How did you get started????

[ruby_woo]

We took computer classes in elementary school. I loved computer day! We used those old Apple computers to learn typing, and played games like Oregon Trail and Math Munchers.

When I was about 11 or 12, my dad bought a computer that ran on DOS, and my sister and I played this silly Barbie fashion game, and a Carmen San Diego game. Eventually we got AOL, and my sister and I used to troll the AOL chatrooms until my parents figured out the parental controls. We figured out how to undo the parental controls, and my mom decided to move the computer from the basement to the dining room, where she could watch us from the kitchen or living room.

Our family would get into epic fights over use of the internet vs. use of the phone, and who wanted to use what and when. Oh, dial-up...

In high school, we used the Mac computers Ruffryder pictured in the school library, and to work on the yearbook layout. This was about 1999 I think? High school teachers were still resisting the internet as a research tool at the time, and emphatically told us that we HAD to cite actual books in our research papers, they did not want us using just the internet.

I received an iBook as a high school graduation present, and have been using Mac laptops at home ever since.

[Corkey]

Mom had a Commodore 64 keyboard. She played pong on it for days.

I didn't get a computer until 1998. I had no idea how to use it but I played around till I figured it out. I am no techie. When in 1999 my company went to computer generated reports and keyless entry I learned a few programs. I had a PC at home. When I moved from Ca, I left it to my ex's daughter. We now have Mac Pro's and we plug along nicely.

[PaPa]

Wow...what a loaded question, princessbelle. I will see how well I can tackle the answers....

1980 or 1981...I took a computer math class at the beginning of 9th grade. The schools computer was one preformed piece with monitor and keyboard. It had a modem which sat on the top and it had two holes in which the telephone receiver went. We would dial a number for a college nearby and hook up to their computer system which took up a whole room. We were then able to learn computer programming for that time. Each line began with a base ten number in sequence and we could insert go to commands if ___ then go to ____ commands...etc...I don't remember a whole lot of that but then again it was 31 or 32 years ago!

Fast forward to the mid 80's I had experience with a commodore 64 that my brother purchased. Later in the 80's my brother tore apart a premoulded one piece computer and designed his own. He had written to IBM and Apple and received schematics. He played around with it in the garage until he had a useful computer for what he wanted to use it for. Today, my brother has his own business and deals with high temperature extreme hardware for companies like Boeing, Lockheed, and the military.

Early 90's I was in college and learned Word Perfect, Quattro 1, 2, 3, and other programs.

Mid 90's I bought a Brother Word Processor for my own needs.

I then advanced to a Dell, an HP and today I am still a faithful buyer of HP products. It meets my needs and has never left me stranded.

[Martina]

I don't recall the types of computer. I was in grad school and using the school's computers. Many universities had a gopher. It seemed like accessing the wealth of the world to navigate to a university's gopher and be able to download docs on every subject.

I recall being able to make a few commands and see everyone on the network. Anybody could. Then you could email from the command line if you wanted to.

We had a text only gay forum at the University of Michigan -- called Confer. We mostly knew each other in real life. We argued so ferociously on there and then would run into each other at the library, cafe or a party and be so pleasant and friendly. One of those guys became a famous economist. One a porn star for a while. It was the good old days when gay men and lesbians talked to each other.

I didn't have a computer of my own for a long time, but I remember occasionally using a roommate's and dialing in to MichNet for access. I stored alot of my research on my server space, and sometimes needed it at night for something. Usually I'd go to the computer center, which was open 24/7, but sometimes the snow was too deep. Wow. Haven't thought of that stuff in forever.

[Ginger]

I forgot to say, I taught computer applications in a high school in the late nineties, and took two online courses: computer hardware repair and website design. Both of course, full of concepts that are hilariously outdated by now.

[Medusa]

Anyone remember the old Commodore64 BASIC programs?

10Print I Love you
20Print I Love you more
30Print I Love you the most!

[JustJo]

At the risk of showing my age....

In middle school we had a computer class that included punch cards....and the whole "go to" programming... I remember little except that it seemed a long and tedious way to get an answer that I could calculate faster in my head.

In the early 80s I worked at a university law school on a work-study job....on a Tandy 64 with the giant, truly floppy, floppy disks....

I worked as a temp in the late 80s...Lotus 1.2.3, WordPerfect....

Now I work remotely....couldn't function without MS Outlook and MS Project (which I have a love/hate relationship with), MS Word and Excell....

I'm still super low-tech, but I use computers as second nature all day long.

[Soft*Silver]

My mother wanted me to go to college to become a writer. She bought me a brothers typewriter with a corrector key on it, that also had word processing features. I was hot shit! Then a friend of mine told me about the computer he had just purchased and rained on my parade. Butt head! LOL

I fought getting a computer but the butch I was married to for 7 years was computer savvy. He was a scheduler in a plant and his job had been computerized. I remember we went computer shopping together and I couldnt understand the differences. There were alot of numbers being thrown out there in the descriptions (I still feel this way when I go to buy a new one!) They were all the same color. And the bigger the screen, the better the quality.

until it became, the smaller the screen, the more expensive it was.

and then there was the battle over mac or PC. I bought one of those colored Macs because I wanted something other than putty colored. I have ADD so I couldnt stick with the transition and sold it on ebay.

Oh yes..ebay. I remember when it was FUN. You could go on there and find obscure used things that would have taken you a lifetime of antiquing or garage saleing to find. Now its all businesses and frankly, most of it is new junk.

I started out on aol and ran up a few credit cards. Being online was $4.95 an hour. And the temptation to play around on your partner was suddenly VERY easy. Was it cheating if you cyberfisted? So many relationships broke up over this. I was so loyal to my butch. It wasnt easy. She proved how hard it was by cheating on me with a cyber fling, who together, drained my inheritance, took my daughter's college fund and put my family farm into foreclosure. A few months later she tells me she the Other Woman did the same thing to her that she had done to me and wanted to come back. Oh yes. Cyber affairs shouldnt have the same consequences she said. I said, maybe not, but breaking my heart regardless of how, does.

Obviously we didnt get back together.

My daughter went to a upper middle class school system for her kindergarten year. They bragged about how they got the kids started on computers right from the beginning of their school life. I moved her to a blue collar school system for 1st grade, and by week two, I had a call from the new teacher. She said my daughter was failing and wanted to know if she came from an inner city school. NO> I said< she came from (fill in the upper middle class school's name). She said "ah, thats why. They spend so much time teaching kids the new computer language and how to navigate that they dont bother teaching them the alphabet and basic things like numbers and colors."

After my butch husband left me for a cyber affair, I started dating on the internet. I dated ALOT. and I dated in person, not just pretend dates. I also remember Women Only rooms and how we worked so hard to keep men from stealthing into our private domains. And how there were families that developed, and they werent always part of the leather world but often had that root somewhere in their history.

I remember hearing about online college classes and degrees and thought that would never fly. It would never be seen as reputable. hah. I was wrong!

My daughter at the age of 7 could maneuver on the computer better than I could for the first year. In fact, that computer sat in my bedroom for a good six months before I would even get on it. I was scared. Oh, and I had to take out a bank loan of $3500 to get it. But I got a free printer with it.

I ran social service programs and was a therapist as well. Handwriting notes remained more personal and reflective than entering them on the computer. But the agencies made me do that shift. They could also monitor my every move. And they did. I had to record what I was doing every 15 minutes, and they could check if what i said was true. Dammit.