Computers

My day job is installing and working on all kinds of technology. It is what I have done since the late 1980's, however I built my first computer in the early 80's. It was a Sinclair ZX-81. It was introduced in 1981. Sinclair merged with Timex not longer afterwards and that model became the Timex Sinclair.
I built it from a kit that cost me $99.00. It had 1k (that's right K) of RAM. You connected it to a TV. I built an interface that allowed me to save the programs I wrote or typed in from a magazine to a cassette recorder and then I could restore them back to the computer. It used BASIC only. I subscribed to the monthly magazine and copied most of the programs in them to the computer then to the cassette. The block on the back of the picture is a 64k add-on RAMpack. I bought that plus several pre-recorded cassettes at a close-out for $10 or so a couple of years later. That seems to be my way of buying computers - I buy it and then a week later the price drops by half!!
I then went to the Commodore 64. I became a Commodore authorized computer dealer. I did that part-time while working at several "real" jobs in order to pay the bills. In 1987 I started working part-time for an office supply business that was trying to get into computers. I knew more about computers than anyone there, even though I was just hired as a gopher. Eventually I worked my way into the "computer guy" and quit my day job and started working for them.
Toward the end of 1989 I joined with several other guys to start our own computer business. We sold, installed and supported medical office management software that ran on UNIX. I was the hardware and UNIX support person. We covered all of Kansas, a bit into Missouri and also Oklahoma.
I did that until we sold the business in 1995, then continued to work for the guys who bought the company, doing the same thing I had previously been doing.
In 2000 they moved me from the Midwest to Florida to become the Regional Service Manager. That lasted until August 2001 when I went back to Kansas.
That takes me to doing what my current job is Technology Support Specialist for a State University covering the western third of the state.
More in a later post. I don't want to bore you too much at one time.