TL;DR version: Got started when I learned Windows 95 at a video store, then became a help desk guy and then a "web guy" at the university. Back in the day and until 1994, I had seen "computers" in middle and school, and I had worked on programs like Aldus WordPerfect to finish my papers in college, but... I didn't ever install, configured, even plugged in anything onto a computer. The time to do that came when I was working at a video store on 17th and Shepherd, called U.S. Video Express (and now a sales car closed lot). Our boss brought in a brand spanking new edition of Windows 95. In college, I worked with a DOS menu where I had to choose specific programs in DOS and Windows, in contrast. He said: "do you want to help me install the OS?" I said: "No. I don't know how to." He showed me all the diskettes and said "it's easy, man." I still said "no." He said: "If you want to play around with the computer, make sure there are no customers. Come over and click around. I always have it backed up and you cannot mess up anything. Let me know what you find out." He usually was never there, so I learned to install, remove, etc., everything in Windows '95. I learned settings, configuration, etc. I even taught him a few things Windows 95 could do. I then got a job as a Computer Assistant at a summer institute at UHD because I knew the new Windows '95 before it was installed there. After that, I became a lab assistant, then a full time User Support person. In there, I learned a lot more, and then became a "web guy." I'm not talking about just using it, I mean an "expert" or someone who "helps someone else": How did you become a "computer" person?
Always infatuated with the pretty flashing lights on things, and computers were no exception. Bought an Apple IIgs (CURSE YOU APPLE!!!) back in the mid-80's, but it was all still very arcane. Worked as a manager of a Babbage's for a few years in the late 80's, selling software before ever really having the money to actually have a computer (they were still really expensive at that time).. Became a lot more 'involved' with them when Circuit City had their Grand Opening in Houston, and along with opening this new market, they also expanded into selling these newfangled things called 'home computers' at the same time. I was one of the very first employees for the company hired to actually sell computers for them. This was in the days of DOS shell programs (competing with Microsoft and their weird new 'Windows' thing), most computers didn't yet come with a 'mouse', none of them hard 'hard disks', most of them still came with 5.25" 'floppy disk' drives (although, some of the more fancy-shmancy ones came with these little ninja-style 3.5" disks (hard candy shell, but still 'floppy' on the inside).. many of them still had monochrome screens ('monitors'), although the fancy once had something called 'CGA Graphics', and the really really cool ones had something called 'VGA Graphics' capability , then later of course SUPER VGA (SVGA) capabilities.. None of them had the ability to make sounds, although some companies had figured out how to make the little beeping internal speaker actually simulate other kinds of sounds ('RealSound' on the golf game, anyone remember that?).. then the cutting edge started to happen and we had to become aware of our 'baud rate', and buy all these expensive 'modulator/demodulators' to connect to our phone lines..PACKARD BELL! AST!! ACROS!! '640k is all the memory anyone would ever need anyway!' :grin: Ahh those were the days all right. Kids nowdays, they don't know how lucky they are...
PC gaming was the start. Dial up was the only internet access we had at home at the time, so for multiplayer my friends and I learned how to set up LANs to get together and play age of empires 2, starcraft, ect. Installing new video cards, hard drives, network cards, ect all lead to learning more about building computers, along with software, updates, troubleshooting, ect, which eventually lead to formal study in college.
^^^ :grin: ^^^ is that just playing it, REEKO? I meant actually doing high-level stuff... like installing programs, fixing them, etc. Oh, yeah, what was your first PC? I didn't buy a PC for my home but until 1998. It was a Packard Bell Multimedia with MII Cyrix processor. I forget the speed, but I believe it was in the 200's, maybe 266MHz, bought at CompUSA near Kirkwood on Westheimer. It had a new technology called 56k and it also could attach parallel with a flatbed FP320 Canon Scanner, with which I got a free inkjet printer.
I remember my uncle giving us his old pc, and I played a whole lot of King's Quest on the big floppy disks, from then on it was just wanting to get more content to play, I would buy games and then find out my pc couldn't run them, that's when I learned about video cards and upgrading.
i started off playing doom and tomb raider on my dad's PC at home and at his work when i was around 6. eventually games got more sophisticated and required stronger PC's, so i learned to upgrade them on my own. the windows OS has always been pretty simple and straight forward to me, so i guess i'm self taught
I think in 5th grade, so around 9-10 years old I guess. I don't remember if they were plain PCs or those Macs with different colors, but I didn't know whatthe**** to do with it. The teacher asked how many of us had computers in our homes. The only ones who didn't raise our hands were myself and some kids who were obviously poor. I was lame. I didn't really start to use computers regularly until I started getting on CBS Sportsline message boards. Then I eventually started using AIM and that helped me learn to type faster. Then I was on other sports forums and eventually became a Mod at ProSportsNation/ZeroGravitySports (not that yall know what those are) and played a very minor role in that site's contruction. Then I started to use Xanga, then MySpace, and those got me started on very basic HTML. Much more stuff after that, obviously, but that's how I got "started."
Yeah, to become a "web guy", I read the entire "Beginner's Guide to HTML" from the NCSA around 1996. That was a "new thing." Notepad was the only thing we had to write Web pages. There was no "social" anything. I was on Usenet user groups, IRC, and more places to talk to people and learn more about editing web pages. I helped build my university's first web site with the assistance of many others. I wrote JavaScript, HTML, and web pages on CGI using Perl. I wrote an entire solution to send greeting cards.
I'm doing networking and very little programming now. I've installed Ubuntu on all my family computers since they are all 10 year old machines. I've really gotten into home networking with connected hard drives for media. Home automation as well (Video cameras and Lighting).
I started programming on an atari400. The keyboard was brutal, but I loved it. Also we had Apples in school, and had friends with TRS80's and commodores. Got an apple//c when I was 15. 128k RAM and no hard drive! Good times.
How did you get started with this? I'm sure you added programs or installed things another way and this is your job now, but... how did you get started doing the stuff you learned through the years? I know only SOME networking, but that's not my job. I'm starting to see that most people got started learning on their own... and almost no one went to school to be "computer peeps"... at least that's what it seems.
The first known Greek computer is the Antikythera mechanism it is an ancient analog computer[1][2] designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera wreck,[3] but its significance and complexity were not understood until a century later. Jacques Cousteau visited the wreck in 1978[4] but, although he found new dating evidence, he did not find any additional remains of the Antikythera mechanism. The construction has been dated to the early 1st century BCE. Technological artifacts approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again until the 14th century AD, when mechanical astronomical clocks began to be built in Western Europe. link
HTML: I learned most of my "skills" through a mix of computer programming basics from San Jac and the Internet. Hours of reading forums and printing instructions. The classes I took were required for my music engineering degree but it did make me want to learn more about networking.
I think the title said 'GEEKS', not 'GREEKS'... ..and damn Youtube for not having the Cliff Claven 'Aqueducts' scene..!
my brother had an Apple IIe around 86 or 87 and he programmed a slalom game with x's and o's he told me about modems and bulletin boards back then. he was 13 at the time. we played a game called Karateka while listening to the Beatles and the Beastie Boys
I worked at Babbages as a part time job while I was going to U of H. I was actually a political science major. They let us check out software and use it on our computer at home. I was able to learn a lot by just dabbling in it. It was just sort of a hobby at first that eventually became my career.
