Hello world!

Where did you begin your journey and relationship with technology?

I don't specifically mean programming, coding, developing, engineering..whatever you want to call it. I also don't mean the first time you touched technology. For some of us that are older, that might actually be the beginning of the journey. But for some of you that are younger, you might have had access to what we currently call technology before you can even remember. For all people however, I feel there is a moment in time that changed their perspective and accessibility with technology. It may not necessarily be in a good way either.

For me, it was the Commodore 64. A lot of people I run into that are of the age remotely close to mine mention the Commodore 64 as their first interactive experience with technology that would change their life.

But it was not me acquiring the actual system that I remember. To this day, I actually don't know where it even came from. I just know that I occasionally saw it in some brown box with a bunch of wires as I was part of a military family. I remember trying to pick up a monitor for it and hearing my dad yell out, "You're not going to be able to lift that, son!" What was even in these old monitors? It was so heavy and not even very big. Well neither was I as I was probably 6 or 7 at this time. But no, I don't remember ever touching it. I don't know if I was allowed to or not, but it never crossed my mind in between riding my bike, playing with Legos, and Transformers.

The first thing I remember that planted the seed in my mind was actually way before this time. I don't remember much about it. It only exists as a couple of photos in my mind and I don't remember many details. I remember riding a ferry. It still to this day is the only time I've been on a ferry. It counts as my only ferry ride since I don't even remember the return trip. I remember it must've been Christmas, because I think I remember getting a train set. And finally I remember it must've been my grandparent's house.

Well almost finally. The last other memory I have of it is I think I had wandered into the basement. As I went down the stairs, I heard this loud noise that I can't even describe in words really. I'll make an attempt.

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeowwwwww zzzt beeeoooowwwww brrt brt zzt

I probably thought about turning around, but kept going. As I turned the corner I saw about 3 monitors, a few printers, drives, and I don't even remember what else. All I know is it looked like a space station. I remember asking my grandpa what all this was and he said, "Computers." I sat on the step and watched him for a bit. He was typing away and ignoring that I was there. I said, "Is there games?" He quickly responded, "No, this is not for games." I probably went back upstairs thinking boooring. But nevertheless, this moment is still what I think of as the genesis of my relationship with technology.

So back to the computer in the closet. One day my dad and I were at the store. I didn't want to walk around with him so I stayed over at the magazines, looking through whatever looked interesting. I came across a magazine that had stuff about computers. I don't remember the name of the magazine, but on the front cover I saw some picture of a game and it said that the code was inside the issue. Some other portion of the front cover had a picture of the C64. I brought it over to my dad and asked if that's what we had and if we still had it. He said it was still somewhere. Then I asked him if I could buy it. In other words, I was asking if he would buy it for me. He put it in the cart and when we got home he pulled out all the stuff and set it up on the floor because he didn't have a desk and didn't have a table that he felt comfortable putting the monitor on. And then I got to coding!

Well when I say coding, I mean inside there were very specific instructions and pages and pages of code to "copy." My copy-paste journey had begun. I spent hours and hours copying everything carefully over to the computer. I don't remember exactly how long it took, but long enough that when I tried to run it and it didn't work, I started to cry. Now my journey into debugging started. Actually I'm just kidding, see it was not in BASIC. I don't remember exactly what it was but some type of ASM and was just lines and lines of like 4 slot groups or characters. So I did the only thing I knew I could do at the time. I added some break points and a debugger and started running through the application. No no. I packed up the computer, and never touched it again.

It was years later until I would touch a computer again actually. My parents had gotten divorced and my dad sent the computer with me. One day I really was just having a bad day and missed him so I broke the computer out. What I didn't know was there was a box this whole time that had some floppies in it that had several games on it! I had never thought to ask him about games after my grandfather had told me so sternly that we don't play games on these things. I had some good times playing those games. Some barely worked, and when they did work I don't think they were particularly any good, but I was using things that someone made. Someone programmed. Something I couldn't do before in my failed attempt. Ever since then whenever I played games, I thought about what it was that might be making them work.

I went several years before I had access to any other kind of computer. But luckily when I went to high school I was able to take a C++ and Java class and solidify and experiment with what I always thought about. It's still a dream that I get to work with it every day now. But will always remember how my journey began.