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Remember What It Felt Like The First Time?

By on Jul 29, 2014 in Blog Posts | 5 comments

Do you remember the first time you connected to the Internet? Where were you? What did it feel like? For me, it was the summer of 1996. My mother had taken me to our small public library where I discovered that they would soon have a computer with an Internet connection and I couldn’t wait to get back to try it. A week later I was practically the only person in the library but I still had to add my name to an empty sign-in sheet for just 15 minutes of time on the computer. With an eagerness that only a child can have I sat down and pretended to listen to what the librarian was telling me about “getting online”. After she finally tottered away I was transfixed. Netscape Navigator was loaded and the modem rang out loudly, letting everyone know that a 15 year old Scott Carter had just become a man. The first site I loaded was Yahoo!, the most popular portal of the time....

My first taste of the drug

By on Jan 10, 2008 in Blog Posts | 2 comments

Though I had spent time fiddling with an old Tandy and a Commodore 64, my first true personal computer was a Packard Bell 486 DX/2. This was apparently a very popular model (as seen in the picture to the left), as many people now look back on it with joy. Joy that they have moved on. That model was a nightmare – but it was my first. Many hours of Doom and Sim City 2000 were played. My first experience online using a 9,600 baud modem was had on this machine. It was the first machine I had to troubleshoot, which is pretty much how I’ve learned everything I know about technology. Unlike most customers, I’m grateful to Packard Bell for pushing such a dog of a machine on unsuspecting customers. Had it not been for the poor combination of hardware and software bundled with this machine I’m certain I wouldn’t be where I am today. The speakers, CD-ROM drive,...