This Day In History

This Day In History

First of all, when it comes to doughnuts, we’re #1!

I hope the weather doesn’t prevent us from consuming even more doughnuts.

More importantly, let’s wish the microprocessor a happy birthday. In one form or another it has had a huge impact on our lives. Certainly on my life anyway.

I still remember the first Bowmar Brain that Dad brought home. Wow. I was entranced. I soon graduated to the TI-59, which introduced me to primitive programming. Then I managed to buy a TI 99/4 and had my first personal computing experience. This machine was a dog but the notion of personal computing was infectious for me.

I quickly ditched the TI (which again was a dog) and got an Apple ][ which was a great machine. I loved buying software in ziplock bags at the Microcenter on Lane Avenue. I loved the huge market of addon cards. I loved the nascent computer industry press – Byte magazine and Creative Computing were my monthly bibles.

Then I read an article about the Smalltalk programming environment in Byte magazine and was hooked on the idea of a graphical interface, and bought a Mac at the first possible moment – my second year in grad school, C and I had absolutely no money, but I managed to buy a Mac the first day it was on the market.

Then I moved out west here and had to adopt Windows and PCs wholeheartedly. By now I am probably on my 20th Windows PC in the workplace and probably 10th at home – my latest being a hardcore game machine from Alienware.

And of course I now use microprocessors in about 100 other machines in my daily life – in my stereo, in my car, in my MP3 player, in my cell phone, in my Blackberry, etc…

It has been fun so far…