My Computer Hardware and Software Experiences

Free Software (Open Source)

I'm a huge fan of the Free Software Movement, though I don't always live up to its highest ideals. For better or worse, I'm a pragmatist when it comes to choosing software to use. But I'm a huge believer in sharing my own work and enjoy it immensely.

Programming languages

Languages I'm very or somewht proficient in
- Perl
  - My native programming tongue
- PHP
- Raku
- Javascript
- Vimscript
- SQL
Other langauges, in order of proficiency, I know and could (probably) do something useful with
- Bash/zsh
- C
Languages I've at least explored but couldn't do anything very useful with
- Lua
- Java
- Apple Basic
- Swift
- Ruby
- Python
- Visual Basic (had to for a college course)
- Lisp/Scheme
- C++
- Assembly

Software I am very or fairly familiar with

Web technologies
- HTML/CSS
Server tech (too many to list, these are the major ones)
- apache
- mysql
- WordPress
- Drupal (before version 8)
- postfix
- dovecot
- AWS

Tools I use a lot

Software

vim
bash
tmux
git
iTerm
*nix
- macOS

Great Moments from My Computing History

Early years

Since I was a young boy, I've always been fascinated by all things digital. The first bit of technology to transfix me was owned by my cousin's husband, Jimmy Wagner. It was a watch and instead of hands it had glowing LED numbers. It was probably 1975 and I was 5 years old. If the watch wasn't the Pulsar P3, it was something very close to it.

I begged my parents and relatives for a digital watch as a present but, of course, they weren't about to spend a couple hundred bucks on a watch for a little kid (I did get a cool Snoopy analog watch, though). I don't think it was until 1979 that I finally got a digital watch. I think it was my Grandmother bought it for me for Christmas though my memory is a little fuzzy and it may have been the Snoopy watch she got me.

At any rate, although the digital watch had a liquid crystal display rather than an LED face and had an ugly, goofy, stiff brown plastic wristband that was supposed to look like alligator skin, it was good enough for me.

Here's a rough timeline of some of the other hardware I've owned as well as other experiences that inspired my or left some kind of permanent mark on my wetware.

Late 70s to mid 80s

1977?
- Little Professor - Wikipedia
  - It had the magical, glowing red numbers, just like the digital watch
Christmas 1977 (or could have been '78)
- First video game console: Coleco Telstar Arcade - Wikipedia
1980 or '81
- My first use of a computer attached to a network
  - Armory Street School, 5th or 6th grade
  - It was some kind of horizonal teletype machine with a keyboad connected computer in downtown Springfield
    - was very excited to play with it occassionally
    - it could play simple games such as madlibs, tic-tac-toe, etc.
Early 80s
- Various hand-held games
1982 to 1994
- spent unglodly amounts of my paper route money and spare time playing arcade games
1983
- Got an Apple IIe - Wikipedia
  - It was purchased by my brother, 10 years older than me, while he was in college
    - I'm not sure if he ever intended to use it for himself but he never did so it essentially became mine.
    - It sits in my basement to this day
      - Worked as of about 2014 when I last tried it out
      - one of the disks or memory unit was a little flaky, though
        
        somehow managed to work around the issue
      - doesn't go for much on eBay
        
        maybe $100 if I'm lucky
  - Learned Apple Basic with it using the book that came with it
    - I particularly enjoyed making little cartoon animations with it
  - Used it for gaming, as well
    - Had all the Zork games
  - Wrote a database program to try to catalog all the videos I saw on MTV.
    - Didn't last long. After a couple dozen entries, I got tired of running up the stairs after every video to record it
    - I still kind of maintain of obsessiveness about cataloguing things with a computer, though
      - and I'm still not very diligent about it
      - My great Aunt Phyllis also did this
        
        seemed like she had massive collection of index cards with notes for everything
        
        all of her Victrola records were very precisely detailed
        
        she immacualte penmanship
  - Conceived a graphical software maze game in 3-D.
    - Never finished it (and barely started it) but I'm sure it would have been better than Doom if I kept at it
- Intellivision video game console
  - Video games basically killed my budding career in programming
    - sucked up a lot of free time
- I took some special course in electronics offered by my junior high school
  - there were only 3 of us enrolled
  - learned a little bout digital electronics and boolean math
  - project was to build an arcade video game from parts
    - I don't think we ever finished it
  - helped spark my interests further in electronic hardware
1984
- My sister and brother-in-law had an original Macintosh computer
  - Didn't have much need for it but was absolutely fascinated by it and spent hours on it seeing what it could do compared to my Apple IIe
- My brother-in-law worked in the software industry and had some kind of printing device (I think it was some kind of portable teletype machine) connected to a modem. I could play games on it.
- Spent probably a couple of weeks of paper route money and got a digital Casio calculator watch with a touch screen
  - it scratched easily and the "zero" button stopped working at some point
    - I think I got another one not long after and the same thing happened
  - It was either this one or something similar:
    - CASIO - TC-600 - Calculator - Vintage Digital Watch - Digital-Watch.com: www.digital-watch.com

