Computers & Technology

I have had an active interest in computers since I was a preteen. My father was nice enought to send me to a computer camp for the summer when I was about 10 years old or so. I learned to program in basic on an old Apple IIE computer that summer. Because I picked up basic so easily and was able to write programs that worked in basic, my confidence soared and I pretty much was hooked on computers and programming from there. I took a computer programming course my freshman year in high school and managed to improve on my programming skills on yet another Apple IIE computer.

 

I wasn't introduced to IBM computers and compatibles until my junior year in high school. I had transferred from my regular high school to a vocational school to study Law Enforcement that year and as part of my course I had to learn a little about data entry.

 

I managed to end up having a falling out with my parents during my junior year and I unfortunately didn't get to finish my Law Enforcement training. I moved awayu from home and actually didn't have anything to do with a computer until about 3 years ago.

 

Someone I was working for had an old IBM clone that wasn't good enough for his business anymore and I decided to buy it from him. It wasn't anything special, it's OS was Dos 3.30 I didn't have much for software either. After a couple of months the hard drive locked up and I found I was in need of another computer. Well, it just so happens, a friend of mine, who isn't really computer literate, decided to get rid of his IBM AT computer but it somehow had lost some of it's memory and wasn't working quite right. I managed to build a working computer from the two that I now had.

 

With the IBM AT computer I also got quite a bit of software. In the midst of all of that software, I found a few applications that allowed me to see their programming syntax and began to figure out how to modify the programs to my needs. One of those was learning how to edit .ini files for Microsofts DosShell. I learned how to create custom color schemes anf pull down menus for the DosShell. From there my second computer had finally quit on me and I was in search of another. I found one at a local pawn shop and purchased it for $165.00. It was a Laser 386SX which happens to be an IBM clone. It had a 40MB hard drive and only 1000K memory. It was the fastest computer I had personally sat in front of. As things would have it, after only a couple of months the hard drive locked up on this computer too. What luck! I now have a 200 mhz Pentium computer with MMX technology, 24 MB memory, a 1.2 GB hard drive, Diamond Multimedia Vga video card, Creative Labs 24Xmx cd-rom drive, 33.6 kbs fax/ modem, 16 bit sound card and stereo speakers. Everything is new except for the monitor, which came from the Laser computer, and my hard drive, which came from a Packard Bell computer. The hard drives capacity is probably cut by 25% due to some kind of physical damage and bad clusters. I really am due for a new hard drive. But regardless of whatever kind of problems I've encountered over the years I still have a strong desire to work with computers.

 

This website is my first attempt at web page building and I'm using Microsoft's Front Page Express to write my web pages with.