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[bk]

My first computer, as mentioned, at Varese was a Compaq Presario.  I hated it.  That would have been around 1998, I think.  However, I'd used one to rewrite a script, way back in the late 80s, and boy did I hate THAT.  Then I was given Web TV - not a computer, of course, but the Internet on your TV and I had that for two years before buying my very own first computer, a Toshiba laptop (which I still have), quickly followed by a Dell laptop (which I no longer have as I stomped it to death).  I had the Dell for several years before their brilliant tech department in India helped me erase the hard drive because of their ineptitude - that is when I stomped it to death (thankfully everything backed up to zip discs), and that is when I finally made the switch to Macs - a very good day.

[bk]

I believe I wrote Benjamin Kritzer on the Toshiba and the subsequent two books on the Dell.  I believe Writer's Block may have been the first book on the Mac. 

[Matthew]

Good Morning!

[bk]

As to the Internet - on Web TV I was all over the Usenet movie and theater groups - these were wild and wooly and filled with the worst kinds of trolls imaginable, in the days when anonymity could let you get away with any damn thing you wanted.  It was vile and even dangerous, hence my short story about it, Your Worst Nightmare, of which every single word was based on truth, save for the very ending, although that event was also based on truth, but the drama of it was my own invention.  Today, as far as I can tell, and perhaps FJL can back me up since he lived it, is Datalounge, which I consider one of the vilest places on the Internet and which I feel should either be nuked off the face of the Earth, or everyone be made to post using their own names so that they'd perhaps think before the libel and slander everyone under the sun.  I feel that about any board where one is allowed to post using nicknames or fake names.

[Matthew]

TOD -

In 6th grade, we had Commodore PET computers in the classroom.  I learning to program in Basic language.   Later on in high school, I bought a Commodore Vic 20 from a friend of mine.  I think I had an Atari computer also after high school.  I got on the Internet in 1995 on a PC, and I've never looked back... from the Internet, that is.  I went total MAC in 2005 or so- and I haven't looked back from that either!!

[Matthew]

I once chatted with bk on IRC in the #broadway room, which is where I also met life long acquaintance, DR MarkB

[bk]

Yes, I remember that chat room on the IRC - I had several amusing experiences in various chat rooms, many of which I wrote about in One from Column A at the Stephen Sondheim Stage site that Mr. Bakalor still runs.

[ChasSmith]

I don't have a lot of time, so I'll just type this quickly and whatever comes out is what y'all get. 

In the early 1980s our company ran on a couple of ancient 8-inch-floppy disk (yes, 8-inch) computers.  They later added an Apple IIc to the arsenal, on which I eventually learned how to do basic things on the VisiCalc spreadsheet application.  I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and by around 1985 I was ready to get my own computer for home.  The two really popular ones for home then were Apple and Commodore, and a co-worker advised me to get the Commodore because at that time there was a lot more fun stuff to do on it, and they'd just expanded the 64 to a whopping 128 megabytes!  So I did, and wiithin a few months I had a ton of programs, I'd joined a user group, and through them I eventually was inspired to get my first dialup modem and get online with a few local BBSes.

I went for the "fast" modem -- the 1200 baud instead of the 300 that most people still had -- and instantly loved the fact that I was communicating with the outside world.  I soon decided to go all out and get the disk and join QuantumLink which was later to become America Online but was strictly for the Commodore platform then.  That's where I experienced my first chat rooms.  Jumping ahead a bit, this part is hard to believe but it wasn't until five or six years later that I was finally ready to get my first PC -- a primitive desktop Hewlett Packard 386 at Costco.  (But it came with a color VGA monitor!)  That machine ran best on plain old DOS, which I really loved learning about, but it eventually opened up the world of Windows (3.1?) and the various expanded implementations of America Online which was finally becoming known as AOL.

So, I was on AOL (their earlier platform, and eventually "WAOL - Windows AOL") where I worked for a while as one of the "hosts" of a help forum.  I later added Prodigy to my online adventures, and then Delphi, but I never got around to trying - or rather paying for - CompuServe.

