What's your geek / tech background?

[HalationEffect]

I've often found myself curious (in idle moments) about how people arrived at their current state of geekiness. Not necessarily in great detail, but in broad strokes.

Here's my potted tech history (or 'geek resumé') :

• Pre-teens - discovered a love of sci-fi and comic books.
• 13th birthday - got my first home computer (Sinclair ZX81). Learned Sinclair BASIC, dabbled with Z80 assembly language.
• Age 16 - left school, but instead of going to a regular college, got paid to study avionics by the Ministry of Defence (Air). No student loans for me!
• Age 18 - completed my avionics studies; employed by MOD (Air) as a TTO (Telecommunications Technical Officer). Despite the job title and the fact that I worked on an RAF base, it was a civilian position.
• Age 22 - wanted to get into IT; took a programming course... in COBOL, of all languages, lol.
• Age 23 - got my first real PC: cobbled together from assorted parts that were going to be thrown away, it was a 20MHz 286 with 640K RAM, a 20MB 5.25" half height MFM hard drive, a 5.25" floppy drive, Hercules graphics (glorious monochrome!), and a 14" green screen monitor. Installed MS-DOS 3.2 on it.
• Early 20's - worked at a Texas Instruments wafer fab, in the Power Dept., working on transient surge suppressor ICs. Upgraded PC to a 386SX-25.
• Mid 20's - got interested in Linux, started dual-booting my 486DX-33 PC with Slackware (2.something, iirc) & MS-DOS 6 / Win 3.1. Upgraded PC to a 486DX2-66, and added a VLB Trident graphics card with 1MB VRAM(!), and a VLB IDE controller with 2MB cache.
• Mid 20's to early 30's - worked for the UK distribution arm of PC Chips in the Tech Dept. Several PC upgrades: Pentium-133, Pentium-200MMX, Celeron-300A, Pentium3-500.
• Early to mid-30's - Product Manager for a startup which was essentially a UK franchise of Foxconn. Upgraded to an AthlonXP 2100+ system with 1GB RAM, which I only got around to replacing this year! (Although it did have several component and peripheral upgrades over its lifetime)
• Mid 30's - after using Mandrake for a couple of years, discovered Kubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger). Loved it, and have stayed with Kubuntu since then.

Then in my mid 30's (almost 10 years ago) steadily worsening health issues cut my career short, but not my love of all things geeky

• Mid to late 30's - health issues eased up for a couple of years; worked tech support for BT Internet until health worsened again.
• Earlier this year - new PC: Sandybridge Pentium dual-core G840, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 750GB HDD.

That pretty much brings my story up to date. Anyone else care to share?

[oshunluvr]

Ok, why not:

• High school in 1977 - programmed an IBM 360 with ForTran IV with Watfiv using punch cards for Computer Science Class (my high school was only one in the district to offer it).
• College - started studing "Computer Systems Analysis and Design." Programed in COBOL, Assembler, RPG II and basic on PC's and mainframes in school. At home bought first computer - Timex Sinclair 1000.
• Quit college and got a real job and a real computer - bought an Apple IIc system ($1295 in 1984 dollars!). My job was not a computer job, but I kept a personal interest - mostly games and "cracking."
• Sold software on the side for awhile, but it wasn't really profitable for the time spent doing it.
• Had a small side business for awhile building and repairing PC's - Got too much business so quit it.
• Started using OS/2 2.0 in 1992 - the first 32 bit OS in public use. Kept with it until IBM stopped issuing updates (not long after Warp was released).
• Discovered linux after trying Windows again (it sucked then and still does IMO). Bought Mandrake 6.1 on 3.5" floppies.
• Used Win98/Xp off and on while I learned more and more about linux. You really had to work at it back then, so I kept both on a machine. I had to manually swap hard drives to dual boot!
• Dumped Windows for good circa 2001. Converted my wife to linux a year later.
• I bought Mandrake upgrades until 2005 or so. PCLinuxOS was my first gratis linux distro. Tried a few others with mixed success.
• Started Kbuntu at 9.04 and now most of us use Kubuntu.
• Retired from job and took 18 months off. Now working as System Administrator in a simulation lab.
• I'm mostly a hardware geek, but love tinkering with networks and seeing how well I can tune my linux systems.

that about covers it...

[SteveRiley]

* Invented Abacagol, a programming language for abacuses.

* Labored in obscurity ever since.

[Qqmike]

well, h*, I fell for it ...
!
:-)

[Frank616]

No formal training in computers. Entirely self-taught

In my 30's I bought a Radio Shack PC-2 in 1980 (I think) and a book on how to program it in BASIC when I missed an appointment and realized I needed a PDA long before PDA's were around. I still have the upgraded Sharp PC-1500 on which the PC-2 was based, though I haven't fired it up in years.

