I've been doing computer things for a long time.
I remember when my brother received a Commodore 64 computer for his birthday one year. He was so excited! It came with a cassette tape drive and we would spend 30 minutes loading the Blue Max space shuttle trench run game so that he could play it and I could watch and that I could play it sometimes. It was a fun game, but it was limited in what you can do and the boss at the end was very hard to defeat! We had spent many hours playing on our original Atari game system. Space Invaders was my favorite because I had become so time synced with the space invaders that I could sit and play it indefinitely on my joystick and big console TV at home.
After I had my own Commodore 64 in college I remember using a heat transfer printer to print my essay for a college class. I had typed up, saved, edited, and printed my college class essay using GeoWorks software which was early "what you see is what you get" document editing. I remember arguing with my professor that doublespaced and 14 point font on heat transfer paper was the same as doublespaced on a typewriter.
I remember another professor at University of Central Florida bragging about how she had gotten a 1 MB hard drive and how it was so big and how excited she was.
Last timeI checked I carry 2 TB of storage in my pocket. Wow!
I remember using America Online dial-up. I remember using CompuServe on dial-up. I remember dialing into servers using the telephone line and downloading software that was posted from other sources.
I remember being my apartment in Orlando while attending University of Central Florida and calling my girlfriend (eventually my wife) and her mother iand playing for them the three voice harmony that I had programmed using "peek" and "poke" commands in my Commodore 64. It was an amazing achievement on my part but probably didn't rank very high in other people's eyes. They laughed and were encouraging. And my wife has continued to be encouraging ever since then.
Now I tinker on my phone and make it do cool things. I try to convince my iPad in my Apple iPhone from work to do cool things and often I succeed but sometimes I'm blocked by my employer's security.
I love tinkering with computers, they're so much fun!
