How it all started – Part 1

My love for computers and software began when I was 10 year old kid in elementary school.  At that time, the only students who had access to the computer lab were selected (and very intelligent) students in grade 6. I was a student in grade 4 at the time but I had a good friend who was in grade 6 and recognized as one of the smartest and intelligent students in the school – and of course he had access to the computer lab, even during lunch hour!

Finally after months of hearing how awesome computers were and what you could do with the software on them, my friend asked the teachers in charge of the computer lab if he could bring me to see the lab one day during lunch hour. I was a very well behaved student and so there wasn’t much hesitation from the teachers to allow me to come into the lab during a lunch hour one day, under one condition – I could see but not touch.  So the day finally came, I got to enter the computer lab and see 10-12 computers – I was told they were MacIntosh computers (I noticed an apple on each of the machines).  So I sat and watched my friend type things onto the keyboard and the computer execute the commands my friend was requesting. This was all so mind blowing to me!

After that lunch hour, it was 2 years later that I was a student in grade 6 and allowed back into the computer lab!  By that time computer class had become a part of the school curriculum. Finally I had the opportunity to be the pilot behind the keyboard, and type commands onto the keyboard and see a green turtle on screen execute the commands (I was using Apple’s logowriter programming language) I was typing. It was cool to watch it all happen 2 years before, and even cooler to be the individual behind the keyboard.

I was 12 years old at the time, and I had no idea how powerful and common computers & software would become in the years to follow and how much my interests (and life) would be tied to computers and software …