In early 1993 they were on the cusp of making the Internet a public thing, which was very very exciting to me.  It took a while for local providers to come into being, but I finally got one and graduated to a zippy 14,000-baud modem.  I discovered Usenet, which was a zoo, as BK describes, but I didn't spend much time on it because I was influenced by a few friends to join a NYC-based BBS called "Echo", a text-only Unix-based conferencing system that back then was quite full of cool people who loved living on this exciting edge of technology.  It was modeled on The Well in the Bay Area, for anyone who was familiar with that.  Echo still exists, but with very few members -- of which I am still one.

That sort of summarizes the early history, as I experienced it, and of course this is a very condensed version of even my share of it.  I guess it was sometime in the early 2000s that whatever computer I had was finally halfway decent enough to really experience the online world.  I'm still on Windows-based computers because I know the territory, but when this current laptop dies I'm going to a Mac to both simplify the laptop aspect of my life and to better use musical applications.

I still have the Commodore computer and all the accessories and software I'd acquired.  It absolutely warms my heart to occasionally look over that stuff, and I am so glad I kept it - and in good condition - through the years.  It will eventually be time to get rid of it, hopefully to someone who wants to keep it intact, because it's an amazing little museum piece in and of itself.

[ChasSmith]

I remember now that it was in early 2002 that Comcast in this area implemented digital cable service and added cable internet access.  That was the game changer -- probably for me the single most significant development in the entire "second half" of my own computer history.

[Jrand74]

When I was working at the Indiana School for the Deaf, they brought in computers for everyone in the Business Office....IBM clones....there was not much teaching done, and no dedicated programs were purchased, so mostly they just sat there....this was 1992.

In the fall of that year, I left to go work at the Society of Professional Journalists.....and learned to use an IBM computer for everything.  A lot of the programs were slow - but it was nice.

I liked it so much, when a friend got a new computer and wanted to sell his old one, I bought it, for a couple of hundred dollars.  It was Tandy 1500....it used 5 1/4" floppy disks and included a dot matrix printer.  No Windows, but it did have a nice Word  Processing Program.

I wanted to get on the internet, so in 1998, I bought my own IBM clone - with 512 mb of RAM and 3.5 inch floppy disks.

[Jrand74]

I didn't join any sites or groups - but I did like EBAY a lot.....later on, former DR JMK pointed me in this direction and I have been here ever since.

[Ginny]

Saturday afternoon greetings!  Today is a very social day for me.  My midday was taken up with the fabulous fundraising luncheon for the local chapter of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.  Many of my women friends were there and I even won one of the five silent auction items I bid on.  It's a Longaberger basket filled with gift certificates and swag from several businesses in nearby Lebanon, Ohio.  One of the gift cards and a couple of swag items will be the perfect gift for our great-nephew J's second birthday next month. 

[Ginny]

So, I'm home now regrouping before Richard and I go downtown in 3 hours for the Middletown Historical Society annual dinner.  The theme this year is "Musical Middletown," celebrating the "rich history of music in Middletown."  The irony is that this season is the final one for the Middletown Symphony Orchestra 

[bk]

Back from an omelet and a bagel and having the smog check on my car so I can get the registration renewed.

[bk]

And no check - am rather furious about it but will wait till Monday and if it's not here I will insist on a wire and they can cancel the check - it should have been a wire in the first place.

[Jane]

First computer was in 1980.  I would have to ask Keith what it....he just walked in.  It was a TR model 3 and he loved it, but then he didn't use it at work. 

A couple of years later we purchased the boys their first computer, a TI (Texas Instruments) something for children.  I had been trying to get Craig to add simple numbers for me, nothing.  The next day Keith came home from work and asked it I knew what Craig was doing on the computer.  I did.  The kid was adding and subtracting like crazy, far higher numbers than I expected, and he was only four.  I loved that computer

What I never imagined is that I would one day have my own computer, something I fought  tooth & nail against.  My first personal computer wasn't until long after we had moved to Ashland.  I would say my current Dell all in one computer is the first one I have been comfortable using.

