About Me
Introduction to Computers
It was a warm Christmas morning when my 5 year old legs sprang from bed and ran into the living room. My eyes widened as I saw a white boring box with shipping notices stamped across the face.
“Santa really did place his order through ups!”
I tore into the box to find a clumpy, large, brand new PC. The adapters and cords were all color coded so it was very easy for me to put everything together. With a flip of a switch, and a few seconds later, some white text appeared on the screen with a single blinking line.
“Welcome to DOS.“, my father said as he handed me a large DOS how-to book.
Wanting more from my great computer(s), and with the introduction of Windows, I asked my family a barrage of questions:
“How do I…”
“What if I want to…”
“I need something that…”
And all my questions were answered without a single word being said: My family handed me a C programing book.
The computer knowledge was fun but really became useful when I was in the 7th grade. My math teacher was trying to explain the combination of numbers and letters when used in Arizona license plates. He had stated that it would be impossible for us to type everything out and print it before the school year was over (school had just started).
Always up for debate I stood up and advised my teacher that he was incorrect. After some talking back and forth he posted a challenge. If someone could produce him the license plates printed you would get an automatic A and never have to do another homework assignment again.
That night I quickly compiled a program that would generate every possible license plates, omitted reserved ranges, captured the results to a text file, and finally started printing everything out automatically. For good measure I made sure the program was just about impossible to close or stop without turning off the computer.
Needless to say I didn’t have to do any kind of math homework that year.
Internet Time
At this current time, if not slightly earlier, the friendly internet was just getting underway (think AOL). And while I had been playing around on BBS services, AOL, and miscellaneous websites I hadn’t realized I might be able to put this “monster” to work, much like I did with the simple C program.
I do not want to get into specifics because I can see this “About Me” page growing into a long rant. But you may know there were advertisements while you surf, websites offering referrals, PPC programs and other means to make cash online. I implemented my standard programing abilities coupled with the current web tools and languages (yes I learned these too) to have a bit of fun.
What I found most interesting were two things: Domains and Search Engines. Domains allowed me to lay claim to a piece of the internet world much like the Wild West settlers of previous day. The search engines were, is, a competition for me. Rank Higher, rank better, rank faster than that company/site – see who wins in the race to the top (I love competition).
So here I am today enjoying the domaining world, enjoying the new technology that is always developing, using both to compete in the SEO game and now hopefully sharing my thoughts and ideas to help out others.
