My Short History with Computers

Apparently there has been a new trend in blogging about your personal experience with computers. Not being one to miss out and not jump on the bandwagon, of course I have to do it as well. Alissa sent me an email about it and a link to her brother's history with computers. The blog took a technical spin on the whole deal, but what really inspired me was the comment she left behind as a comment. Just look for the long comment written by Alissa and you will see how vastly different two peoples history with computers can be even though both of their experiences overlapped at one point early on.

So, what about me? Well, some might think that my experience with computers goes back a long ways, but I never had my own PC until the end of high school. Before hand I had the typical computer experience. I spent my years in elementary school playing Number Munchers and, my personal favorite, Oregon Trail. I mean, what is better than watching your friends get Cholera after you decided to ford the river? And who doesn't want to shoot and kill 300 lbs of buffalo when you know you only carry a small amount of that? Who cares, be wasteful, it is the pioneering way!

After elementary school my contact with computers was pretty minimal except for typing up school papers. This continued throughout high school. I did not have much interest in getting into computers because at the them I would have rathered gone out with Will to go skateboarding. My brother showed me a little bit of HTML and I dabbled with that here and there in high school, but not much until later in high school. During this period my brother spent a quite a bit of time on the computer playing games. I never got too interested in them, however. There was even a point when he stayed online long enough to get a letter from our ISP telling him to get offline (eventhough our plan had unlimited connection time).

Before college I was able to get my own computer all to myself. I didn't have to worry about trying to split computer time with Eric. This was nice because I really started to get into learning more about developing websites. I also wanted to start learning more about programming since at that time I had decided I wanted to major in computer science. I felt like I was already behind.

Throughout the first couple years in college I spent my time on a windows computer. I was programming with C++ and Java. I also spent time doing web development on linux servers at school. This was for various personal projects and other job related ones. I started to get more and more interested in Linux, but I neither had the time or energy to put together a linux box for myself at home. Luckily my brother had more interest in this sort of thing, so he did for himself. Thus, I was able to continue playing with Linux in my spare time. Despite this, I didn't feel an alliance to either operating system, but my love for non windows systems started to grow.

In my junior year of college I decided it was about time to finally purchase my own computer. Since the beginning I had been using hand me down parts and pieces from his old computers. I think this was good for him because if he bought new parts it would actually help both of us. I don't know if he used that as an excuse to buy new parts, but I was happy that I could get new upgrades to my computer, so I didn't complain. Anyways, back to the purchase. I knew I wanted to get a laptop. That pretty much threw linux out as a contender. The last thing I wanted from a laptop was hassle in getting it running. I did not like very many of the PC laptops on the market at the time and Apple was sort of turning up their advertising campaign, so I decided to get a powerbook laptop. I have been happy with the choice ever since.

There were a couple deciding factors in the decision. I wanted something small and lightweight. Also I liked the BSD subsystem available on OS X. This meant I could come close to having my linux system, but have all the nicieties of an OS like OS X or Windows. Having a BSD subsystem meant I could load up all the software running on a webserver I used at work on my laptop and then it was a piece of cake to do local development for remote jobs. For demos and getaways I could just update my code from the repository and go. Also, being a BSD subsystem I immediately had access to all sorts of free programs.

Recently I travelled to China and I am now going between Seattle and Southern California. Not having a laptop for the last six months would have been horrible. Throughout most of my travels I carried my laptop with me where ever I went. Jesse can back this up for the time I was in Japan. One morning in Tokyo I was able to save my friends photos from her memory cards because I could put her photos on my laptop. Thanks iPhoto! My laptop helped me a great deal while I was in China. Even though Sandra let me borrow her memory card, which was quite big, I still would run out of memory. Having my laptop allowed me to transfer photos on a daily basis. Then I was free to take as many pictures as I wanted. At this point I am not preaching about how great Macs are, just how nice having a laptop is. My friend James once told I would never go back to a desktop after having a laptop .... I think he is right.

So, nowadays I still tap away at the keys on my powerbook laptop. I spend most of my time using the computer to chat online and manage my photos. I recommend an Apple to anyone who needs to do that. And if they want to write client server database applications for MySQL, then they can do that too. I am happy with it now, but there are some shortcomings, which are not related to OS X, but the fact that other companies have not ported or will not port their software to Linux. At work I use XSI every day. I think this is a great piace of 3D modeling software, but it has not been ported to XSI. For many technical and political issues within the industry, it probably won't be ported either. So now I am in a dilemma. I need to decide how willing I am too purchase this software (and hardware) in case I want to work with it in the future as as serious career. On top of that I would also like to get into writing mental ray and renderman shaders. I am not familiar with platform support for render man, but mental ray does come into an OS X version, but even if I get it then I won't have XSI. Should I get PC versions and sacrifice being able to work on my laptop? Do I get a Linux laptop and just get Linux versions of the software. It is a hard decision to make.

Well, in a nut shell, that is my history with computers. Love it or hate it, it is only going to get longer. I only hope there is more money and fame along the way. I think that ship has sailed already.