When I was 10 years old, my family bought our first computer, an Apple IIe. Obviously, it was very old with limited technology, even for its time. To put a little perspective on the time frame, Packard Bell was the Dell of that time period.

After figuring out how to code in [Applesoft] Basic (at least enough to do some simple scrolling animations), my parents decided to purchase something beyond command-line.

Next on the list came a Packard Bell computer. I have no idea what the specs were. The reason why is because I destroyed it that quickly! I remember it ran Windows 95. I would stay up all night playing with different color schemes, listening to music, and calling my friends via mic and headphones.

Now, as I mentioned before, I destroyed this computer rather quickly. You see, I really loved MS Paint. I would paint and paint and paint. Well, I would also save and save and save. Eventually, the little hard drive (2GB) just ran out of space. My solution to this problem was to find files on the computer that I didn't use and delete them to free up space.

Do you see where this is going yet?

I found this folder called "System" and I thought, "Man, that's a lot of files in there! I bet that would free up some space!" Well, I was right. It freed up a ton of space. After saving my little crappy piece of artwork, I went to bed. The next day I turned the computer on and...something happened. Actually, nothing happened. Thus, the end of the Packard Bell. I suppose we could have just formatted and reinstalled but we were a bit behind the times and didn't know about any of that, plus the computer sucked anyways.

When I was 15 years old, our family got a new computer. Technology, the internet, email, all of that was full-force. Considering this, we got a 400mHz Hewlett-Packard Pavilion. The story behind this little guy was someone had purchased it, turned it on, didn't like it, then returned it. We thought $300 off the total price was pretty nice for a brand new computer that had simply been turned on, then off.

So, off we go with a new HP. I told my mom, LITERALLY during it's first boot, "Well, at least this one will start up." We watched a Windows logo appear (Windows 98 SE), then a bright blue screen that said something about a fatal exception. Holy crap. I'm sure Mom was thrilled she didn't buy the warranty. These blue screen continued throughout the life of this computer. In the end, it was a problem with the integrated video.

Continuing on, this computer is where I began my interest in everything I do now. During the few years we suffered with this computer, I started listening to a rock band by the name of Tool. Tool was different than the other rock I listened to. It was formulated with a mixture of really intense time signature changes, electronic drum components on some songs, and very thought-out, emotional lyrics. Well, this influence led me to create my very first website. It was called "The Best TOOL Multimedia Site On The Web". No freaking joke. I became friends with a couple fellow TOOL fans that were also webmasters and they got me going.

Due to the work involved in creating a unique website, I needed a way to create some graphics and Paint just wouldn't do it anymore. Photoshop v5.0 came into my life. I downloaded it from a friend. On my dial-up, it took almost exactly 24 hours to complete the download. My site eventually grew to be one of the most popular TOOL websites on the internet. In it's hayday, it was known by the name Desensitized and was located at desense.com and averaged in between 125-150 unique hits per day.

The problem with working on my website on this computer was that the computer was constantly crashing. It would stay up for about 30 minutes, blue screen, require a hard reboot. I eventually had to give up the website and move on to more financially productive jobs. I started working at a ISP located in a nearby town. Here, I was the webmaster and one of about 4 technicians that would go to customer homes and configure their computers up to work with our dial-up connection.

The lead programmer was incredibly fluent in PHP. His OS of choice was Linux and he absolutely hated anything GUI. He taught me how to code in PHP. We also took that terrible HP and installed Red Hat Linux on it to see if maybe it was the OS that was the source of the problems. It wasn't.

I didn't really care. We had recently purchased a 750mHz Gateway computer. New. Fresh of the line. Unused. It worked great. Unfortunetly, my job at this ISP didn't work out as great. I quit...but left with a great knowledge that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. The Gateway lasted until I was 20. As a matter of fact, it was running so great, I didn't even upgrade to XP until 2003 in fear that XP would ruin its flawless track record. It had something special that made it just screaming fast. I wish I still had the little guy.

The reason I don't have it is because I did a job for a friend and he paid for my replacement: a 3gHz Pentium 4 with H/T, 1GB ram, DVD read/write, and a gorgeous case. I still own this computer today. It still has that same processor, now has 3GB of RAM, a GeForce 6800 video card (thanks Mike), and is attached to a 21" TFT Flatscreen with 5 inputs: Composite, component, VGA, DVI, and S-Video. It also has PIP and pivot.

Let me "switch" gears for a minute here. Back in the days of my Gateway, I was going to college working toward my Graphic Design degree. We had a brief class on Macintosh computers. They ran OS 9.2 and were ugly, slow, and ugly some more. One of my co-workers had a G3 iBook with OS X 10.3.9 on it. It was beautiful. She said she was buying a new PowerBook and said she wanted to sell the iBook. I had to have it.

My first Apple purchase. It was a great laptop. It has had 2 kernel panics in it's entire lifetime. Nowadays, it spends it's time hanging out with my wife. She tends to be a bit less dependant on it than I was.

Anyways, after accepting my current job, we all used Macs to build the newspaper ads. The Macs we used all ran OS 9.2. We finally got a killer upgrade. Brand new Dual-processor G5's with 1GB RAM. Attached to them are 21" Apple Cinema Displays. These guys run OS 10.4.11.

I was promoted to the IT department at work and was supplied with a G4 PowerBook with 1GB RAM.

I currently have OS X 10.5 (Leopard) installed and it works great. As a matter of fact, my Macs work so great, I have completely ridded my house of Windows (with the exception to one computer my son will be using just so he'll know how).

One last little hit on Windows. Several of their most loyal followers have abandoned their most recent attempt at making a secure and stable operating system, Vista. In fact, one of the most notable was one of their own developers, Chris Parillo (50 reasons to switch). Microsoft even said themselves that Vista was a complete failure.

This history wouldn't be complete without mentioning that I have installed and used several different Linux distros including Red Hat, Slackware, Mandrake, and my favorite, Ubuntu. I'm not a huge fan, though.

So that's where I stand today. I am all Apple. I used to try and think of anything relevant that happened in 1984, the year of my birth. Soon after my switch to Macs, I found out that the Macintosh was introduced just days after my birthday in 1984. I think that's relevant enough.

As I said, Macs are a great computer. I have spent all that free time at work learning more about my other two areas of interest: Web Design/Develpoment and Graphic Design. The knowledge required to run and manage this very website was done while at work. I relearned PHP and MySQL, which this site heavily relies upon. I'm also utilizing HTML and CSS.

On the Graphic front, I have done a few jobs here and there. I have been awarded 7 times by the Arkansas Press Associate for my work. I hope my work with graphics continues on into the future as well.

Software development on Macs has really just begun for me. I've created a few nice little utilities like SyncIt (SyncIt Info Page). We'll wait to see where that path might take me.

On a final note, one think I was told while learning these languages was "He who asks might be a fool for 5 minutes, but he who never asks will be a fool for life."



There are no pictures associated with this post.