About 1985 I bought a Radio Shack 4P, loaded CP/M, and learned how to program in Turbo Pascal by writing a custom form-fill program that I needed, and which was not available shrink-wrapped. I like Pascal.

About 1990 I bought a 286 beige box PC and switched to DOS and Turbo Pascal, rewriting the above program. I dabbled in 'C' and wrote a few utilities in Turbo C, but nothing more. C is tough.

About 1991 I started porting my program to Delphi for Windows, but then our daughter arrived. I switched careers and started my own small business in the automotive industry. My program never got ported. OOP hurts my head. The project was abandoned.

About 1995 the Windows EULA got too onerous for me, so I started to switch to Linux as I could run WordPerfect on that (which I had been using since the days of DOS). I ran my business on WordPerfect and its tables feature, first on Win95, then for a while on Win98, then on Linux using Win4Lin. I haven't used Windows since Win98. Took me several years to get to that point of 100% Linux usage, however.

After switching to WordPerfect on Linux, it became evident that it was a dead end. I wanted to stay with Linux, so I dumped WordPerfect and switched to OO, and now LO. I'm still in the automotive industry, and now running my business on a custom Calc spreadsheet using array math. However, I'm hoping to retire soon. Anyone want to buy a business?

Computers have always been a hobby for me, with the exception of the limited practical use that my other life has required me to learn. I haven't programmed from scratch in over 20 years as office suites with macro languages now do all I need. I really don't have any geek credits. However, I enjoy learning.

[ScottyK]

1979 - After spending weeks in his basement workshop, my dad calls the family together in the kitchen. He proudly shows what he built, a Heathkit H89 computer. My younger brother could care less, but i (almost 9 years old) was fascinated. Spent a few years using that computer in all of it's green-screen glory. taught myself all about BBS, 300 baud modems, and by 12 years old was dialing BBS in the Denver area. Amazing that I had no firewall or "protect the children!" software, but still came out all right.

1983 - Saw the movie "Wargames". Wanted to be Matthew Broderick.
1984 - middle school starts issuing progress reports via a computer. Became first person in school history to forge progress reports using a computer (H89!) from home.
Late 80's - High school gets Apple II computers. Beg Dad for an Apple at home, but he refuses. He says IBM is the future, and I need to learn DOS. I curse the moon and wept bitterly, but he was right. Proudly carry my box of disks with me everywhere I went at school. Spent many lunch periods in the computer lab.
1989 - Head off to a small college in Minneapolis. Out of 500 students, I'm the only student with his own computer (IBM XT Clone). Used modem (forget the speed) to dial into Minneapolis BBS. Made a few $$$ letting students use my computer to type their term papers. Attractive female students got to use it for free. This computer has my first hard drive (20 MBs). What am I going to do with all of that space?
1993 - XT computer is showing it's age, so I save up tips from Pizza delivery job and buy a screaming fast 486SX/25 computer. That summer I discover the wonderful game called "Civilization".
1996 - Buy first ever 1GB hard drive. What am I ever going to do with all of that space?
1997 - 486 is getting dated, even after swapping out the CPU with a 66 Mhz. Co-worker from work helps me build my first system. A screaming Pentium 200!
1999 - The Air Force wants to send me to Wichita Falls, Texas to learn something called UNIX. Loved the course, and the instructor is thrilled with my great interest in UNIX. He introduces me to Linux (Red Hat). Computer at home sucks, but I vow someday to run it. This turns out to be the only formal computer class I ever take.
2000 - First DVD Burner. Only cost me $200. Pay it off in two weeks charging people $5 a disc to burn the music they download from Napster to CD for them.
2001-2005 Various computer upgrades. Install VMware for first time, and finally get to play around with Linux. Still too much of a windows grunt to make the switch full time.
2006 - Bought first 1TB drive. What am I going to do with all of that space?
2010 - Take the plunge, download and install Kubuntu 10.04 and go for the dual boot option.
2012 (current) New MB/CPU and 8 GB Ram system build in progress

I still dual boot, but the windows side is only for games now. I do all of my work on the Kubuntu side. Computers are still just a hobby, and I love to tinker around when I get the time.

[Qqmike]

HS math & science major. College B.S. and M.S. pure math, PhD ops research/probability. Along the way: IBM 360 and punched cards, CDC 6600, Pascal, Fortran IV, LISP, simulation languages, BASIC. 1980-ish, my first PC--IBM, WordPerfect, DOS. Barfly days, early 1990's, a good buddy at the bar (burned-out AT&T tech) tells me to learn Unix, he insists it's The Way. I have no idea what he's talking about and I buy another round of drinks. 2005: Linux, Kubuntu 6.06; learned (from books) to build home PC's; somehow got hooked on GRUB. No formal computer courses. So what is it? Logic, baby: the common thread for most of us. The kick of tweaking the logic to make things go. And that probably starts at age 5, before you take any courses, in any geeky field. A logician in drag.

