Computers: Click on any photograph with a blue border to enlarge, then click your left or back arrow
My Love affair with computers began
nearly 24 years ago when I cut my teeth on the little Texas Instrument TI
computer. It was truly a computer, but only a step above a toy. I mastered it in
two months and moved up to a Radio Shack Mod 4 which was a humdinger, TRSDOS and
it used the 5 inch floppies. I thought this was heaven. My first hard drive was
an external 5 Meg affair and I doubted that I would ever fill it up. But someone
named Bill Gates licensed a product called MSDOS to IBM and the future was his.
IBM made it the standard for the industry. The dozen or so DOSes perished in the
race leaving Bill Gates and a friend, partner and yes, the developer of Apple.
Microsoft was way ahead and along came the mouse and Windows.
I moved to a hybrid MSDOS and finally settled on the real McCoy. I built my own 286s, 386s, 486s, and my first Pentium 1. Then I retired from the ministry and the first thing I did was purchase a Pentium 2. Things couldn't get any better than my HP Pentium 2, but they did. Windows was wide opened with '95, 98 1 & 2, and a little Windows that celebrated the new Millennium. And then XP. What a great time to be alive with the entrance of te Internet and the Information Highway!
I used the computer to write sermons, prepare Sunday Morning's Bulletin, spreadsheets for budgets, data bases for membership rolls and dozens of other things. Desk Top printing rang the bell on old fashioned print shops and we could do and print most anything.
And then retirement brought one heart attacks yearly for four years. My cardiologist told me that I had to stay in during the heat of the day and later the cold of the day. What could I do, I asked and he said anything you can do with your fingers! Back to my computers. I began tracing my family tree as well as my wife's. I began searching for classmates both high school and college. This was followed by searches for Navy and Marine Corps buddies I served with 55 plus years ago during the Korean War, yes, Elizabeth, it was a war! Then our museum, chamber of commerce, the industrial board, library all wanted a web page. I accommodated them and began setting up forums for my old Marine Corps Buddies.
My computers have been my friends during the dark days and when the light of health began its return. I have downloaded everything from soup to nuts and all sorts of recipes, ordered much merchandize, books, clothes, etc over the Internet! How did we ever do without our computers?
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