[bk]

So, out of the nearly 400 Kritzerland contributions made two years ago, we are down to 56 people who still are owed CDs.  However, at least ten of the 56 and perhaps a bit more than that, are getting their final CD with Two for the Road, so that goes down to 46 - by the end of this year we'll probably be down to under 20. 

Interesting factoids - one $50 contributor has managed to opt out of all nineteen releases that have occurred since the campaign closed.  I've instructed the helper to inform said person that they can either choose three CDs or we will return their fifty bucks, as I don't ever want to see their opt out name again and after a year and a half it's rather inane to even care.  Of all the donations I came to realize that one person and only one gamed the system and got ten extra CDs because of a loophole I didn't see - and a couple of $1,000 donations could have actually gotten the same exact perks for 500 sans baseball jacket - we're finally going to do those - only seven people get them so it's time already.

[FJL]

Today, as far as I can tell, and perhaps FJL can back me up since he lived it, is Datalounge, which I consider one of the vilest places on the Internet and which I feel should either be nuked off the face of the Earth, or everyone be made to post using their own names so that they'd perhaps think before the libel and slander everyone under the sun.  I feel that about any board where one is allowed to post using nicknames or fake names.

Bear with me on this, BK, It's a long explanation  - but from my experience, as far as NY theater is concerned, I think All that Chat is far more dangerous than DataLounge because it has managed to maintain an air of respectability, and also, as I found, while someone could bring an action against DataLounge (and actually get a finding in my favor), Talkin Broadway had managed to make itself legal-action-proof by requiring all actions against it by users to be brought in Nevada and only in Nevada, which happens to be a state where that type of entity is protected by far more lax laws than PA (where Ann Miner clearly does the company's work but incredibly managed to convince authorities that she didn't).

[bk]

The Nevada thing was because of the other guy who owns it with her, but they've always worked out of Ann's state - and yes, I feel the same about that board because people remain anonymous - they're disgusting.  Did I know you'd gotten a judgment against Datalounge?  What was the result?  Did they have to reveal the culprit's identity?  You can e-mail me if you want that info private.

[Jeanne]

Hello, everyone.

[Jeanne]

I am trying to recover from several poor nights again this week. Why is it so very difficult to get a good night's sleep when you're older?

[Jeanne]

Much impressed by John Boswell's playing.

And Nick Tubbs should be a permanent fixture.

[Jeanne]

But how could it be that I've known BK over fifty years and NEVER knew there was a song called THE DELICATESSEN OF MY DREAMS?

[Jeanne]

Congrats to DR Ginny on her basket win. Gift cards are very nice.

[Jeanne]

I started my computer programming career using a DEC-System 10 and an IBM 360. The DEC-10 was a nice machine and I did mostly database design and programming on it. The 360 used the punched cards that FJL spoke of. Sooo archaic now! The two computers each had their own operating system and I was using different computer languages--a database management system called 1022 on the DEC-10 and IBM JCL on the 360. I would start my work day on the 360, submit the cards for processing, then mentally switch gears to the DEC world until my printouts were ready, then switch back to the 360 world. The two worlds were very different and I had to keep the two separate.

[Matthew]

I just got a rather rude VM from another Bruce that runs an online CD/LP business.  I purchased something on the site that he no longer has.  He offered a CDR, not tracked, not artwork for $15 and and refused to send me an email (my email address is part of my voice mail message) and if I wanted that to call him back and if I I didn't just forget it. 

I've only been looking for this LP for 20+ years and I'm quite bent over the whole situation. 

[Jeanne]

My first home computer was the early Mac that I bought from a friend who was buying a new computer. Interesting that so many of us did this. For a while I switched to the PC world, because that was most of my clients had and I needed to be compatible, but I've been back in the Mac world since 2009.

[Jeanne]

DR Matthew, did he not offer to give you your money back?

[Jeanne]

I'm rewatching THE SYNDICATE: ALL OR NOTHING on Acorn TV. I really enjoyed the first time through and am now enjoying it again. It's a lottery story with a twist. Very good writing and very competent everything else.

[Jeanne]

Good weekend vibes to all. I'd like to hear more about Vixmom's weekend.