{"id":3798,"date":"2012-12-10T00:01:44","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T07:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=3798"},"modified":"2012-12-08T13:25:27","modified_gmt":"2012-12-08T20:25:27","slug":"computer-encounters-of-the-first-kind-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=3798","title":{"rendered":"Computer Encounters of the First Kind, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

My High School had a computer lab and, naturally, I avoided it. At the time, I thought that computers were all about math. Having my Algebra II teacher as the computer science teacher didn’t help ease that perception. Even so, I was drawn to the lab.
\n
\nLots of my friends — whom I would refer to as my nerd friends these days — were deeply into computers. They spent every spare moment in the computer lab, which is how I was dragged in there from time to time.<\/p>\n

The computer lab at my High School didn’t actually have a computer. The computer was in the school district office. No, the lab featured noisy teletype machines, terminals. Specifically, as best I can remember, they were the Model 33<\/a>. Here’s a picture from Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

\"Model<\/p>\n

I specifically remember the round keys. Typing on them was a bitch, which I just chalked up to the fact that I hated computers.<\/p>\n

The gizmo on the left of the keyboard was a paper tape reader. Programs were stored on paper tape, which the teletype could punch for output or read for input. I took home some of the punched tape from the trash can because I was so fascinated by it.<\/p>\n

I remember one of my friends trying to get me to play Star Trek<\/em> on the computer. It was agonizing. Because there was no interactive screen, you had to remember things in your head. I lost interest in the game — and in the computer lab.<\/p>\n

One interesting thing that came out the lab was when a friend of mine hacked into the school district mainframe. I don’t know how he did it, but apparently he enrolled a mythical student, who he called “Irving Julius” after the basketball player Julius Irving. I remember this whole episode every time I watch the film Wargames<\/em> where Matthew Brodericks character changes his grades using the school computer.<\/p>\n

Anyway, my friend grew panicked when the administration found out the bogus enrollee and started asking questions. I don’t know if they ever caught him.<\/p>\n

So even though I touched a teletype, and attempted to play a Star Trek<\/em> game in High School, I never really used the computers aside from taking home the paper tape. Things were different when I went to college, which is the subject of Wednesdays’ blog post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My High School had a computer lab and, naturally, I avoided it. At the time, I thought that computers were all about math. Having my Algebra II teacher as the computer science teacher didn’t help ease that perception. Even so, I was drawn to the lab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3798"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3805,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3798\/revisions\/3805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}