Life before the Internet?

How did you get started using computers? When did you first get "online". Do you predate the Internet being available to the public or was it always here for you?


Well gather 'round dearies, while I rock and knit and let me tell you about the dark times before there was the Internet.

*hushed silence and wide eyed gazed from the youngsters sitting at my feet*
I was introduced to computers at a really young age. Well, let me re-phrase. Comparatively speaking it was a young age back in the early 80's. I was most likely around 10 or 12. My dad brought home a Commodore Vic 20, this huge ....."thingy" that attached to our TV and that played some simple games (remember Pong???) and some educational ones too. That did not hold our interest very long, since we were so caught up in the new technology of ...... Cassette Tapes.

When I was in college were required to write a few of our papers on word processors that were found in the computer lab. However, it was always easy enough to ask one of my room mates to type the paper for me in return for beer. That was called Beer-nomics. As I progressed in my education classes, someone had the foresight to know that computer education would become huge, and we had to do many assignments, projects and lesson plans on Apple computers. Not macs, my dears... Apples. And you had to put these large disks in the floppy drive (remember this is in the age before CD/DVD Roms) to save your work.

We had a computer when we got married in 93. We had an on;line service called Prodigy. This was the beginning of my internet life as I became more savvy in posting on bulletin boards. However, there was no surfing on the Web for me, everything I needed to know was found on Prodigy. Even though I spent much time on there, I didn't get much information since dial up connections were so slow.

Now, I love to be on the Information Superhighway. Just don't beep at me if I go too slow for you young whippersnappers.