Another deleted goodbye

[nectere]

My first crack at a computer came in the form of a "Time" computer, I am not really sure you could call it a computer and I have looked all over for another one. It was more likely akin to a glorified calculator which you could input code into and get a dancing line or dot after hours upon hours entering in pages of this code that came with the little system. My step up was a Commador 64, that was when I started getting interested in games and rushed out to purchase an atari. A fews later I found myself working for Sun and a wannabe computer geek was born. I was their "receptionist" and had literally and encouraged all day to do nothing but learn how to use their system, oh and of course hack into other peoples computers and learn a little about encyption which was just starting out really, but that was just a side hobby of mine. I cheesed off the new office admin and found myself outted after I called the president to complain. Boy was I ever brazen back then...

now I just goof about building databases etc, but not for Sun.

[RainbowTigress]

I did manage to get a 55 year old woman from church addicted to the sims too.   

Shame on you, corrupting church members, Chris! 

[Bangelnuts]

I did manage to get a 55 year old woman from church addicted to the sims too.   

Shame on you, corrupting church members, Chris! 

ROFL

[Twibil]

I will be 32 next month.  Yikes.  When I was a teen I never thought I'd live to see 27.  (The year 2000 - remember how big a deal that was?  The turn of the the century woooooo.)

The first computer I ever learned on was a Radio Shack TRS80, not so fondly referred to as "trash 80".  Our first home computer was an Atari 800  I believe, and up to that point we had been only playing with the Atari console.  I loved Kaboom.

My husband and I met online, through personals.  We have been together for 5 years now.  The ironic thing is that my first husband cheated on me with some chickie he met online.  I caught him, and he begged to come back, but the second time he did it I kicked his ass to the curb.  Can't believe he would have rather had a little checkout girl from walmart than such a beautiful and intelligent woman as myself.  Go figure  

[Brynne]

I was wondering where you've been, Chris!
I think we had an Atari 800 when I was a kid, too. Was that the one with the Pac Man game that put the regular Atari's Pac Man to shame? I was still embarrassed because it was so not cool to not have the usual Atari, like all my friends did. Kick-ass Pac Man or none.
I remember my dad bringing home an Apple IIc when I was about 12 or so. I could program it to make my name print all over the screen! Gasp! My programming knowlege still remains at that level, however. And we had this game called Zork. I played it for hours at a time. Don't remember much about it except that it was all text and no graphics. Some kind of puzzle, I think. Something about opening a mailbox, or going to the east side of a house...does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Here it is!
http://www.nomadgamer.com/archives/2005/04/zork_a_nomad_ga.php

Man, those were the days.

[witch]

That evolved into cautious exploration of the internet, and many panicky situations such as the time I thought it would be best not to tell my husband I had just performed an illegal operation and caused Explorer to shut down. I'd just stoically wait until the feds came to my door.

Oh mate!    I remember the panic & not knowing if something was serious or not.-The whole 'is it just what computers do or is the whole thing irretrievably broken dilemna'!

Commodore 64 was my first PC. Beer Belly Bert as I recall. I tried to teach myself programming from the accompanying book. Did alright up until about the 10th exercise. Couldn't get it to work. Never ocurred to me to skip it and try another. Gave up. Found out years later that there was a printing error in book, program would never work. Realised was stuck in rut in thinking and went & got an IT degree.

Now learning Java programming at 48yrs old. 

Not scared of computers anymore now, am BOSS!

[Lerf]

Our first computer was a Commodore Vic 20.   And I clung to my Amiga 500 until I absolutely had to have a computer that had software that was compatible with my co-author's PC.  (That was in 1997.)

[Kyna]

My first computer was primarily a word-processor, but you could also run programs in CP/M+ on it.  (Brits and my fellow Aussies may remember the Amstrad PCW).  It had a whopping 256k memory and no hard drive!  I can remember playing a text game exploring a cave, and playing trivial pursuit with very simple green-on-black graphics.  Also remember buying magazines that had the code in basic for programs and coding them up, teaching myself some simple programming.

And I'm another simmer who won't be seeing 40 again - I'm 42 (until late next month).  I always hoped that at 42 I'd discover the answer to the 'great question of life, the universe and everything', even if I didn't know the question - no such luck I'm afraid.

[hyperCat]

I don't remember what my first computer was because I was 5 years old. All I know is I spent a lot of time playing some DOS games called Buzzard Bait and Jumpman. A few years later, I got Windows 95 and an internet connection as a birthday present. I spent most of my time designing and updating a web site for a horse club I found on AOL. I wasn't too interested in playing games because we had both a Sega and a Nintendo by then. I don't think I got into the Sims and PC gaming until I was in college. I annoyed my roommate by staying up until all hours playing Drakan: Order of the Flame.