[woodsmoke]

Elementary school, we had no science, but when I was supposed to be napping on the floor I snuck a little book made by the Field Museum and would look at it surreptitiously later the teacher gave it to me and I still have it, published 1932.

Mother bought me a “detective kit” which was basically worthless, but I was in inspired.

My folks built their own house, along with craftsman and tradesmen neighbors, I watched them draw up their own architectural drawings. When we had to sell it because my mother was hospitialized , the people still own it in original condition except for counter tops, and it is considered a “classic” in the town, because of that my first wife and I built our own house, during the Carter energy crisis and we sold it for twice what we paid for it.

Jr and Sr. high inhaled all of the “hard science fiction available.” Read Bacon's Novum Organum. I also was friends with a fellow who graduated two years before me, the high school physics and advanced math teacher kid, he was in MIT's “AI” lab, and now programs black boxes, but he came back to school with an “FBI” brief case that had a phone modem in it, rewired the only line coming into the school and printed out about twenty feet of “adding machine” tape with pi decimals, using the mainframe at MIT.

I kept my piece of it for decades, now lost, the rest of the class were semi-jocks and pitched the paper, and headed for the locker room to butt heads for football.

But, I knew then and there that “things had changed”, and I wanted to be involved.

The teacher later got me into a "teacher's training class" for "the SETs method" of teaching algebra which a few years later became the "new math" and "modern algebra".

Also during high school I discovered, in the public library, a left over "American Nazi Party" book, with a yellow cloth cover and red title, "Genetics". And I realized, even then, that the stuff was just plain wrong, wrong, wrong, and besides, it was racist, with a lot of stuff saying that Blacks, "homosexuals" and Jews were inferiour people.

During high school, I also read Bertrand Russel's Human Society in Ethics and Politics, while I was a "wrangler" for a rodeo "Brahma Bull" herd and compared it to people like the early writings of U.S. thinkers and basically decided that "communism" "socialism" and "liberalism" was basically a bunch of self contradictions that were all about being "different" from ANYthing that had been "dominant" previously. Like capitalism and Christianity.

( BTW I also read Mein Kampf and the Communsit Manifesto) and again, it was not hard to see the obvious self contradictions in BOTH books, having been trained in "debate" during my sophmore year, but also the 7th grade english teacher taught us to look at readings "analytically", (one can divide our class into two neat halves, the people who stayed with her through 9th grade and the other half who "FLED TO THE EASY TEACHER". They are still in that sad, tired, town, drinking the silver bullet and living their lives through the mighty mite football, and the rest of us who "got on with the rest of our lives".

I also found out that I could handle "animals" and later was told that "You can handle horses, and they are a lot bigger than a kid so you ought to be a good teacher, because it is all about getting kids to believe that they can understand something". (or something like that).

In college I majored in biology minored in chemistry and got a teaching cert, but worked as an electrician for a year. I read Calculus Made Easy and “saw the light”.

A few of us met with the guy that developed the theory that "serial murderers" are men with an extra Y chromosome, still don't know if that is correct or not, and also met and visited with W. Clement Stone.

The summer of my junior year, after having taken physics, I traveled across the country, driving long distances for first time, with my mother, to visit some inlaws and experienced “angular momentum” physically, when I drove the car, for the first time, in a clover leaf.

In the navy I went to Radarman School and since I was in college, was offered a year to rewrite the curriculum with a chief and jumped at it, and got to go the the U of Ill various campuses and saw Buckminster Fuller's early work on “world gaming' but didn't really understand what I was seeing, but did later, and I still teach about him today in biology and physics.

I had his “dymaxion air-ocean -sky map” map(one time) that was painted on a huge thirty by twenty foot canvas at the little school whereat I taught most of my life.

That was when he was retired, it was representatives that brought it down.

In the Navy I “fed data” to “keypunch operators” in San Diego, and was in the same room with the Eniac at the Naval Undersea Center for the “ROPEVALS” that my destroyer participated in, and at the summary sessions I saw an “Admiral” being projected twenty feet tall on a screen about the exercise, and again.

Knew right then and there that “education” was going to change forever.

I also watched a man that was....bug infested, long haired, had not taken a bath in two months have admirals shaking in their boots when he had to come in to repair the card feeder, for Eniac and realized.....

that “power” was shifting to a knowledge based society.

