Akkam’s Razor

A Tech Meme, blatently stolen from Geeky Mom:

1. Do you remember when you saw your first computer? When did you actually use one? What about having your own? Do you own a laptop? (PC or Mac?) Have you gone wireless at home yet?

Probably around 1982 or so, aside from what I saw on TV or in movies. My grade school offered paid special classes on Commodore PETs with cassette drives. When I was in the Mentally Gifted program, we used Apple IIs. After that, my high school had IBM PC Juniors. In 1996, I got a Micron Millenia, which I subsequentlly updated the drives, memory, processors, etc. When my wife and I got an apartment, I got us a Dell, which I similarly upgraded. I eventually gutted it, sold it on eBay, and got a new motherboard, went from Windows 98SE to XP Pro, and updated it. My wife has a work laptop - we'll probably get a cheap one (under $1k). I've had wireless for about a year - it's essential - it makes me wish I had a porch, deck, or nice yard. I also had a Palm IIIxe, which I replaced with a Palm m515, which I used with a Bluetooth SDIO-card to browse the net (horribly complicated). I replaced that with a Dell Axim x50v, which has both Bluetooth and WiFi, and is usually how I do my browsing.

2. When did you first go online and/or use email? Who did you email back then? How did the internet change your life? When did you discover blogging? What about your home internet connection - is it dial-up, DSL, cable?

1996 was the year of my first email. I don't think I emailed anyone - I had no one to email. The internet is like "jacking into the matrix" for me. As someone who reads and absorbs every single thing he encounters, it's like crack. Whenever I have a question, I can find an answer - and in turn, usually come up with new questions in need of answers. Like a lot of people, I don't think blogging is anything new. I've been online somewhere, and had a webpage with a "what's new" section since 1996. The first universally accepted blog was published in 1994 - in those days, a blog was just a frequently updated we page, not like todays full packages like Wordpress, Blogger, MySpace, or Xanga. I was always interested in the behavior of people online - so being one of those people was a natural fit. In the beginning, I had dialup at 28.8k. My in-laws had a PackardBell with a 14.4k modem that I tried to get onto AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve with. The alternative would be the Philadelphia Library, which had terminal web access using Lynx (picture the internet with a black screen and green text - old skool dummy terminal style.) After 1999/2000, we've had broadband ever since.

3. Do you remember your first VCR? What about a video camera (there were some bulky ones back in the 80s and 90s) and home videos?

In the beginning, probably in the early 1980s, a friend's parents' had a Beta deck. After our console TV died, my parents got a new TV, and we would occasionally rent a VCR from Video Unlimited. We eventually got a VCR - a top loader with wired remote. I especially remember the crazy complicated dials and switches (mechanical, no less) required to set a timer. We've had a video camera in the house, and I've never used to make anything that I would ever show in public. As far as mementos are concerned, I prefer photobooks.

4. When did you switch from VCR to DVD? How did it change your video viewing experience? Do you use TiVo or any such "contraption" to tape TV shows? Do you use Netflix or some other internet-based DVD "renting" service?

We just recently got a DVD player by way of the Playstation 2 no more than 3 or 4 years ago. We're not really big movie consumers. I think if we were, I would just buy a movie we wanted to see every couple of weeks or so. I have Snapstream TV software installed on the PC, but never really used it as much as I could as a Tivo service. We'll probably go to some kind of movie service, especially as costs of cable go up - I'd like nothing better than to shrink our cable bill and get rid of anything I don't watch.

5. What about music? Did you enjoy listening favorite music in Long Plays or did you prefer cassette tapes? When did you buy your fist CD player and switched to CDs? Did you abandon them (and turned to downloaded music) for MP3 players or Ipods or do you still buy CDs? (I'm not going to ask or comment about "illegal" music activities in the internet, even though it was an exciting innovation, lest one of us gets arrested for it

I was cheap and stupid, stubbornly deciding to buy only cassettes and saving money (if you remember, tapes were around $8.99 while CDs were $17.99).  The downside of this that now I have a thousand tapes and no way to get them on an audio player or computer.  I probably had a CD player since at least grade school graduation, however.  I don't really drive much, and I don't wear headphones around work or when commuting, so I really don't listen to that much music anymore. 

6. Do you own and use a cell phone? Do you think it's useful or just annoying?(Did you always have a telephone in your house growing up? Did you have a phone in your own room?)

A cellphone to me is still a just-in-case type of thing, although I have a web capable, speakerphone, bluetooth, video capturing do it all phone. 

7. When did you first buy a digital camera? What kind was it (3.2, 4.0, 5.0 mega-pixels or better)? Did you start taking more pictures or were you a photo aficionado before then? What about a digital video camera?

We got our first camera, a 3.0MP Kodak, probably around 1999.  It was big, bulky, and SLOW.  It died one day,  so I replaced it with a 5.0MP Kodak around 3-years ago, which is now big, bulky, and slow.  We'll probably replace it this Christmas.

I never had a digital video camera - way back in 1997 I got a WinTV capture card that let me watch TV and capture either broadcast, cable, or composite (off of a VCR, camcorder, or some other source) and convert it to MPEG.  I used it extensively for watching TV, but as far as "making moves", not so much.

I don't really know how excited I am to get a digital video camera.  Aside from the implied "Tommy and Pam Home Video" uses, I generally find making and watching family home movies annoying. 

8. What about televisions? Have you already embraced the new technologies, such as HDTV, plasma, and flat screen? (On the other hand, you wouldn't remember black & white TVs, would you?)

Nope.  TV is becomming less and less important for me.  I'd spend double the price of a traditional TV for a flat screen, but not 10-times.