How I Became Interested In Computers

Perhaps the earliest memory I have of computers, or rather video games, goes back to the late 70's.  After my mom's company softball game, everyone would head over to Godfather's Pizza at 103rd & State Line to drink pitchers of Coors beer.  I was maybe seven or eight years old at the time and would bum quarters from the guys on the team.  I would use them to play my favorite games at the time: Asteroids, Starhawk, Breakout, and the KISS pinball machine.  I always wondered what made these games tick.  A couple years later, my step-brother and I would spend countless hours playing 'Tennis', 'Squash', 'Hockey', or trying effortlessly to shoot that damn moving square on a Radio Shack handheld game controller that hooked up to the television.  Again, these things seemed simple, but what made them work?  In the early 80's, everybody had an Atari 2600.  Well...everybody except for our family.  So we would head over to that persons house to play Combat, Bowling, Pac Man, Yar's Revenge, Zaxxon and so on.  Great fun.

In 1982, a movie came out called "Tron" that turned my world upside down.  Not only did the story involve a favorite pastime of mine, videogames, but it went one step further by plunging real people into the world of a computer to play those games in order to return to the real world.  I hope I didn't give anything away for those of you who haven't seen the movie in the last 20 years :)  The video game of the same name was also quickly my favorite box to throw my lunch money leftovers into.  I could only make it to the 5th level, as I always got killed in the MCP Cone.  I remember the levels were names of programming languages like RPG, COBOL, FORTRAN and so on.  In my humble opinion, Flynn would kick Neo's ass on the game grid.

The next year, another computer related movie came out called "Wargames".  Because of this movie, there suddenly became news stories about 12 year olds breaking into company computers over the phone lines.  This peaked my interest.  Gee, how can someone from home, access a computer across the country?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Later that same year, ABC premiered one of my all time favorite television shows entitled "Automan" starring Chuck Wagner and Desi Arnez Jr.  It only lasted one season, and of that one season I only saw a few episodes due to the fact that it conflicted with grandma's "Cosby Show" viewing on Thursday nights.  The premise of the show is that a computer geek at a police department wrote a program that created a holographic image called "Automan".  Given enough electrical power, this creation of his would manifest itself in the real world along with his flying orb of a helper called Cursor.  Due to his need for electricity, all of their crime fighting had to be done at night before the city woke up and started to consume it.  Automan had the coolest car, which made 90 degree turns, then would suddenly turn into a jet or a helicopter with the help of Cursor.  Cool show.  I'd like to see all the episodes someday.

For my 13th birthday in 1984, I was constantly telling my mom that I wanted a computer.  I loved going to KMART and slinking back to the computer department.  While other kids are checking out bicycles or browsing the toy department, I'm entering programs that I found in a computer magazine.  For my birthday though, mom played a mean trick on me.  In my birthday card, she cut out the ad for the Commodore VIC-20 and said, "There's your computer".  I was pissed!  But she remedied the situation by breaking out a real honest to goodness 3,586 bytes free VIC-20.  To quote Homer Simpson, "Woo Hoo!".  I hooked up to a black & white television and started tearing through the manual.  Once I learned how to program in VIC-BASIC, that 3.5K went away quickly.  Another downside was that I had no means to save my programs.  Soon enough I got a DataSet to take care of that.  Ah yes, the good old days of cassette tapes and pressing record/play to save, and pressing play to load or verify.

That same year, a friend of mine in Junior High had a Commodore 64 and a modem.  After school, I would go over to his house, and we would dial into some online service such as CompuServe or Q-Link.  There really wasn't a name for it back then, but we would "surf" until I had to go home.  He let me borrow his modem once, but mom didn't want me tying up the phone lines, so I never got to get online.

In High School, the Typing class was a prerequisite for the Computer Applications class, so I spent my Freshmen year typing away on an IBM Selectric.  My Sophomore year was my year to go nuts.  The day I bought my first box of 5.25" Kodak floppies was historic.  The school was stocked to the gills with Apple ][ computers, and the first semester we mastered AppleWorks (a word processor, spreadsheet, and database program).  Toward the end of the semester, we messed with LOGO.  I would stay after school in the computer lab just to perfect my little LOGO picture of the Saint Louis arch.  The next semester was learning to program in Apple Basic.  Not too difficult since I had an understanding of BASIC to begin with.  I just hated the Apple text editor to insert or delete characters.

The next year, I took PASCAL and Advanced PASCAL.  Again, we were still using the Apple ][ machines, except for the whiz kid who was allowed to use the IBM computer to do his work.  During the summer of 1988, between my Junior and Senior years, I got a Commodore 128D computer for my birthday.  Technically speaking, my grandma bought it and I paid her back.  I think it was about $500 or so.  Damn!  The price of technology back then was insane. but it was cheaper than a Mac.  I slowly built my collection of pirated games....such as "Hackers", "Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy", "Amazon", "Zork", and so on.  The next school year, I decided to take a COBOL class.  That was some evil stuff.  I ended up only taking one semester due to the fact that it was long and drawn out.  Every program was huge and time consuming.  I much preferred the more simpler and more streamlined PASCAL.

When I spent my four years in the Marine Corps, I didn't deal much with computers in my job, but I did work in a telecommunications environment.  That kind of got me interested in networks, but not so interested that I would want to spend the rest of my life installing thousands of  twisted pair wires in some PBX environment or troubleshooting underground fiber optic lines.

I think that taking my experience and interest makes  for a good career in Information Technology.  Ten years ago, I didn't have any idea I would be working with high end computers such as mainframes, the AS/400, or Unix boxes.  I still continue to learn more, whether it's on-the-job experience with Oracle, or a classroom environment with Visual Basic.  Learning about new operating systems and equipment is always good not only for personal satisfaction, but also for professional reasons.  You never know when it may come in handy for that next job.

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