Age....

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Patrick Finnegan may have mentioned these words:
>Jules Richardson declared on Saturday 26 February 2005 03:03 pm:
> > On Sat, 2005-02-26 at 22:02 +0800, Wai-Sun Chia wrote:
> > > Born 1966 (age 39).
> >
> > Most people start at zero ;-)
>
>???
>
>1966 + 39 = 2005.

Yes. but 1967 + 37 == 2004. :-)

I guess it depends on your definition of zero. ;-)

>   That's the current year

Or is it... ;-)

>, unless during my intoxication
>last night, I built a time machine and sent myself back 1 year in
>time. :)  However, that seems somewhat unlikely.

Depends on the intoxication. ;-) ... Hrm... 6pack of beer (for myself, at 
least), 3 bottles of wine (Vintage 2000, but was corky... :-(( )...

Me: 1967; got the bug when I was 8. Visited an uncle on vacation [holiday] 
who was in the US Navy; part of his studies was to build a "computer" --> 
he finished it just before we arrived. It converted decimal to binary and 
back, and had a "custom refresh," a.k.a. a knob that changed how often the 
7-segment LEDs blinked from 1Hz to 1000Hz. My uncle was rather a bit amazed 
when I learned (quickly) how to run it. Ever since; it was what I wanted to 
do. He ended up one of the highest ranking NCO's in the Navy before he 
retired. Seen him twice since then, once when I was 10-11 -> he gave me 
actual Navy books on math and 'digital computing theory' which I still 
have... and the second time around 18 months ago. Odd that the person who 
'gave me the bug' and defined such a large aspect of my life was so distant 
and had an (otherwise) minimal impact on my life.

Other than the Atari 2600 my brother and I shared the cost in, my first 
computer was a Tandy CoCo2 with 16K and the Extended Basic. My brother 
threw in about a 1/3 of the purchase price for my birthday, and I sprung 
for the extended basic "Just because." This is despite my father's 
protestations that "My boy won't own a computer thingy until he learns to 
do it on paper." [[ At that time, he *still* thought that the 2600 had tape 
cartridges... ;-) ]] That's why I bought it 2 days after he left town. ;-) 
My father *ordered* me to give it back (and he was a Marine...) until I 
turned it on and asked him to show me how to have it do it's homework for 
him. I eventually sold that system to a friend of mine, and bought a CoCo3; 
which I still own and am ready to upgrade, thanks to Mark Marlette & 
Company. ;-)

My local high school got rid of the cardreader just before I was able to 
get into computer class (grade 10) --> they had an IBM Series I when I had 
computer class at grade 11 where I self-taught myself COBOL... My teacher 
was *useless* and I was supposed to be his "protege" until I could 
outprogram him - which took about 8 weeks. I finished the first year of 
education before the 1/2 year break, and spent the rest of the year 
self-teaching myself BASIC and Pascal.

By my grade 12 year, I was the #2 programmer in the school (including all 
the teachers.)

... Jump to present: I'm teaching myself 8085 assembly on my Tandy Model 
100's; a *big* change from the 6809 assembly I've known for 20 years...

[[ An aside... ]]

Ethan -- it seems so far you're the closest in age to me as I've seen 
professed on this list, and I may very well be at this year's Hamfest again 
this year! If I'm not mistaken, you're no longer on the bottom of the 
planet, eh? Beers? In Person, no less? ;^>   ???

IMHO, NEA, and TMI;
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | A new truth in advertising slogan
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy...
zmerch at 30below.com          |                         ...in oxymoron!"