I guess for the start of this year-long 365 computer/tech post challenge I have set for myself, it’s only fair that for the first post, I start at the very beginning. My beginning as a computer geek. The first computer I ever touched was a TRS-80 Model I computer. It was in the Remedial Education class my friend’s mother taught in high school. We went up to the classroom because she needed something and the minute I got there I saw this weird TV-looking boxy thing on a table at the far end of the room and asked what that was.

“It’s our class computer.” replied the other teacher, Ms. Havlicek. A very kind older woman that also taught the class.

“You have a computer!?” I replied, as she caught the fascinated look on my young face.

“Would you like to see it?”

I think I about nodded my head off as she led me to the magic box. We sat at the desk in front of this almost mystical device and I watched her put a cassette tape into a tape player next to it. That’s how you loaded programs?! Weird. She loaded the first program, a game for me to play.

It was called Space Warp.

I was hooked. Noticing and nurturing my interest, Ms. Havlicek and my friend’s mom told me that they would like some help with the computer and asked if I would like to learn more about this wondrous machine so I could give them a break and help the kids from their class with using it. I agreed instantly.

And thus it was that these two great and wonderful ladies helped steer me straight into my destiny; always encouraging me along the path I would follow all my life. A Geek’s Life™.

The year was 1981 and I was 15 years old.

I learned how to use the computer and spent every spare moment I had in it’s company when I didn’t have a class or someone wasn’t using it. My study-halls were always spent in that classroom as I helped the teachers, the other kids and myself unlock it and my potential. I not only learned how to load the programs and use the computer but soon began to create programs on it myself. Many, many programs; it was the first computer I ever programmed (and it certainly wasn’t the last.) The TRS-80’s Tandy Basic was my first programming language and the sky was the limit. (Provided I stayed under the 4k and later 16k limit of the computer’s memory.)

Read more »