WHOA. Are we the same person? Let's see, Apple II computer? Check. Fifth grade in 1982? Check. "Geek Kid" class? Check!Originally Posted by smork
Our school first got a computer when I was in the 5th grade, a single Apple II computer (with the green monochrome monitor and no sound except for the weird Apple beeps and boops from the keyboard itself) in the media center (i.e. library). I don't think anyone ever ever got to use it, at least I didn't. Just once, in my gifted student class, we got to look at a graphics display program; I remember that you'd press a letter and the display would change, each letter did something different. One letter activated a face that beeped and booped at you. But I never ever got to use it for real, I never played Oregon Trail, what have you. It's just a very obscure memory with no meaning or relation to my childhood, not even a footnote.
The very next time I got to use a computer at school was 11th and 12th grade when I took some BASIC computer programming classes. This would be 1988, 1989. The high school lab had about 8 or 9 Apple II's, all except one had the green monochrome monitors. One actually had color and we always fought to sit there. I wrote some pretty cool programs in class, including one called "The Heimlich Maneuver" (Quick! Press 'H' to perform the Heimlich Maneuver!). Good times.
My first two years at college (1989-91) I lived in a dorm room; there weren't computers in every room back then. There was one centralized computer lab on campus with a handful of computers. I actually brought my Commodore 64 from home and had in my dorm room, which I used exclusively for gaming and composing music. When I typed papers, I used an ELECTRIC TYPEWRITER. Yeah. Suck it, technology!
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