[Bangelnuts]

I don't remember what my first computer was because I was 5 years old. All I know is I spent a lot of time playing some DOS games called Buzzard Bait and Jumpman. A few years later, I got Windows 95 and an internet connection as a birthday present. I spent most of my time designing and updating a web site for a horse club I found on AOL. I wasn't too interested in playing games because we had both a Sega and a Nintendo by then. I don't think I got into the Sims and PC gaming until I was in college. I annoyed my roommate by staying up until all hours playing Drakan: Order of the Flame.

my hubby is sso technologically impaired he cant even turn on the TV since its been hooked up to Dish network and the computer  baffles him completely. I watched him look for the on/off switch for  my computer for an hour last night after  he  helped me put in the RAM cards, I was ROFL at the sight of him looking all over the tower for a light switch apparatus.  ;Dhe wouldnt believe me when I told him where the power button was. after an hour he gave up I walked over pushed the power button and the computer instantly powered up. my hubby got mad and stormed off to another room declaring that for me to know that "I must spend far too much time on the computer"

[baratron]

As this seems to have got derailed into a "how old are you and what was your first computer?" thread, I'm 29 and my first computer was a BBC Master 128.

Now, Americans probably won't know what that is, but Acorn were a British computer company whose machines were popular all over Europe and in places like Australia. In the late 80s, pretty much every school in the UK had at least one BBC B or Acorn Electron computer. They were fantastic for schools, because they were basically indestructible. Special needs educators in particular loved them, because a large adult could have convulsions over one without hurting the computer at all! (This is an almost-direct quote, btw).

Acorns were always "serious" computers - they were aimed at schools, home users who wanted to learn to program, and people who wanted to run robots. BBC BASIC was a neat programming language, and you could write a sensible program without a single GOTO - we had the IF/THEN/ELSE construction and PROCedures, which were like mini programs running within the main program. As Acorns cost roughly twice what other home computers did, we never got much in the way of games. However, the games Tetris and Elite were both written initially for the BBC B. The Acorn Archimedes series, launched in 1989, was groundbreaking. The Arc was the first ever computer to use a Reduced Instruction Set Chip (RISC), and it showed. In 1990, my Arc (440/1, the top end) was between 4 and 10 times faster than a Windows 3.1 PC of comparable price.

Acorn themselves died, but the spin-off company ARM is going strong. ARM chips are in just about everything these days, including my Game Boy Advance SP - which has a spec roughly equivalent to that Archimedes 440/1 that I mentioned . Bearing in mind that my GBA SP is all of three inches in diameter and fits into my pocket, I feel old.

[Hairfish]

I'm 46, married 27 years to a 50 year old man who spent nearly 20 years as a miserable computer operator and now drives a big rig. At what time will the truck arrive in Cincinnati?

Oh wait. All those numbers...

He's living his second childhood through his ultimate dream-job, and I play Sims obsessively and "make toys" for the game. We're polar opposites, but exactly alike. Our kids are in their 20's and live here at home, and think they have the world's coolest parents. (They do; otherwise they'd be out on their asses by now.) Personally, I can't stand most people "my age," unless they're Simmers.

Ahh, computer nostalgia. I got my first "IBM clone" in 1985 or thereabouts ~ an 8088 with 64k of RAM and a 10MB hard drive, which I quickly swapped out for a 40MB. We had a C64, but I don't count that as a computer, since all I used it for was drawing pornographic ASCII graphics to scroll endlessly on a black & white portable t.v. that served as the monitor. The "clone" was a major step forward in graphics ~ Optix, an amber monitor, and a 9-pin dot matrix printer, OH MY!!! 

Y'know what's sad, though. For what we paid for that old "clone," I could now buy an Alienware system that would make Sims2 run like a Pixar movie.

[windy_moon]

Y'know what's sad, though. For what we paid for that old "clone," I could now buy an Alienware system that would make Sims2 run like a Pixar movie.

Isn't that the truth!

I think I paid $3000 for my first Apple computer that had no hard drive.  To run any programs, I had to keep switching floppy disks. "Insert Disk A", "Insert Disk B".

Don't remember the year, somewhere mid 80's, but $3K to me then was like $30K right now, I was that poor. 

Not sure exactly where I got the money....I think I robbed a bank.  Wanted a computer that badly. 

(it's was obsolete so fast.....    .... I've never tried to be cutting edge again!)

[Hairfish]

We didn't pay quite that much for my first PC, but it was over $2k. We had to borrow the money from my parents, who didn't mind, as it meant my father got to go computer-shopping with me. He's a mainframe programmer geek from way back...but has unfortunately reached his level of incompetence with Win-XP.  (I find that hilarious, but I guess you had to be there.)

