Here is a little list that details the journey I’ve made in computer usage. It starts on a dreary day in the elementary school library’s “computer shack,” an actual shed built inside our library that housed Apple IIes. In those days, these games were all the rage:
1. Number Munchers (made in MN). The bad graphics were oh so cool in those days. Or maybe rad. And who even knew that we were doing math?
2. Odell Lake (made in MN). Why, oh why, did anyone ever choose to be a lowly Chub when you could be a Mackinaw Trout? I don’t recall a Chub ever winning the game.
Shortly thereafter (let’s say…mmm…5th grade), I was in a special “advanced” math group. We were allowed to work ahead, and sometimes we’d get up to two weeks in front of the rest of the class. Then we would spend our time in the exclusive “back room” and play this awesome game:
3. Oregon Trail (also made in MN, baby!). This was the version with the 9-pixel “squirrel” flitting about back and forth across the screen. He was worth about 2 lbs. of meat. If you got a buffalo, you were SOL anyway because you could only carry 100 lbs. of meat. Oh, and we quickly figured out that whoever you listed last on your caravan usually had a 95% chance of being the first to die. So, mean kids that we were, the kid that we didn’t like very much (we’ll call him “Perrence”) was always guy #5.
Moving on to about 1994, my family purchased our OWN computer. Can you imagine the ecstasy of looking up things on a CD-ROM instead of using a book? Enter the magical world of:
4. Encarta. Rather than flipping a few pages, we could now type in any ol’ word and instantly (in about 4.5 minutes!) have an encyclopedic description at our fingertips!
5. Spiderman Cartoon Maker. I spent many an afternoon working on this game. I can’t recall exactly what the point was, but I do remember Spidey’s “Spider sense tingling” an awful lot.
6. Solitaire. Oh, my solitary friend. The computer was in the dankest room in our house, and I spent summer afternoons huddled in the dark, cold dampness (with an afghan around me) playing hours upon hours of this sad, sad game. I think my record was 54 seconds. And all just to see those cards bounce at the end. Later I moved on to Minesweeper, but Solitaire was my first love.
A mind-boggling craze swept the nation soon thereafter, and in 1997, our school got THE INTERNET. Soon, my friends and I didn’t have to talk to each other anymore; we could simply all be in different nooks of the library and send each other emails through the coolest new system we’d ever heard of:
7. Hotmail. Need I say more?
Internet fads began. The one most burned in my memory?
8. Hamsterdance. Here’s what the original looked (and sounded) like. I can still sing the song.
Another way to avoid talking to friends in person:
9. ICQ. Chatting at its finest.
I still find this one quite handy. In college I used it to figure out what to wear that day:
10. Weather.com
I got a much better, less spammy email address at
11. Yahoo.com
More Internet fads:
12. All Your Base Are Belong To Us. I still don’t get it.
13. Star Wars kid. That poor guy…
14. Numa Numa guy. Kind of an on-purpose rip-off of Star Wars kid, but he was very popular, nonetheless.
And THIS GUY was stinking awesome. Never mind his friend who the site is named after:
15. Strong Bad
Another truly amazing email change to the bigger, better
15. Gmail
At this time “Google” becomes a verb. For real.
Anyone can post videos of themselves at community-driven
16. YouTube. I look up “laughing babies” on this site about twice a month.
A step or 117 up from Encarta, another community-based, peer-reviewed wonder:
17. Wikipedia. You’ll notice I’ve used it numerous times just in this post.
And just this past year or two, I found out what “blogs” were. Gag. But…the two that got me really interested:
19. Pioneer Woman.
Somehow I managed to avoid the madness that is FaceBook/MySpace, etc., but my friends keep telling me I must join. Right now it holds about as much interest for me as blogging once did. Hmm…
Heh heh. Perrence.
I will not join Facebook. I won’t. No one can make me.
“blogging once did”
hummm what does that mean?
I seem to have gone from
1. that thing is a fad
2. message boards
3. blog.
Where will it go from here???
Funny. That sounds alot like my life!
We had a little black Texas Instruments computer. Strange little thing. Then. Are you ready for this? THEN we got a Commodore 64. And. TONS of games. We were the envy of the neighborhood.
Ah, yes… the internet! Back in ‘97, when I was first introduced to the internet, I didn’t leave the home page of AT&T for about a week. I didn’t know there was content beyond AT&T. Yes… I was a lo-ser!
Oh, wow! Flashback!! I remember using Encarta for the first time and being blown away, and OH! how I loved to play Oregon Trail. Loved. It. So. Much!! It was our reward for good behavior in class. Come to think of it, they didn’t have that on our junior high computers, and that’s where my decline through the total delinquent phase began. Was it for lack of a covered wagon that my behavior went south, I wonder??
VM–ditto!
Donna–the Lord only knows!
Sherry–I totally had the Texas Instruments computer! Or maybe it wasn’t. It was this tiny black and silver thing shaped in a 90-degree angle with the screen right above the tiny, tiny keyboard. I had one in beige, too, by some different maker.
Erica–funneeeee! AT&T = boring. Then again, Internet in 1997 = boring. But at the time, it was state-of-the-art. Thanks to Al Gore, of course. HAAAAA!
Brea–sounds like you need some introspection time. Maybe visit a local museum and ask if you can sit in a conestoga for awhile…
Heidi,
I just found your blog, and have been laughing my way through. I think we must have been sisters in a previous life. Can you believe I’d forgot all about Odell Lake? I’m so ashamed to call myself Minnesotan! I spent many many many hours playing Oregon Trail instead of learning German, which was our version of “advanced” class. Drove my mom crazy with the hamster dance song. I think I’m going to go and call her and leave it on her machine…just for kicks! What fun! Thanks for the memories.
Tina
ps~Is that Hitch in Veronica’s pic? From “On the Road” fame?