I'm old enough (just barely) to remember a time before computers were commonplace. The Internet was available, but it was more of an experimental playground than a necessity for a normal life. Most folks paid their bills through the mail with checks, shopped in person (or occasionally via catalog), and went to their banks to deposit money.
How boring.
My father was an early computer adopter. At the time he ran an industrial contracting firm (think big buildings like hospitals, schools, water treatment plants, factories, and so on). They started using computers in the late 80s/early 90s for accounting, payroll, drafting projects, generating estimates, and other office-type work. The office had a dedicated server room with tape drives for creating backups and some local secure storage. Sadly I don't remember the particulars, but I do remember gazing on the whirring tape drives and blinkenlichten with awe.
After much pressuring, Dad brought home some computer parts for me to play with. Initially these were random bits and pieces of broken hardware, bare circuit boards and the like. But eventually I got my hands on my first functional computer. I still remember the system specs - a 486 clocked at 40Hz, 238MB hard drive (I never imagined I'd be able to fill that drive when I saw all that space), 2MB of RAM (which we later upgraded for 4MB as some more office hardware trickled down to me). I started with DOS, learning how to jump to different directories and create text files - real basic stuff. But Dad was able to scrounge a copy of Windows 3.1, which is what really pulled me in (ironic, as I'd rather eat sand than use Microsoft products these days).
Those were heady years for young me. I spent time in chatrooms, and talked to people all over the world. I pirated MP3s, and had to wipe and reinstall Windows on the family computer more than once after downloading viruses. I explored vast virtual worlds, starting with text-based MUDs and eventually culminating with Everquest (after which I swore off MMORPGs for awhile). I wrote my own websites, first on geocities (which is what drew me to neocities, nostalgia is fun) and later on MySpace. I made computers do things they weren't supposed to do, breaking into the security cameras at my high school and installing (and hiding) games on the school's networked lab computers.
Fast forward to today, and I've spent the majority of my life working on and playing with computers. Most of my college jobs and eventually my professional career have centered around computers. In roughly chronological order, I've:
Worked in an arcade, where we regularly repaired our own arcade machines (basically big single-purpose computers)
Worked in a photo processing lab, where we used a computerized editing and printing system
Worked in a pawn shop which specialized in home entertainment devices, many of which I repaired for resale
Worked in a cellphone repair store, fixing phones, tablets, laptops, and the occasional game system
Once I finished college (where I was always the "computer guy", but never never the "printer guy") I found a job providing technical support for an energy monitoring product. That was a triple whammy - working on embedded Linux systems, troubleshooting networking configurations, and a touch of programming (in Python) to build tests and collect/aggregate/display data. From there, I moved on to another role supporting a broad variety of applications for a medical supply billing company. This was my first exposure to a primarily cloud-based environment - a bit behind the curve, but at least the tech is fairly mature. Currently, I'm working towards some certifications and trying to hone my programming skills.
Even though I work with computers at work for 50+ hours every week, I still enjoy playing with them for fun too! I've built a home server, which runs Jellyfin (to serve media to users on my home network), Zoneminder (for some home security cameras, complete with motion detection), and an SFTP server (to back up all of my computer's content locally). I tinker with SoCs (once I used an Arduino to spoof the check engine light on my car to get around emissions testing - I passed). And since everyone knows me as the computer guy, I accept computers from friends and family to rebuild and play with (I'm writing this post on one such computer).
Below, I have links to my various computer projects. I still love making computers do things they're not designed for - most of my machines run some variety of Linux, and many have hardware modifications (more storage, more RAM, better chipsets, better displays, even custom paint jobs). Some of them run software I've written myself (mostly to run backups or pull energy/environmental data from the sensors in my house).
Computers have been good to me: a gateway to career opportunities, new friends, and engaging projects. I plan to work in a computer-related field for the rest of my life, but even if my career trajectory shifts I'll never stop messing with those 1s and 0s.
