January 30: AW Monday Meme #7

AW Monday Meme #7Today's little quiz is about computers and you.

1. Do you remember the first computer you ever used? If so, tell us what you remember and why you were using it.
My first computer was in 1983 and it was a Commodore 64. I mainly used it to write stories and to play some neat "Olympic" games. It contained a program that I loved where you could be an olympian athlete - you pick the sport and the nation and compete against the computer for the gold, silver or bronze. It also had National Anthems for many countries. One could ski, swim, participate in skeet shooting...the list was endless. And it was such fun and a big hit with my family. I remember hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas family gatherings and everyone would gather around the "computer" and play games or just check it out. We sold it several years later when we got a "real" computer. And I missed it so much. I kept wishing we had kept it.

2. Do you remember the first computer you ever bought for yourself? What was it - if you know details like how much memory it had or anything funny about it, share!
We got a 486 computer from Office Max in Fresno. It had a 100 mb harddrive and 1 mb of RAM. We used it in our business. But it soon was almost worthless. It didn't take long for us to fill it to the max and everything suddenly was in super-slow motion.

3. What kind of computer are you using right now? Any particular story about you and your computer experience you can share?
Believe it or not, we have five computers at home and one at the office. All three of my daughters have computers, I have a 3 ghz computer running windows XP and a 200 gb harddrive with a dvd and cd burner. I love my computer. My girls have similar ones. Also, I have a Dell Inspiron 2.8 ghz laptop and two BlackBerry's, 7290. (pda) which I have sync'd to my online calendar and to my computer address book. I can't imagine life without it.

4. Is there one thing about having a computer that is particularly important in your personal history? Something you wouldn't have done or known unless you had a computer? Some big change having one made in your life? - for example, I (Dawno) met my SO 15 years ago because I bought a Commodore128 that had a floppy disk in it for an online service called Q-Link. We would never have met if I'd bought a different computer.
Wow. You would have to go and ask, didn't you? Some time ago - and I do mean a long time ago - like 11 years ago -  I had a dear friend from church who had moved to Holland. I decided to "look" for him. I went online (Compuserve) and never found him - but, I did find the Netherlands forum. And it was not long before I had lots of Dutch friends and they started inviting me to visit....so, I bought me a ticket to Holland, left my three babies behind and left. I was 32 at the time. I guess none of that would have happened if I didn't have the one office computer.  I made some wonderful friends and have had five different people from Holland come to visit me.