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in the heart or in the head?

Tell me, where is geekdom bred?

On second thought, I’ll tell you: in the home. Saw a picture of this high-tech piece of equipment the other day, and found myself gasping and agape. The Sinclair was the first computer my family owned. I was five. That’s the kind of environment that spawns a man like me, whose interests are abstract but can’t keep his hands off of thinking machines.

Remember playing catch with your dad? Or going to the game? I spent many summer afternoons in front of the Apple IIGS with the old man, reading lines of code out of PC magazines. When we got a Macintosh SE, a friend came over with his machine and we networked them, just to say we did it. The young geek tales, they are multifarious.

You can see how I just can’t help but be what I am, and can perhaps see why I’ve been trying to install a decent Linux distro on a seven-year-old laptop. Old habits.

7 replies on “in the heart or in the head?”

And, boy, were our parents worried that we might break something trying to get those computers networked.

Peter: Around second grade, and it was the Electrical Transduzer.

Dave: Between a Fortran programmer and an electrical engineer? You better believe they were worried.

All you guys with your fancy computers. I was so psyched to finally get that old beast, the Kaypro 2x. No sledgehammer-susceptible plastic case for me, thanks. Just all-in-one monochromatic bliss.

We did finally get a 286… in ’92, I think.

Yeah, Paganitzu was on the 286. We didn’t even have a sound card. I was so blown away when I finally tried Commander Keen on the Kooontz’s PC, and it played music during the game!

The only good games on the Kaypro was good ol’ Star Trek and Ladder, a very cool Donkey Kong clone with interesting levels and entirely ASCII art.

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