The daily prompt wants to know about my first computer again. I answered this question 2 years ago in a post called First Computer.
What I’ve learned in my experiences with computing. And what I’m quickly forgetting.
These tools can be used to help make you smart or stupid.
Like many things man has created, it has made possible wonderful advancements for humanity. It has also been used for much evil.
In some ways it has accelerated the separation of classes in society.
It’s one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done.
Computing through the last several decades was like reinventing yourself every few years along the way because things change so fast.
Some of the most brilliant advances have been made by teams of people who work well together. And sometimes that involves someone who has never touched a computer before explaining and detailing a craft or skill with someone who does know computers.
Computing has been a great part of my life. I have also wasted some of my life on the computer when I should have been living more experiences away from it.
Computing advances so fast and so much equipment becomes obsolete way too fast and creates an incredible amount of waste I suspect.
Computing before BBS systems or the internet was a trip. A fun and frustrating experience at the same time.
I should have kept track of the total of the gazillion miles of cable I’ve strung in my lifetime.
Or thousands and thousands of backup tapes created, stored, stored offsite and demolished in my lifetime.
The hundreds and hundreds of racks assembled and unassembled and moved and the contents within the same in my lifetime.
The storage systems that would take up rows in a datacenter, to the old 20mb SCSI hard drives in a MacPlus if my memory serves me correctly. Well, I did start when we swapped 5 1/4-inch floppy disks in and out of 2 drive bays.
Days in the computing world will seem like Groundhog Day. You know you’ve seen and solved this problem before.
Computer Server rooms and Datacenters are loud. At least the old ones were.
At one time in computing UNIX System Engineering and Database Engineering had to work together to really make things hum. But talk about two different groups of people. Wow. Both extremely skilled but like oil and water a lot of times. Not all cases but just my observation.
For some it’s an endless source of frustration. For others it is an endless challenge of opportunities.
Being I worked in computing environments for decades, the type of people I gravitate towards are the ones who are open and share their knowledge and experiences. And I try to be one of those people for others. I also don’t make personal judgements of you based on your knowledge or lack of in computing.
Quick story. – I had just started at a daily newspaper. I worked in IT and the company was shifting technology, and they were retraining people to use computers for layout instead of the manual ways of doing it piecemeal on a table. Well, a lot of user type problems were generating calls for system issues that weren’t system issues. So, on my way to another area we supported I would always stop and ask how things were going and see they were struggling with the basics. One or two had ok skills but were still entry level. While there I’d just show them easier ways or proper ways to execute things just by watching them or helping with errors they would create or come across. To cut to the chase. A few of them would thank me and say, “you’re the first person from IT who didn’t make me feel like an idiot.”
Well crap, I hadn’t intended on this being so long. And I want to get back to the workroom and do some sanding. Now days, I balance life at the keyboard and away from it much better. In that way retirement has been good to me.
