In Which I Write An Extremely Unreliable History

My memory is notoriously poor for things in the real world. So, I cannot tell you exactly what kind of computer I first used. I know it was an Apple Macintosh, probably a PowerMac. What I remember best about it, however, is the black and white monitor. I whiled away many a happy hour of my very early childhood toying with a program called KidPix, making large, multi-shaded blobs of grey. The thing about KidPix, of course, is that all those effects that just made shades of grey on our monitor were meant to be eye-smarting rainbows. So the day my father brought a color monitor home from the office (he worked as a systems administrator at Duke) was quite a revelation. For a long time KidPix, Glider (a game involving a paper airplane), and Ingmar (a skiing game) were my primary amusements on the computer. There were probably a couple of others- I seem to recall something having to do with air hockey- but a computer was basically a toy.

At some point, we acquired a new computer, this time a beige PowerMac.











It came with a new monitor, which probably why I remember at all. It was on this machine that I was to write such literary greats as "Quartz" and "The Capybara". Suddenly it wasn't just a toy- it was a toy I could pretend to do my homework on! We acquired a few more games to keep me from accruing hideous library fines- Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego, and Starship Titanic. At this point, I was aware of the internet, although we didn't yet have access at home. My father had introduced me to it on one of many visits to his office in a desperate effort to keep me quiet and occupied. At the time it all seemed rather silly and complicated to me- all it seemed to do was let you talk to strangers, which I wasn't too keen on, or look at pictures of people's children and pets, which I could do just by wandering around the building. I went back to checking out as many books as the library would let me.
In desperation my parents moved out into the county. In fact, this probably had something to do with the number of car crashes that occurred at the intersection in front of our house, but that's neither here nor there. The really important part is that, at the age of 9 or 10, my father purchased a modem and a dialup internet connection.
Looking back, it was painfully slow, and I spent hardly any time online at first. I learned about email, and after a brief struggle with the idea of not having to buy stamps or in any way pay postage, thought it very interesting in a nonfunctional sort of way. After all, who could I email but my parents? My father introduced me to a web directory for kids called Yahooligans, which I decided was actually useful, because it allowed my to access things of actual interest on the web- games, the websites of my favorite authors, and an academic reference at my fingertips. That all went very well and smoothly for a while, and I was beginning to see that the internet might not be as silly as I initially thought. I even met a few people I could email back and forth with.
Then came a new computer- an iMac G4.

This was a big step up. I was astonished by the speed and the size of the hard drive, and by the idea of having my own private workspace. And finally, finally, I was allowed to install AIM. It was a revolution in my computer usage. My parents never got the chance to complain about my being on the phone all the time. They had to go straight to prying my away from the keyboard with a crowbar. A year or so later, I gave in and got a Livejournal, which I began abusing egregiously. It was somewhere in this period of time where my computer usage shifted its emphasis from amusement to communication.
These days, I've finally diversified. I still play games- in fact, I'm a point-and-click junkie, and turn to Lazylaces for my daily fix. My Livejournal friends page is my homepage, and Fire (my AIM client) is always running, even though I haven't taken down my away message in ages. But I also use the 'net to find recipes, quotes, and lyrics. I windowshop and do leisure research on my various pet topics. I keep huge catalogs of photos that I and my friends have taken, and download music, books, and the occasional movie or television show. I even use it for schoolwork sometimes. All of this I do on a 1 year old iMac G5, which will never be as cute as the G4.