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i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs
By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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It was indoor work with no heavy lifting.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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So is cleaning toilets.
It didn't interest you otherwise? Was it something you were like "I'm going to go to school to learn this so I'm not cleaning toilets" kind of thing? Or was there another draw?
*prys*
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Not really sure - it was many, many years ago.
I just kinda woke up one morning thinking "religion is b*ll*cks and I wanna program computers". So I became an atheist* and my future was laid out. Never even seen a computer except on TV up to then, and had no idea whatsoever what it actually involved. If I'd had a dream about Spaghetti Junction maybe I'd have been a road planner instead, who can say?
* I grew out of that when I realised atheism is a form of extremism, (fanaticism, call it what you will), just like being a god botherer is.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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LOL I can accept that.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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OriginalGriff wrote: If I'd had a dream about Spaghetti Junction maybe I'd have been a road planner instead, who can say?
Because you liked it or because it needed fixing?
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: Because you liked it or because it needed fixing blowing up and redesigning
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I walked under spaghetti junction (many canals, not to mention the railway) several times while it was under construction. Only a 15 minute walk from school. It was strangely beautiful then (especially with arcs of motorway several layer up, just in isolation and not joining up). But didn't dream about it, so stuck with IT DP. (Data Processing)
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OriginalGriff wrote: I grew out of that when I realised atheism is a form of extremism... It would be nice if more people made that connection. Sometimes I think they hate for hating's sake. Just as some religious people do (ie, their views of Muslims).
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No heavy lifting? I thought you were old enough to have had to rely on paper manuals...
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Wondered how the 'thing' worked...
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ahh a fellow taker aparter. Gotta know how it ticks!
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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taker aparter++
There might be many of those here.
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yeah i had that feeling. i've met a lot of fellow tinkerers in the field.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Doesn't work with living things though.
Had to tell my daughter, you can't mend a frog with superglue.
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oh come now. a few stitches, some tesla coils, a stormy night. What could go wrong?
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Well define mend, to close up and rejoin skin yes, to get a fully functional Kermit, no...
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Well, she had chased away a magpie and wanted a fully functional kermit.
Yesterday she found a dried out rain worm on our driveway, and promptly fetched a bucket of water.
Then again, last week she asked for a pair of scissors. When I asked what she needed them for, she was going to cut slugs. I wonder where she learned that.
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As 2 year old my Dad showed me a screw driver and how it work. Since then no 'warranty void if damaged' sticker remained for a long time, I'm a hardware guy today...
modified 9-Sep-19 8:24am.
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I really like this idea of taker-aparter. As a kid in the early 60's, we would rummage neighbors trash cans for stuff to disassemble and "rebuild" into some other useless thing, until activated with imagination. I always wanted to know how something worked.
So, I fell in with the wrong crowd in high school (1968) - the science and math department. They had a ASR-33 teletype connected to a timeshare system and had no idea what to do with it. I got some info on Dartmouth Basic, and was writing simple things in a week. By my senior year, I assisted in teaching a class on programming and had created a library of various apps for the department.
I went to college to get a degree in Electical Engineering so I could design computers. Well, that never happened, never finished my degree, but just retired from programming/manager/architect after 45+ years. Seen it all, done it all. Had a great time. Still coding for fun. Might look to do some pro bono work for a local cause/charity.
The cure to boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. -- Dorothy Parker
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honey the codewitch wrote: What made you start coding? The awesome gaming capabilities of the Commodore VIC-20[^]!
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant Anonymous
- The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine Winston Churchill, 1944
- Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference. Mark Twain
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yeah, i remember my machine was supposed to be the Amiga killer.
John Scully was ... not so smart.
At least it played Leisure Suit Larry.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I was lucky that my father had a good position in communist Hungary and was able to buy a 2nd hand C64...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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ooooh, i bet that getting that was like 3 christmas' worth of joy.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Even better - within a year I collected money (recycling glass, metal and paper in all the neighborhood) to get a disk driver... build a joystick and installed a hard-reset button...
As today I'm writing a game for C64 - using emulator...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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