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326 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
----====<<My Name Is Reo>>====----
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A look at how the electonic me was born :)
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by Tom Hare
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I suppose one could say I have computers in my blood. I haven't been
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assimilated by the Borg or injected with a lojack, but I was raised in an
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environment where electronics were everywhere, computers were commonplace,
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and robots were a regularity. I recently saw a photograph (digitally altered,
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of course) of a fetus hooked up to a computer system by what may have been
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either umbilicus or fiber-optic cable. This image resonated within my psyche;
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I realized that I was one of these children, a member of the first generation
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to whom computer technology is familiar since birth. From the microwave to
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the microchip, computerized devices were not --machina non grata-- to me; more
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likely, they were --silica vitae.--
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Let me begin at the beginning. I was born in 1979, the second and last child
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of Timothy and Evelyn Hare of Tallahassee, Florida. They met while attending
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Florida State University, and were married in 1974. While Tallahassee is no
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Silicon Valley, they both found themselves working with the forefront of
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computer technology.
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In 1983 when I was 4, my mother would bring me with her to Astoria Park, my
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sister's (and later my) school, on volunteer jobs. I would get to play games
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on the Apple II's in the media center while my mom worked. I can remember
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playing those Ziggy learning games with the little fuzzy creature falling down
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the screen, and using the Sunburst word processing software (albeit probably
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not to write anything in English; I just remember the orange
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five-and-a-quarter jackets!) I also vaguely remember being tested on the
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computer for the gifted program before I was enrolled, which involved being
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asked what was wrong with certain pictures and whether I could solve tangrams.
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Apparently I passed, because in the first grade I was placed in gifted at
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Astoria Park. The classes were held in the media center, and offered me
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"unique learning opportunities" and "a more individualized teaching
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situation." The students I met in the gifted class way back in 1986 would
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become lifelong friends, and one in particular would become my girlfriend,
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though not until 1997 on. Of course, I didn't know about any of that back
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then, so being put in gifted meant one important thing to me -- regular access
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to the Apple IIs and their games.
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Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? and Oregon Trail were the greatest
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games in existence. The rest of the class would get to play those games
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sometimes if they wanted, but I was the best. I could reach Oregon on a
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grueling pace with meager rations without losing a single family member to
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dysentery. When we had a Carmen Sandiego competition, my partner Cory and I
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finished first, catching Carmen in Montreal with a huge amount of time to
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spare (I'll admit, somewhat due to the fact that I knew holding down the
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open-apple key sped up the text scrolling speed).
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While Carmen and Oregon offered epic globe-trotting fun, there are few words
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to accurately describe the simple, unparalleled joy of playing Number
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Munchers. I spent hours and hours discovering the truth that math can be fun
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after all. I would send the frog-thing 'gleeping' valiantly across those
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squares, avoiding troggles and eating what equaled what. Sometimes, I still
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hear his synthesized croak of victory in my dreams, and it's beautiful.
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After I conquered these kingdoms, my choice in software changed somewhat.
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Our gifted class was bussed weekly over to the Academic Resource Center on the
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campus of FAMU, where they offered even more unique classes for students. Some
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of my classmates took pottery, violin, stock market, or foreign languages, but
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I stuck to the computer and programming classes. My first taste of programming
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was here, and was the friendly turtle of Logowriter. I was simply creating
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shapes with the digital turtle's movement. We also had a number of robot-type
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devices in our classroom, from the single-robot-arm Armatron that you could
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manipulate, to the voice-controlled Omnibot, to Lego Technics, which could be
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hooked up to a computer and then actually programmed.
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I may have been in third grade by this time, a mere 8 or 9 years old, and I
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was becoming accustomed to teachers asking me how to do certain things on
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their computers.
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"How do you reset it without turning it off and on?" "What's that blue
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screen?" and "How did you get the computer to talk to you?" were some of the
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common questions. They were usually coupled with looks of incredulity when I'd
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do something amazing like use BASIC at the command prompt. My programs
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invariably went something like this:
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INPUT "What is your name"; NAME$
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INPUT "What is your age"; AGE$
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INPUT "What is your favorite animal"; AN$
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PRINT "HEY EVERYBODY! "; NAME$; " kissed "; AGE$; " "; AN$; " last night!"
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Another program I used only at ARC that has resurfaced in a modern variety
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was Hyperstudio. Hyperstudio allowed you to combine video, sound, and digital
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components into impressive multimedia presentations. Today, some
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businesspeople use PowerPoint for presentations, but I was creating them with
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Apple IIGS's way back in 1987. While I enjoyed using the computers for these
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kinds of things at school and ARC, I was greatly discouraged by the fact that
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the only time I could use them was during the school day.
