i remember the first time i was fascinated by computers was some 20 years ago. o-mi-gosh! did i just type out 20? shit. that sounds like sooooo long ago and makes me sound old even if i don't feel old. for crying out loud i'm only 31...32 at the end of december. christ. anyway, so that would make me a good little 11-year old or in other words, a 6th grader some 20 years ago.

so the story starts with me as a 6th grader with a teacher named mr. brown, who was like THE cool teacher of the decade. HE started our very first computer club and like the little geeky side of me, i was instantly attracted to the idea of a computer club.

they were classic macs from what i can remember. tiny little screens, though at the time, it looked big to me. i remember they booted up awfully slow. other than that, i can't say i remember much. i think over time, i lost my fascination for computers because all i can remember after was nothing that dealt with computers.

come 8th grade, i remember getting really excited about learning how to type. yup, we had a typing class. i learned how to type old-school way....that is on a manual typewriter.

typewriters are cool. in fact, i think i'd like to hunt down a cute, old way in some thrift store some time in the future. oso and i saw a bunch of them when we had a day trip up in santa barbara a while back. i love the nostalgic look of typewriters.

so the typewriter stage came and went as did he computer club. it wasn't until probably mid high school when i became fascinated with the word processor. remember those? hell yea! i remember how i loved that i could save what i typed on a floppy and not have to retype the whole thing. i thought that was way cool. that word processor served me well during my first few years at a 4 year university where i was on the 8 yr program. ha!

then sometime in my first year of higher education, i remember roaming downstairs in the basement of one of the buildings where they had computers. i would say it was the library, but it wasn't at the time. they had mostly ibms but there were also about 20 macs. people would usually have to sign up on a waiting list to use a computer. at that time, i think this was when email was getting big. or, perhaps it was just when i started discovering what email was. it was around 1991. can anyone confirm this? anyway, email at the time was interesting....kinda neat, but a little scary since computers at the time seemed a bit "scary" to me. i was always asking the tech peeps how to do what.

it wasn't until about another year later that i started to become more fascinated with the whole email and IM deal. that was around the time my first college sweetheart got his own personal computer...a pc. i remember getting mad at him for chatting with girls even if they were older, married and had kids. i remember he even exchanged addresses with one of the married ones so she could send him stuff in the mail and she did. i remember getting jealous over it.

anyway, i went off track. sooo, i was not very good on the computer back then. it wasn't until i switched to graphic design and got my own computer that i slowly became an expert without knowing it.

after my 8 yrs of formal education was over, i moved on out to los angeles where i really became alarmingly fascinated with the world wide web or internet world after a boy i had a major crush somehow introduced me to it. ok, i wouldn't say he introduced me to it, but he was sort of a catalyst and i must also give him credit for introducing me to the world of weblogging and online diaries/journals. because of my huge crush on him and him eventually becoming some major web celebrity, i became addicted to this world and wanted to learn all i could about it.

it took a while for me to understand how html works. it's fascinating and i have love that we can connect with people like this.

looking back, i have to admit, i've come a long way and here i am typing on a wonderful little 15" PowerBook G4 with a desktop G4 near by. who would've thought i'd end up working with computers every single day and for that matter as a living? could that little fascination for computers back in 6th grade have been a foreshadowing of my future career?

sometimes, it amazes me when i end up helping people at work who barely understand how computers work, whether it's a mac or pc. some people literally do not know how to even shut down an application.

next time i'll have to remember about writing something on pagers.