Mid 80s to mid 90s

1987/88
- Took a couple of electronic courses in high school
- learned all the basics
1988
- enlisted in US Navy
- my rate was electronics technician
  - went through a considerably good and thorough US Navy trade school
    - called "Nuclear Field A School"
    - focused more on transistor circuits than what I learned in high school
  - learned to troubleshoot electronic circuits
    - mostly on navy equipment, mostly analog at the time
1991
- Bought my own first computer, an IBM PS/1 - Wikipedia
  - Operating system was PC DOS
  - Provided for my introduction to bulletin boards and Prodigy online service
    - Early precursors to the World Wide Web which got popular a few years later
    - Prodigy was a walled-garden version of the Internet at the time
  - Tried learning C++ from a book but without success
    - OO concepts were way over my head at the time
    - Had way more fun things to do while living in the Bay Area in my early 20s
1991/2?
- played a "virtual reality" game in Berkley, CA
  - I think it was on University Ave.
  - required you to wear a helmet on your head
  - had crude graphics but was amazing at the time
- met a guy online and then face-to-face who told me about the internet
  - he was on it
  - didn't seem to be of any interest for me
    - populated by scientists and academics
1992 to 1994
- Assembled a couple of Windows-based PCs from components
1995
- used the internet for the first time at Grossmont Community College
  - doing research for an essay I was writing
  - was trying to get stats on smokers
1996 (maybe '97)
- Nintendo 64
  - I also had a Nintendo or super Nintendo console at one point
    - don't remember when or how I got it
    - maybe got it in '95
1997
- Got a Web TV - Wikipedia to surf the web
- My PCs got abandoned when I left San Diego and left the Navy

Late 90s to mid 00s

1998 - 2005
- First time on the internet with a "real" browser
  - Netscape Navigator
- Bought three, or 4 IBM clone Window machines as my main computing device in this period
  - Apple/macs were thought to be a joke at the time
  - Maybe the first was a Gateway? Not sure.
  - May have also bought a generic one
  - The last one I bought was a Dell
  - Got consumed with the internet and building websites
- Got a broadband around 98 or early 99
  - Started experimenting with HTML
  - built my first site was on a free web services provided by ISP
    - was a photo of the Campinile Bell Tower I took with an early model digital camera I owned at the time
      - was basically just the photo in a box with a border and a caption
- Got my first paying customer to build a website for
  - "Movie Memories"
    - They did wedding videos
    - I did a little videography work for them as a side hustle
1999/2000
- Set up a Linux box on an old, second-hand computer
  - Installed Debian, the "purists" Linux distribution
  - Holy hell did it take me hours to get the wifi driver set up. I had no idea what I was doing.
  - Got bit by the free software bug
- Taught myself Perl
- Got my first gig a paid consultant
  - landed a $10,000 contract to consult on some Perl software
    - had only read maybe half of two Perl books at the time
2004
- Bought a couple of 1U servers and started hosting websites for clients
- Housed them in a datacenter
- All run Debian
- Since that time, I bought several other servers as company grew
- Started learning Drupal, the CMS
  - started learning PHP
  - first use of mysql and database-driven websites
  - built website for my growing list of clients with it
  - I had an intense interest in building online communities
    - Intrigued by the idea of communicating collaboratively
2005
- Left my part-time job to turn my part-time hobby as a web developer into my company
- Originally named "Dondley Communications"
- renamed "Prometheus Labor Communications" after about 6 months

Late 00s to present

2008
- switched to mac for my day-to-day computing
  - macbook pro
  - got fed up with Windows crashes and bugs
  - also saw a lot of developer I knew were using macs
- see below for my Apple product purchases
2012
- ditched Drupal for WordPress
2015/6?
- Bought my kid an Oculus Rift for my son
  - he used it for a few hours
  - I maybe used it for an hour
2020
- Finally made the move to the cloud with AWS
  - should have done it sooner
  - just not practical to run your own hardware
    - trips to the datacenter over an hour away suck

The Apple FanBoi Years

I've kind of lost track of all the Apple products I've purchased over the past 12 years. Here they are to the best of my recollection. I've spent roughly $35K on them which is probably a bit obsessive, I'll admit. We've all got our vices. Still cheaper than buying a new car every few years.

2008
- Came back to Mac and never looked back with a MacBook Pro
2009
- got the iPhone 3GS - Wikipedia
2010
- iMac
  - ~~Still in use today, primarily as a third monitor to my iMac 5K~~
    - shit the bed sometime in 2020
- iPad
2011
- iPhone 4S
2012
- MacBook Pro
  - I think this was the most expensive computer I ever bought
  - over $4K
  - Still in use by wifew but keyboard is getting horrible
    - have to slam the keys to get them to work
- got another iPad somewhere around this time
- Got an AppleTV somewhere in here
2013
- iPhone 5S
2013 to 2016?
- bought three MacBook Airs
  - none of the airs are in use anymore
  - only one was for me
2015
- Apple Watch
- Got an iMac 5k ~~(still my main desktop machine)~~
- iPhone 6S Plus
2016
- New MacBook Pro
- iPhone 7
- Got a newer AppleTV somwhere around here
2017
- Apple Watch Series 2
- iPhone X
- iPad Pro 10.5"
  - Apple pencil
2018
- HomePod
- iPhone XS
2019
- iPhone 11 Pro
- Air Pods (I think in 2019)
2020
- Apple Watch Series 5
- Another iMac 5K
- iPhone 12 Pro
- Air Pods Pro
2021
- Apple Watch Series 7
- HomePod mini
- MacBook Pro original M1
- iPhone 13 Pro
- Air Pods Max