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Our family didn't have a real computer at home for a long time, but we had
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an Atari 400 before I entered school. While it couldn't do much, I'm told I
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was still fascinated. I would draw shapes on the Atari 400 with the special
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character sets. There was a chart on the keys that showed how you could get
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a line or a box, and I'd draw a house, or a boat, or whatever. It was a flat
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beige boxy keyboard with a plastic cover (to keep my sister and me from
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getting crud in the keys, I imagine). At some point we got rid of that one
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for an 800, then did the same for an 800XL.
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My handwriting was atrocious (still is), and by the fourth grade I was
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writing my book reports and journals with its word processor -- not to mention
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a few computer-generatedly anonymous love notes to girls I liked. The Atari
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also had games I loved to play over and over like Miner 49er, Pac-Man, Donkey
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Kong, and of course, Pong. The graphics and sound were pretty simple on most
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of these games, but the spirit was there. They were fun, and that was what
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counted. I still felt like the Atari couldn't do anything near what the
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Apples were doing in school, though.
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For five years I suffered at home, yearning for the multifunctionality of a
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personal computer. My father finally got a real home computer in 1992. It
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was a 386 megahertz MS-DOS machine with a CD-ROM drive and everything. I
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spent a lot of time playing on that machine. At first, it was just games.
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I'd be just about to complete Police Quest II or another adventure game when
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Teresa would fight me off of the computer to play Hoyle's Card Games. Or I'd
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be shooting my way through the bricks of Arkanoid, and my mom would kick me
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off so she could use her databases of patterns for sewing on plastic canvas.
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Or I'd be bouncing around the psychedelic world of Bubble Bobble, when Dad
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would send me away in order to work from home. All I knew was that somehow
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he called DOT on the phone and was able to talk to their computer from ours.
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Little did I know that the boring box with the red lights blinking nonstop
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would change my life.
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Yes, I mean that 2400 baud behemoth, that staticy stallion, and the reason I
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hate call-waiting to this day: the modem. My father used it mostly to dial in
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from home to work on the DOT mainframe. However, he also showed me how to
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call up and access a BBS. I had no idea that computers could actually
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communicate with each other, especially not in such a useful way! These
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boards were nothing like the Internet of today. Each BBS stood alone and
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had to be dialed up separately-- there was no network of systems. There
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were no graphics except those created out of the ANSI character sets. Upon
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connecting, you were often greeted with a simple black screen and the somber
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command "Press ESC twice. . ." Then the login prompt would appear which
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could either grant or deny your request for an escape from reality.
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From that first BBS my dad showed me, the Tally Apple, I found a list of
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over 50 BBSes in operation in the 904 area code. I quickly discovered that
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most of the BBSes in Tallahassee were adults-only stores of pornography and
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houses of chat of ill-repute. Only a select few were open to people of all
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ages. I was only 13, so my preference was quickly narrowed to the
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Southeastern Evaluation Association, or SEA BBS. The SysOp, of SEA was Susan
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McNamara, who set up the board to support the evaluation of companies'
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efficiency, or something. I never really understood the original purpose;
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The BBS had spread far beyond that before I joined. This became my regular
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haunt, with occasional trips to The Computer Patch and 'underground' BBSes
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being run by teens, like the Rooftop and Jedi Alliance BBS.
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One of the most alluring things about BBSes was the veil of anonymity. While
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they let you use an alias, it was a simple feat to discover a user's real
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identity. I began on Tally Apple as Don Maxx (after the Ninja Turtle and my
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friend Aaron's slogan "Maxx Out -- Be Extreme!"). Then I changed myself to
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The Omniscience on Computer Patch, a name which was the maximum number of
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characters the board allowed. I settled for a while as Charon, the River Styx
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boatman, on SEA and boards after that.
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Hanging around on these boards all day was great. They each were based on
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message forums, where we could discuss whatever we wanted. While the teen-run
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BBSes usually allowed unlimited --and unsupervised-- access, the content was
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rarely worth the time spent connecting. On SEA, only one user could dial up
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at a time, so they limited you to usage of 1 hour every 4 hours. I would batch
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download the new messages and get off; hurriedly reply to everything I was
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involved in, dial back up and upload my responses, and then my hour would
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usually be up. So then I'd call other BBSes at random in order to waste the 4
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hours until I could check replies to my replies.
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Through this practice, I became used to seeing a few names on BBSes across
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town, though to this day I have only met a small percentage of those people.
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Names like Midnight Star, MindStalker, Electric Monk, Aurora, PVC, and a few
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real names like John Ponder were my friends in the electronic world only, but
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those I spent the most time communicating with.
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I also spent a lot of time with the program TheDraw! drawing ANSI and
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ASCII art that were the pictures for the opening screens of BBSes. I wish
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that I had saved some of that stuff, because there are only 2 BBSes still
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running in town and everything's been lost.
