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        <h1><a id="HowIGotInterestedInComputers"></a>How I got interested in computers</h1>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> This page is woefully incomplete.</p>
<ul>
<li>old Heathkit computer kits&#8230; I was not allowed to have one (my parents didn&#39;t want to put out that much money)... this was back in the 70&#39;s. However, I did play around with electronics here and there, and built a tone generator for a shortwave radio, etc.</li>
<li>I saw a contact email address listed on some product literature, and thought it incredibly foolish that someone would use a computer to send <q>pretend</q> mail to someone else.</li>
<li>took my first FORTRAN at LSU in 1982</li>
<li>took Pascal in 1986 or so</li>
<li>went in half with T. H. for an old 386 around 1996, but T. H. bought out my share when I moved out of his apartment</li>
<li>got an old 286 in late spring of 1997</li>
<li>immediately upgraded that box by purchasing a 386 board and ram from a used parts place</li>
<li>played with OS/2 warp 3 for a few months, on an old 80 MB hard drive</li>
<li>put up an eggdrop bot in late 1997, running on my ISP&#39;s shellbox</li>
<li>upgraded to a 486 board sometime in 1998</li>
<li>finally made headway with OS/2 in 1998</li>
<li>the 486 board and half my peripherals burned out in perhaps November 1998. I suspect I had too many hard drives installed, and when I landed my first CD-ROM, the thing croaked after 2 days :-(</li>
<li>Got new enough parts together for a new box in december 1999 (30 days without a PC? I almost lost my mind over it)</li>
<li>got a job at a hack shop putting together K6-2 266 MHz machines for the christmas rush in December 1998</li>
<li>started working at Bayou on January 2, 1999 and immediately started playing with a box truck full of old parts</li>
<li>wired Bayou with cat 5 cable</li>
<li>upgraded all PCs to modern hardware and Windows 95 in spring 1999</li>
<li>took a spare Pentium 233 box and installed <a href="http://opensuse.org">SuSE Linux</a> 6.2 on it, which I purchased from CompUSA</li>
<li>perhaps 2 weeks into my Linux project, I realized that all of the configuration files looked exactly like the eggdrop config files I had been editing. The light comes on at this point :-)</li>
<li>got advice in fall 1999 from Scott Harney who was at that time the sysadmin for Fast Band, on how to administrate the SuSE as a dialup router for Bayou. He metioned starting <a href="http://nolug.org">NOLUG</a> with friends and invited me to come out</li>
<li>several months later I attend my first NOLUG meeting, and am totally hooked on Linux from this point on.</li>
<li>Hired on at Fast Band (thanks, Scott) and begin leaving Bayou in May 2000</li>
<li>went full time at Fast Band a month or two later and completely left Bayou</li>
<li>Fast Band went belly-up on October 1, 2000 and I&#39;m out on the street. It&#39;s a long hard road at this point, trying to find another computer gig.</li>
</ul>
<h1><a id="ToBeAdded"></a>To be added:</h1>
<ul>
<li>mainframe</li>
<li>junker that Dean gave me</li>
<li>advanced video</li>
</ul>

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