Rumor has it that Patrick Finnegan may have mentioned these words:
>Jules Richardson declared on Saturday 26 February 2005 03:03 pm:
> > On Sat, 2005-02-26 at 22:02 +0800, Wai-Sun Chia wrote:
> > > Born 1966 (age 39).
> >
> > Most people start at zero ;-)
>
>???
>
>1966 + 39 = 2005.
Yes. but 1967 + 37 == 2004. :-)
I guess it depends on your definition of zero. ;-)
> That's the current year
Or is it... ;-)
>, unless during my intoxication
>last night, I built a time machine and sent myself back 1 year in
>time. :) However, that seems somewhat unlikely.
Depends on the intoxication. ;-) ... Hrm... 6pack of beer (for myself, at
least), 3 bottles of wine (Vintage 2000, but was corky... :-(( )...
Me: 1967; got the bug when I was 8. Visited an uncle on vacation [holiday]
who was in the US Navy; part of his studies was to build a "computer" -->
he finished it just before we arrived. It converted decimal to binary and
back, and had a "custom refresh," a.k.a. a knob that changed how often the
7-segment LEDs blinked from 1Hz to 1000Hz. My uncle was rather a bit amazed
when I learned (quickly) how to run it. Ever since; it was what I wanted to
do. He ended up one of the highest ranking NCO's in the Navy before he
retired. Seen him twice since then, once when I was 10-11 -> he gave me
actual Navy books on math and 'digital computing theory' which I still
have... and the second time around 18 months ago. Odd that the person who
'gave me the bug' and defined such a large aspect of my life was so distant
and had an (otherwise) minimal impact on my life.
Other than the Atari 2600 my brother and I shared the cost in, my first
computer was a Tandy CoCo2 with 16K and the Extended Basic. My brother
threw in about a 1/3 of the purchase price for my birthday, and I sprung
for the extended basic "Just because." This is despite my father's
protestations that "My boy won't own a computer thingy until he learns to
do it on paper." [[ At that time, he *still* thought that the 2600 had tape
cartridges... ;-) ]] That's why I bought it 2 days after he left town. ;-)
My father *ordered* me to give it back (and he was a Marine...) until I
turned it on and asked him to show me how to have it do it's homework for
him. I eventually sold that system to a friend of mine, and bought a CoCo3;
which I still own and am ready to upgrade, thanks to Mark Marlette &
Company. ;-)
My local high school got rid of the cardreader just before I was able to
get into computer class (grade 10) --> they had an IBM Series I when I had
computer class at grade 11 where I self-taught myself COBOL... My teacher
was *useless* and I was supposed to be his "protege" until I could
outprogram him - which took about 8 weeks. I finished the first year of
education before the 1/2 year break, and spent the rest of the year
self-teaching myself BASIC and Pascal.
By my grade 12 year, I was the #2 programmer in the school (including all
the teachers.)
... Jump to present: I'm teaching myself 8085 assembly on my Tandy Model
100's; a *big* change from the 6809 assembly I've known for 20 years...
[[ An aside... ]]
Ethan -- it seems so far you're the closest in age to me as I've seen
professed on this list, and I may very well be at this year's Hamfest again
this year! If I'm not mistaken, you're no longer on the bottom of the
planet, eh? Beers? In Person, no less? ;^> ???
IMHO, NEA, and TMI;
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | A new truth in advertising slogan
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy...
zmerch_at_30below.com | ...in oxymoron!"
Received on Sat Feb 26 2005 - 20:02:44 GMT