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At about the same time that I was using these systems, I entered the
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mandatory computer and typing class in middle school. The teacher was an
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hugely fat, stupid, lazy woman who barely understood computers herself. So
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I did the typing tests like everyone else, finishing way ahead of time.
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After about a week of bordeom, I brought TheDraw! in on a disk and just
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started drawing after I finished the typing exams. The teacher, of course,
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didn't understand, and told me to stop. So I moved to the back of the room
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and only did it when she wasn't looking.
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During that semester, a computer across the room from mine caught
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fire during class. I mean it exploded, flames shooting up to the ceiling
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and stuff. That afternoon I was called into the principal's office, and they
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informed me that I would be responsible for paying to replace the computer
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that had caught fire, since I had obviously caused its demise with all the
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"strange hacking" (They actually called it that!) I was doing in class. I was
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ultra-pissed. Eventually, and with my mother's long, patient explanation to
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the staff members that nothing you could type on a computer can make it
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explode, they actually told me that I didn't have to even take the typing
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tests anymore. The computer I sat at was the only one with a modem (!) so I
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ended up, school-sanctioned, calling BBSes and drawing for that period. The
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teacher gave up, eventually, and resigned to the fact that I knew more than
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her about it.
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In addition to messages, SEA had 'Doors,' which was the term for programs
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you could get the BBS to run. Naturally, my favorites were games. My
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sister's best friend Emily (Grumbles) was a common user of SEA, and I became
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rather good friends with her over the system. Emily was a 'wizard' on one of
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the games I played a lot as Reo, Pyroto Mountain. Pyroto was a game in which
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you climbed a mountain by answering trivia questions written by the wizards.
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She still ignored me in person, of course, but we'd correspond through the \
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primitive mail system about the game, and badmouth my sister (heh.)
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Another wonderful feature of SEA was their file system. You could upload
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and download almost anything you could imagine. Shareware (or not) games,
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recipes, pictures, equipment manuals, and of course instructions for makeshift
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explosives and cable descramblers were all regular content of the Files
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sections. The uncensored and unadministrated distribution of information was
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captivating. I read every textfile, downloaded every game and every picture
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on that system. I was actually first introduced to two of my favorite
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artists, Patrick Nagel and Olivia DeBerardinis, through what I now know were
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illegally copied versions of their art.
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The Files section also was involved in another milestone of my life. I was
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innocently browsing the .gif section looking for new material, when among the
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Nagels I found a picture simply called girl.gif. The description was "A nice
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girl." I went ahead and downloaded it, and whap! I suddenly and unexpectedly
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became a member of the first generation of young men who can say they saw
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their first picture of a naked woman not in a Playboy (or in person, if
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they're --really-- lucky), but on the computer screen.
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Aaron, my best friend then, was over at my house at the time, and we were
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both extremely happy about this discovery. We spent that night as kids
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often do, making prank phone calls to buddies and looking at that picture
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when no one was around. The next day, the telephone rang and my father
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answered. I heard him become serious, and say "Yes, we will definitely talk
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to him about this," as he glared at me ominously.
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"What's going on?" My mother asked me.
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"I, uh... I think Aaron's parents found out I gave him a picture on a disk,"
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I responded quietly.
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"What kind of picture?" she demanded.
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"A naked girl," I admitted, embarassed as hell..
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When my father hung up, he said "Well, Tom, you're in trouble. That was
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your friend's mother, and she says that you and Aaron did something very
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irresponsible last night. She says you were making prank calls?" (D'OH!!!)
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After my punishment was over and I was allowed to use the modem again, for a
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brief time I used Compuserve, but not long enough to understand it. Since I
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was a fan of Sierra's Space Quest and Police Quest series of games, and my
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sister and mother liked their Hoyle card game series, our family signed up to
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use the Sierra Network. The Sierra Network, which later became the
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ImagiNation Network, was my first experience with anything like the internet
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as it is today. There were hundreds of users connected at one time from
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anywhere in the world. On the Sierra Network, we could not only join
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chatrooms, send mail and buy CD-ROM games, but we could also play fully
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graphical games with the other users. This was an amazing new feature of
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modem communication that I had never before experienced. The games were
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mostly limited to simple things such as chess, checkers and other board or
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casino games. I became a 3-D Tic Tac Toe addict, competing in monthly
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tournaments against other users. I never won as long as I was on that
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system.
