-- This is my first post! --
Wednesday, August 12, 2020

"let me tell you how it will be...TAXMAN" 
-- The Beatles

"There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear."  
-- The Buffalo Springfield

Call me COVID-crazy but this working from home has got me digressing into
numerous rabbit holes, and one of them turned out to be a gopher hole. 
(did I mention "dad jokes" in the introduction?).

I recently read some articles that got me thinking about retro computing
and sort of kicked off the whole path that led me to sdf.org and gopher.
I was in college when I got my first computer, a Commodore 64.  I never
had an Apple II, couldn't afford one. By the time I was done with college
in 1984 (yes I'm old), the IBM PC was the next big thing and the Apple II
was on the way out.

I can remember clearly when I went to interview at Peat Marwick Mitchell 
& Co in Dallas, they were very proud of the 5 brand new dual floppy IBM
PC's in their library.  I thought I was joining the computer age, only 
to be told later by my supervisors not to use those PC's on their job
because they didn't want to "blow the budget."  So I started out with
a 10-key and 13-column ledger paper, pencils and erasers.  I very 
quickly figured out how to use those PC's, however, and I became hooked
on the power of the personal computer.

Over the passing decades, I've used lots of different cool computing 
devices. Unfortunately, most of those got passed on to someone else 
or sold in the name of progress. I still have a few old Macs, a Psion
5mx, and an HP 100LX.  I recently purchased an Apple IIc because I 
love the look of these but I didn't get the matching 9" CRT (yet).
I also bought THE C64 emulator to relive my Commodore glory days.

I also discovered the Raspberry Pi (I know I'm old AND slow) and this
has me very excited about getting my retro computers online to do 
things like calling computer bulletin board systems (like I did in
my youth) and IRC and telnet, and SSH and text based browsing...

More on these topics later. I've said enough for now...

/end pointless rambling