|
I
am 79 years of age and have been in semi-retirement since 1989. The
twenty year period immediately prior to retirement was spent in the
Caribbean, where, at various times, I was the manager of four business
enterprises owned by the largest retailer in the Caribbean, a
commercial diver engaged in underwater photography, construction, and
demolitions, and a licensed captain of sailing vessels engaged in the
crewed charter business.
I
began messing with these things when Vic 20 and Commodore 64 were big
news.
I
was a schooner captain in the Caribbean and Atlantic before the days
of SatNav or GPS. In short, when we were out of sight of land we used
a sextant, four large books, a stop watch, and spherical trigonometry
to ascertain our approximate geographical location. The entire process
for one session took about half an hour. Of course by that time you
were four or five miles from where you took the sights, therefore
approximate.
Then
some mathematical nut wrote a program which fit nicely on a 5
1/4" floppy, which had the ability to compute the whole nine
yards and give you a "line of position" in about two
minutes. |
|
I'm
not stupid, I bought one of the first copies and a Commodore 64. That
gave me a little extra time. Then came the Commodore 128 and I bought
two of them. Put one on the boat along with my HAM radio and was
running packet radio from the boat, through the 128.
Those
two, and a Zenith two floppy laptop lasted until 1989 when I retired. Almost
immediately two major events occurred that changed my entire
perspective on retirement. I bought a used 286 from an ad in the
paper then purchased a sound card and some speakers from a
character named Hal Cardona, at a yard sale in his back yard in
Noblesville, Indiana.
Bit
by bit, by constant effort Hal managed to insinuate bits of
information into my salt warped brain. I moved to Florida a year later
and through e-mail, MSN, and the twisted pair, the friendship (and
mentoring) has flourished.
I
sit here now, surrounded by four networked computers running 95, 98,
and Win2K and I'm in the process of setting up a Linux machine.
And,
I have a one man fun thing called, "Gerionics" Computer
Consultant to the Chronologically Advantaged.
Damn
these things are fun.... |
,