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The Sierra Network did have a few multiplayer action games. One was a
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role-playing game that later split into two, the Shadow of Yserbius and the
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Fates of Twinion, and another was a dogfighting game called Red Baron. Red
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Baron was the place I first experienced the horrible limboic sensation known
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as lag. Lag occurs, as I understand it, when your connection fails to send
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or receive information in synchronization with the system you are connected
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to. It is often caused by line noise or heavy traffic on one system. In
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layman's terms, you find yourself lagging behind the other users by a few
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seconds or more, unable to communicate effectively, until everything suddenly
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--snaps-- back into sync. It was almost constant during games of Red Baron; I
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would be attempting a barrel roll underneath my enemy with the intention of
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shooting him down from the other side, when I'd find my controls getting more
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sluggish, then without warning the ground would explode into my windshield and
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I'm dead.
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Another friend, John, first referred me to the Tallahassee Freenet, a free
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dialup Internet provider, in 1993. The first thing he showed me was where to
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find a list of MUDs. I started playing Dark Castle for a while, but I didn't
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ever really like it -- I never was big into RPGs or games like that.
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The point was to kill monsters and improve your character, but I had more fun
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talking to people. On that system I was kind of shocked to meet people
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from such varied places as Finland, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, and all over
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the United States. After a few months playing this game, John referred me
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to another called TinyTIM, which was not a MUD, but a MUSH.
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The point of a MUSH is not to kill, but simply to create. They are called
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Multi-User Shared Hallucinations, because everyone connected is free to build
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and program anything the system's language allows. The main idea is simply to
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hang out and chat with others, with a certain degree of alternate reality
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provided. One can sit on the ceiling, play frisbee, use toads to battle, or
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even interact with The Clock on the Wall, the most complicated object
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programmed on TinyTIM. When I first connected to TIM in 1994, I thought the
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Clock was a player beause it responded to so many things. I still use my
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character at least once a week. I've made friends with many of the users and
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consider myself somewhat of an old-timer (Some of the users have been there
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since its creation in 1990!)
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TinyTIM is where I got the name Reo, as well. I was still Charon on
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everything I was playing until the summer of 94/95, when I had a few
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particularly depressing months, and when I got over it I wanted a new name.
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Everyone pretty much hated Charon because I had been so bitter and anti-
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social during that time. So I stole the name Reo from an object I'd made
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on TIM, The Random Exploring Object, which randomly tried to teleport into
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different database numbers to find out who had what, where. From then on
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I've been Reo. I can't tell you how many times people ask me if I'm a
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speedwagon or if I dance in the sand. :) I also am a big fan of Duran Duran,
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so naturally I just adopted 'Rio' as my theme song after this.
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From there, it was a small step for me to discover Lynx. It was simply
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another option from Freenet's main menu. I had another amazing discovery when
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I realized it could connect me to a vast number of computers. I used Lynx on
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Freenet as much or more than I ever had the Files system on SEA. The WWW was
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many times better than the simple local Files system because it could pull
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information from any computer connected to it. Anything I wanted to
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investigate, I found. I used the WWW for homework, entertainment, and any
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other information I needed or wanted. When I was introduced to the visual
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WWW through Netscape in 1995, I was again blown away. I began writing HTML
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pages in a computer class, and haven't stopped since.
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Since 1996, the entire world has discovered the Internet and can easily
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access it. I feel somewhat violated by this; before that time, computer
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communication was something only a few people I knew could delight in. Now
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everyone does the same things I do: they use Napster because the media makes a
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big deal out of it; they take the graphics and bells and whistles of the WWW
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for granted; they don't know how to do anything else but they can get in a
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chat room and yell 'NE GIRLS PUSH 1234' from AOL and its evil existence; warez
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and piracy are mainstream efforts; porn is even more rampant than it was;
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computer companies now work towards the dollar and not towards the user.
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There have been lots of bad changes. Of course, there have been lots of good
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changes, too, though.
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Computers have always been a huge part of my life, and have become one
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that I cannot live without. I experienced a vastly unseen history that the
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rest of the world living through the 80's and 90's missed. I learned, I
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played, I grew with computers and they will always be close at hand. Each of
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my jobs has involved computer operation in some capacity. Growing up using
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computers, for work and for play, has shaped me in a very unique way. Because
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most programs have always been text-based, my reading skill, speed and
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vocabulary have been augmented. Video gaming and programming have cultivated
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an almost obsessive attention to detail and accuracy of memory, which improved
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both my school and professional work. When my girlfriend went to another
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college, we would chat nightly (for free!) over the net. At home, I spend
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upwards of 10 hours a day connected to the Internet; whether I'm actively
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using it or simply waiting for messages from others, my computer is online and
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ready. For a majority of my daily life, I exist not as Tom, the
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flesh-and-blood human that eats, breathes, and goes bowling, but as Reo, the
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shade of identity that lives only in the electronic sphere where it eats
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bytes, breathes signals and sits on the ceiling.
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