Your First Computer

Ben Wilson recently had a FB status up asking his friends to list their first computer.

At first I thought that ours was the Commodore 64. I thought that we had one of those because when I went to school and used one I already knew how to control the "turtle" and get it to draw things. High tech. Plus I could play Oregon Trail at home like a boss.

But then I remembered that my brother had a game he would play on this beige and brown box that looked like a tape player.

I called my mom and had her ask my dad what our first computer was and he came back with, "HP." I laughed. "Compaq?" he tried again. No....no...


So I texted my brother and we got started on a trip down nerdy memory lane.

Turns out we had an Atari 800!

For the younguns...it was basically a typewriter that plugged into your TV. We used to have to unplug the computer so we could watch the Muppet Show. Or decide whether or not to plug in the Atari 800, Atari OR Colecovision. What? You've never heard of Colecovision. How did you play Cabbage Patch Kids in Babyland General without it?



This is the only video game I've ever been really interested in. I played The Sims for a while in college before I realized that the characters led more interesting lives then I did and then I got depressed and quit.

My brother had a grown up job when he was in high school where he drew graphics for video games. (My brother is awesome. He also designed t-shirts, worked at a costume warehouse and did radio commercials.) Because his job was so high tech he had a Commodore Amiga in his room.

My dad worked for Dupont and so he had access to Apples at work that would be at our house for long periods of time. They were so little and cute and had their own padded carrying case. Those Macs were when I really started to get good with computers. One of my favorite things was to make really bad music.



Yeah...it was just like that. I could also make animated movies with clip art.



In high school we had some sort of Mac at home that I would use to write school papers and mess around with the free software that we would get. And when I graduated high school I got an HP with...AOL. Hooooooottttt damnnnnnn.....

I had this too:


I really have a lot of respect for my parents for making an effort to get us onto computers when the technology was new. I've always been confident with computers and part of that is because I have broken them spectacularly in so many ways.* But then I would figure out how to fix them real quick before I got in trouble. Always a good skill.



*Once I figured out how system sounds worked and had access to freeware with bonus system sounds it was all over. When you ejected a disk it made a barf noise. When you got a system error Indiana Jones would say, "Snakes. Why does it always have to be snakes?" But at one point I had so many sounds loaded on the computer that it crashed. LOL. The good thing about old Macs, like Windows machines was that restarting almost always worked.