Early Experiences - What turned you on?

[a9127]

I started with a Commodore 64 as well. Did you have the cassette? I also had to hook it up to an old color TV. My Dad had a Compaq DeskPro 386 for work and a T1 line that GM paid for. So I was exposed to business and technology at a pretty early age. We had a Novell network at school and one of the teachers let me work with it. Under his supervision of course. I remember almost all of the original DOS based computers and the earliest versions of Windows. One of my professors in grad school had an old "CP/M" machine sitting in his office. It still worked. My first "real" computer was a "hand me down" IBM PC/AT that used 1.2 Mb floppies had a 20Mb hard drive and used a "286" processor running at 6Mhz.

My first "new" computer was a "Gateway 2000" 486 running at 25Mhz. It was the first to have "VGA" graphics so you could see "real" pictures.

During middle school through High school I probably owned over a dozen PC's including Mac's. In college I learned UNIX and became proficient at C++. My undergraduate was in Industrial Management which was Purdue's way of combining Business and Engineering. The last CRT monitor I owned was in 1999. It was a Dell and had a 19" screen. I got a workout carrying it around. Everything since then has been a flat screen. My current home display is 27". For most professional work I use an HDMI interface at our university and in my office. My current home desktop uses an AMD Ryzen with 32 Cores and has a 1Tb Solid State drive. Everything is wireless. I have a Linux machine in my office as well as many tablets and notebooks.

At my university they give us "Acers" running Windows 7 and Office 2013. Most of the students have better technology. The main classroom I teach in has six huge flat panel displays that I can control with my phone or iPad.

Sorry to go on and on. Long boring post...

(In 1988, one of the school administrators gave me this "certificate" after I helped him with an end of year project. 30 years ago! Notice the "border" of "floppies." No I wasn't very old. Surprised I still have it. He was one of my inspirations to go into teaching many years later. He is still alive and we correspond now and then. Of course, along the way I managed to add to my collection by earning a Bachelor's Degree, an MBA, and Doctorate. I'm chair of the Business Analytics Program at our university and I also own a market research company. I've done pretty well.)