Computers edit
To start off, I'm a PC guy. I've hardly ever worked with Macs and for the most part I'm happy about that. However, like any other person who's in the know, I'd be insane to even attempt to try any serious graphic creation on a PC, so that's the one reason why I want to start messing around with Macs in the near future. But back to the stuff I'm already good at...
I've been working with computers since I've been 10 years old, back when my mom & stepdad at the time got a Tandy 1000 RLX. I'd played around with my grandma's C64 before that but it was only for stuff like playing Lode Runner and Lemonade stand, so the Tandy was the first serious computer I'd had access to that didn't only run on a command line interface. Anyway, this Tandy is a beast; it's got a 30MB hdd, 40Mhz CPU, the SMALLEST motherboard I've ever seen in a desktop PC, an inverted L-shaped sound card (looks like a normal sound card except there's an extra circuit board which is connected to the top of the vertical standing board, giving it an inverted L shape), and a 1.44Mb 3.5" floppy drive. The floppy's the best thing about the computer, because it doesn't have a power port to plug a power cable into anywhere on the drive, yet it still works like a champ. How does it work without plugging a power cable into it? Get this, when you screw the drive into the slot on the computer chassis where it goes, the chassis's electrical current feeds power into the drive. It's the leetsauce. If I can get some pics of the Tandy up here soon I will, the nostalgic power this thing has over people who see it is astounding.
In the summer of 1998 I received free A+ computer certification training through my high school. Long story short, my school district was RICH to begin with due the the nuke plant in our town, but our HS won a Junior Achievement grant for $100,000 to start a student-run IT business, and I was one of around 48 students that was accepted to receive training in one of three areas: MOUS (Microsoft Office User Specialistic, basically an "I can use Word and Powerpoint" cert and a complete waste of money, 24 students took this unfortunately), MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, aka network certification, I would've went for this if the 8 spots for it hadn't filled so quickly), and A+ (computer hardware & software certification). I got a spot in the A+ class along with 15 other students and learned a slew of stuff. I took the 2 tests required to get the A+ certification, and I passed one test but failed the second by only 1 or 2 questions.
I finally got around to retaking the test in April 2000 and passed both tests and received my A+ Cert. That was a good day, I still don't know very many people who can say they received any sort of certification before they turned 18. Anyway, to repay the school for fronting cash to train us all, every student who got training had to take at least 1 semester of a field experience class (my high school works on a block scheduling system: 6 blocks a day [2 80ish minute blocks, 3 40 minute blocks where 2 are for a class and one is for lunch, and another 80ish minute block], 4 classes a semester, 2 semesters a year). During this class you and any other students in the class would go out on work orders within the school district (the high school, middle school, and elementary school are all connected on 1 huge campus by an enclosed bridge, so it wasn't like you'd have to go all over town) and take care of resolving jobs. At least the field experience class was worth 1 credit apiece. I ended up taking the class 3 semesters, if I remember right it was the 2nd semester of my junior year and both semesters my senior year. During that time I ended up doing, by my estimate, around 500 work orders, involving everything from just moving computers to diagnosing hardware and software issues, installing new hardware and software programs, diagnosing and if possible fixing printer issues (which was a BITCH, I'm guessing at least 1/3 of my jobs involved printers fucking up), to ghosting hard drives (which actually now that I recall I never did, for some reason I always delegated ghosting to someone else because I was busy doing something more important).
Anyway it's been over 5 years since then and needless to say when someone needs something done to their computer, be it installing/upgrading components, installing software, or my favorite, needing someone to "fix a computer" with a non-descript problem, I'm usually the go to guy.
I own...4 computers now (used to be 6 but 2 of the older ones died, one to CIH, one to...oh yeah my brother and his best friend fried it while I was away at tech school in Pittsburgh). One is my aforementioned Tandy 1000 RLX, one is an old Packard Bell which still has Windows 3.1 on it and I'm only hanging onto it for nostalgia, my Commodore 64, and my current computer and the only one I regularly use. My current computer is in serious need of an upgrade though, and I'll probably actually just build a new computer when I scrap enough cash together and turn my old box into a linux server. To give you an idea of how badly an upgrade is needed read the following stats:
900Mhz AMD Duron
384MB PC100 SDRAM
Integrated SiS motherboard (NIC/Video/Sound, but I have integrated sound and video disabled)
40GB HDD (which is almost completely filled and has massive OS issues I won't get into right now)
Creative Labs Soundblaster Platinum 5.1
GeForce4 440MX
17" monitor that LOVES to reset all resolutions but 1280x1024 to default (bent to shit) settings on a regular basis, hence why my default res is set to 1280x1024
CDROM that stopped working for some reason I have yet to figure out
No burner, CD or DVD
Faulty 1.44 flopper
Ugly ass generic off-white aluminum case
Now granted I bought the main parts (case, motherboard, PSU, CPU, HDD, monitor, new sound card) for just over $600, but I've had this setup for like 4 years now, and as you can see I'm in serious need for a new box. OH, I almost forgot. I still have Windows 98 installed too. Yes, there's a VERY good reason for that. Let me explain.
Above I mentioned my hard drive is massively borked at present time. The reason is...I don't know exactly, but I think it's because I'm in dire need of a defrag, but I can't do this. Suffice it to say it takes like 2 minutes to start up my computer, I CAN'T run Scandisk or Defrag (Scandisk keeps restarting the search over and over and never ends up doing anything and running Defrag locks up my computer, and since you need to run Scandisk before you're able to run Defrag, it makes it impossible), and for some reason I have yet to deduce my computer takes forever to do anything online. And I'm not talking dialup, I'm was running on 768 DSL. It's gotten to the point of where I don't even attempt to do anything online anymore because it just sits there. I mean I could try to open up Firefox and go to google.com and the end of the universe would come first (the sad thing there is I'm not kidding).
I could just format my hard drive and install a copy of Windows XP or Red Hat Linux that I have, but I'm not going to. Why not? Well, due to my computer's lack of a DVD burner or even a CD burner, I would lose everything currently on my box. This would be VERY bad. Some things currently on my box are: programs I don't have copies of anymore (games, MS Office XP pro), files I don't have backed up (wide assortment of pictures, music, movies), and all of my work-related files (I plan on making a career as a video game designer, eventually owning my own publishing company and in-house development company), just to name a few things. So I'm stuck in a vicious loop; I need to format my hard drive so I can make it work correctly again, but I would lose all of my files so I need to back them all up first, but 40GB of files to back up requires a CD or DVD burner, but I don't have the money for either at the moment, and I also may not have the space left on my hard drive to install a CD or DVD burner, and even if I do have the space, if the burner's drivers are on a CD then I can't install them with my faulty CDROM anyway, but if the drivers are on a 1.44 floppy(which I doubt anymore) then my floppy drive has a good chance of damaging the disk, and if I attempt to get the drivers online I'll probably die of old age or a stress related aneurysm before the download page even loads up.