My foray into the issue of the unopenable Publisher has started me thinking about my own path along the world of computing starting back in the late seventies with a Commodore Pet, a majestic machine with 16k of memory and a screen 40 characters wide. This later grew to an 8032 (80 columns, 32k of memory) and a dual (5 1/4") disk drive, tractor-feed printer (yay, no more tapes) - a machine that lives in our garage and now and then awakes to play.
Life was exciting, I played games on my Apple ][e, which I filled with cards and added peripherals (my first FlightSim version!). CP/M and assembler ruled. This was the time when spreadsheets were new and exciting (3D too!) and the world expanded with the addition of a 300 Baud acoustic coupler. Life on the superhighway indeed!
Like any good addict life was taken away by Nascom computers (built them yourself - version 1 and 2), Z80 development kits (a week to program a ball bouncing on the screen all lost when plug removed!!! No storage!! The Osborne luggable (orange screen), the Dragon (6809 processor, mmmmm), the BBC (A & B - still a couple in the garage), the Radio Shark TRS-80 (trash eighty) and a host of other machines (never had Sinclair's ZX or Plectrum offerings)kept me sleepless and poor.
Then came the Apple Mac 512 and life was Gucci! Apache Strike, Zork (aah, Infocom - played them all), Larry and of course, FlightSim. MacWrite and Works made me productive when I wasn't being dissipated. I've probably owned most of the Apple products (some live in our garage) at some time and worked alongside those with some good DOS and windows machines (many of them) too! It's funny but my computing life has paid me (well), made me efficient and inefficient in equal measure. It's made me friends and cost me loads but I don't regret it (well perhaps the Trash 80).
I wonder if I have put in half as much time, energy, life, love or passion into my faith life?
Pax
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