During that time I also read Marshall McLuhan's books which reinforced the belief.

Helped a navy buddy build a Tandy Television, mainly handing him resistors, but since I had extensive experience soldering was able to help with that.

Decades later, I self taught myself how to wire some simple LSI circuitry and sold a lot of electronic “shop” kits world wide for a few years, and was in a massive car wreck and had to sell the business.

My first wife bought me, and the kids, a Timex Sinclair 100 for Christmas, I did some basic programming but my oldest boy really took to it and is now a major computer programmer who goes around “putting out fires” as it were.

We got two Commodore 64s and everybody got involved with them.

Watched TRON and a couple of other computer oriented films and was intrigued with them.

Our middle boy goes into Astronomy and I am later invited to the state's land grant college (where he went) to work in physics, operated STM, NMR, and a variety of other apparatus, took images of many things, including DNA.

The same boy then, later, introduced me to Linux, but it was not “mature” enough for my needs, however, within a short while it became so.

I am here because of him and owe him greatly for opening my eyes, which were closed at first, to Linux.

Read Stephen Levy's “Hackers”.

A friend introduced me to assembling computers and I donated in excess of a hundred and fifty with a variety of Linux OS s on them, mainly Xandros.

Moved through several distros, irritating a lot of people along the way!

Read Cathedral and Bazaar and donated a copy to an online friend.

Donated an original HTC android phone for Kubu to be installed on it.

I am finally Windblows free ( have to run a crossword program and a test generator in WINE), this week, as announced in another thread.

I probably left some stuff out but the above is the broad outline.

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

* Invented Abacagol, a programming language for abacuses.

* Labored in obscurity ever since.

So YOUR the one I need to file a bug report with!

Those punched beads don't have symmetrical holes, and they are throwing my programs out of kilter. The slightest vibration and I get the value of 100,000 when it should be 65,535!

[Qqmike]

My abacus is broke.

[NickStone]

My abacus is broke.

I believe Abacagol 2.0 is available

[SteveRiley]

I believe Abacagol 2.0 is available

It's a badly coded fork. Stay away.

And Jerry, obviously you compiled yours with the wrong optimization flags, and on the wrong processor architecture. There are no numbers greater than 65535.

[dibl]

Early 1960s -- built balsa and tissue rubberband-powered model airplanes
1968 -- rebuilt my Dad's 1957 Dodge pickup truck's engine, including replacement of pistons, rings, and crank bearings
1969 -- high school senior science project -- built a maze of 1/4 inch plywood, trained one of a pair of white mice to navigate the maze and get the cheese -- demonstrated the difference and collected my "A"
1972 -- in college, took CS-101 (COBOL). Got bored with the homework, figured out how to use COBOL to determine the correct paraboloid dimensions for my hand-ground 8" telescope mirror. Used the Ohio State U's IBM 370 computer and printer to print the needed values.
1975 -- bought a Commodore handheld calculator with LED display
1977 (I think) -- bought the Air Force their first "Word Processing Center" -- wooo hooo -- how cutting edge it was! :-)
1982 -- bought my Commodore 64 -- had some fun with that one!
1984 -- got my hands on an IBM PC (it belonged to the Air Force -- I cannot say what I did to it ....)
1987 -- bought a Northgate PC-AT compatible, 12MHz, for $2000+ (not a 40MB hdd, but a 60MB using RLL encoding!]
1992 -- bought an Advance Logic Research (ALR) 486-33Mhz box, for $2000+
1998 -- bought a Gateway P2, 133Mhz box, for $2000+ (it got upgraded several times)
2004 -- built a AMD system -- maybe it was 1GB of RAM, I don't remember the CPU speed
2005 -- built an Intel Pentium D system, eventually installed Kubuntu 6.06 on it
2006 -- built an Intel Core 2 Extreme (6800) system, installed Kubuntu on it
2010 -- built my present Intel Core i7-950 system

The path to geekdom ....

[SteveRiley]

1972 -- in college, took CS-101 (COBOL). Got bored with the homework, figured out how to use COBOL to determine the correct paraboloid dimensions for my hand-ground 8" telescope mirror. Used the Ohio State U's IBM 370 computer and printer to print the needed values.

That same 370 was there 14 years later -- I did my COBOL homework on it! (Proably sitting in the same room you did in Dreese Lab.)

[dibl]

That same 370 was there 14 years later -- I did my COBOL homework on it! (Proably sitting in the same room you did in Dreese Lab.)

Interesting! As I recall, the printer (loaded with "green stripe") was about 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall, and had a plexiglass cover to semi-dampen the roar that it made while spitting the green stripe out on the floor.

Did you still have to keypunch IBM cards to run it, or did they have a better input system by then?