The last I heard, that old dinosaur ~ the PC, not my dad...although... ~ was still going strong, running basic accounting software for the charity shop we donated it to! These days, I'm lucky if I can make a system last four years before major problems start cropping up.

[KellyQ]

My (then)husband and I bought a top of the line Micron computer in 1995, it had a whopping 16 MB of RAM and of course, only used floppy disks. He worked for Micron and with his employee discount we paid $2,500 for it! I was terribly pissed off at the whole idea of paying that much for something we really didn't need and refused to even touch it, lol. About 6 months later, the hubby was out the door but he left the computer and it became my new best friend. I was a stay at home mom and that computer came in very handy when I had to type up a resume and search for work. I upgraded it at one point with more memory (32 MB, woot!) and a new HD when the old one died. I used the heck out of that thing until I finally got a new computer 6 yrs. later. We still have it; it sits out in the garage on a desk my (2nd) husband made for it, so he can play solitaire and work on MSword projects.

[Tgdrysix]

I was wondering where you've been, Chris!
I think we had an Atari 800 when I was a kid, too. Was that the one with the Pac Man game that put the regular Atari's Pac Man to shame? I was still embarrassed because it was so not cool to not have the usual Atari, like all my friends did. Kick-ass Pac Man or none.
I remember my dad bringing home an Apple IIc when I was about 12 or so. I could program it to make my name print all over the screen! Gasp! My programming knowlege still remains at that level, however. And we had this game called Zork. I played it for hours at a time. Don't remember much about it except that it was all text and no graphics. Some kind of puzzle, I think. Something about opening a mailbox, or going to the east side of a house...does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Here it is!
http://www.nomadgamer.com/archives/2005/04/zork_a_nomad_ga.php

Man, those were the days.

OMG.....I played that game oooooh sooooo long ago....one of my brother's friends had it on his computer and whenever we got the chance to go over to his house we would play for hours.....and hours.....it was so cool.....and not a damm picture/graphic during the whole game......only your imagination.....it was great.....oh and I will proudly admit that I join the ranks of the eldery here at MATY....at an awesome old age of 44!  And  what's with these husbands that think the sims are stupid.....my husband favorite line is " YOU play the sims more than you do me!"..... you guys can read into that any way you choose....lol....Tgdry6

[Sagana]

My husband is actually awesome about my obsessions (his flaws are elsewhere ) He's played Sims2 a bit (played Sims1 as well) tho he doesn't really get into it (mostly building stuff). He might like the business EP enough to get involved again, so I'm looking forward to that. And let's me talk about it and even makes intelligent comments. The other day I was telling him how the oldest kid in my sim family had it hard as her parents were poor when she was little, so she didn't have the things that make it easier to learn (better beds, better food, less time on chores etc.) and he was telling me "how realistic is that game - even when it doesn't exactly mean to be." A whole conversation about societal ills among the poor and their representation in the Sims Pretty cool.

He even joined my (temporary) dance obsession cheerfully, which was pretty cool of him. For my birthday, he got me the CDs and book for Firefly (Serenity, my other obsession) and spent all day playing Tropico with me (his favorite game, so he's addicting me.) We also read together and share books (sometimes).

</pure idolization> Can you tell I've got 3 lightning bolts for my husband? It's that interests thing - nothing to do with zodiac signs or aspirations

[Hairfish]

</pure idolization> Can you tell I've got 3 lightning bolts for my husband?

It shows.  It's refreshing to hear someone else so in love with their spouse.

BTW, my husband has taken to referring to making love as "woo hoo." Now, that's acceptance!! 

[Bangelnuts]

</pure idolization> Can you tell I've got 3 lightning bolts for my husband?

It shows.  It's refreshing to hear someone else so in love with their spouse.

BTW, my husband has taken to referring to making love as "woo hoo." Now, that's acceptance!! 

my hubby hates anything to do with the sims LOL

[hyperCat]

BTW, my husband has taken to referring to making love as "woo hoo."

So does mine.

[Brynne]

If I even bring up The Sims, my husband does that stare-off-into-space thing that a sim does when he's bored with the subject of conversation. Sometimes he'll even stick his fingers in his ears and say "na na na na na na".

[Andygal]

If I bring up the sims my dad gives me a lecture about how it's a waste of my time.

[Brynne]

No, the lecture is the waste of your time.

[laeshanin]

Having neither husband nor partner of any variety, I only get lectures from my increasingly scathing daughters. 

[Brynne]

Pretty bad when your kids lecture you for playing computer games...