple-a cummented ebooot hoo I ves eble-a tu sulfe-a zeeur prublems veet joost a foo keystrukes. It ves leeke-a a bed mufeee-a. Sumune-a hes a cumpooter prublem, sume-a keed cumes up und heets a foo keys, und zee prublem is sulfed. Effter a foo yeers ooff beeeng zee cumpooter keed, my Ded und I gut tugezeer und booeelt oooor furst cumpooters."
Apoptygma Berzerk - 7 - Half Asleep
7
lots of "splatters"
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