Our first computer in the house was a HMD Apple II... ...in maybe 1995. I was 5 years old. My dad was the maintenance guy at a church and school that was upgrading their computer lab and decided that 20 working Apple II's were worthless to them and thus simply threw them out. They had a ton of games, too. Mostly learning and more christian-friendly games, but I remember things like Alice in Wonderland, Type To Learn, Math Muncher, Oregon Trail... ...so on. You could not pull me away from that thing for an entire year. I played on that thing every night. The Sega Genesis and SNES I got in 97 is the only reason I stopped playing on it
In 2000, we got a crappy, bottom-level HP desktop loaded up with Win2k. We had an iomega cd burner. THIS was where it all started. I friggen loved that thing. Spent almost all of my time on it. It was slow and it crashed all on its own a lot, but I didn't care. I loved watching stuff on newgrounds, ebaums world, and albinoblacksheep. Played a lot of DOOM and ROTT via dos emulators. I got into a few forums and found that I really liked it. I remember getting caught on a lockpicking forum and having to answer some interesting questions from my parents... ...such as why an 11 year old is trying to pick locks. Truth is I just found it interesting. I used to practice on locks around the house when they weren't home. The internet was so awesome to me in that way. I felt like, "Man, you can learn about anything on this thing!" So I spent a lot of time just learning and researching things... ...just sort of answering questions that would pop into my head. As a child, I was always super-interested in figuring out how things around me worked. The internet fed that in a really big way.
As a young child, people would look at me astounded at what I knew and the things I would do for fun... always saying "How did you learn that?!" I was always building things, fixing things, reverse-engineering things, describing how things they probably thought of as "forbidden techno magic" worked. They must've though I was some sort of prodigal genius. To be fair I was an intelligent kid, but I don't think it was anything built into me that facilitated my knowledge. I was generally average. I just found a great tool and learned to put it to good use. I had the library of Algernon at my fingertips and I knew it. I spent a lot of my middle childhood alone, teaching myself things and taking in new information. I would say it was a major formative component to being the person I am today. It cued me into the fact that you don't have to be a genius to do what you want to do and do it well. Very little is beyond the average person in this golden age of information. Because of those experiences picking new things up, I have a very wide/deep range of knowledge and skills, which is what most people around me know me for - most of it things a lot of people would look at themselves and say "I'll never be able to learn that." And it's all thanks to the internet and that old computer. The internet instilled in me the love for learning and problem solving that defines me to this day.
In 2001-2002, Neopets got me into web coding and graphic design (which I did a ton of.) I figured out how to pirate photoshop and took off with it. I found a few small communities to share my work with and got sucked in. I ran several stupid fansites and portfolios that I built from the ground up on like, angelfire and shit like that lol. I remember being frustrated with the lack of control. I was almost spending more time trying to bypass their stupid scripts to get what should've been basic code to work like it did in my local browser. I eventually found a host that gave me full control on the backend. I set up and ran a phpbb forum for friends to have our little secret club where we would do things that would definitely get us in trouble at home
That stuff ended up being a big part of me. I considered doing signage and websites as a career at one point. The only thing that stopped me was the overwhelming number of other things I wanted to do at the time.
I also pirated a lot of porn and music, which me and friends would barter disks of, much like people used to do with tapes. I ripped through CD-R's much to my parents' dismay. Sometimes I burned stuff I didn't need to just because the idea of it was really cool to me
With songs people wanted that I couldn't find, I learned I could rip them off of the radio by feeding the headphone out to the computer's line in. I recorded and chopped them up with audacity. Not the best quality, but friends bought it. I also learned that our monitor had a built-in mic. I remember using that to do mock-up radio broadcasts with friends back in 6th grade. We would play the songs through winamp, with audacity taking the output from that and the mic simultaneously. I must've used splitters to make it happen. Good times.
Admittedly, I ran the thing into the ground. Between all of the viruses from sketchy sites and bad practices, all of the "tweaks" I would make, and constantly topping off the hard drive...
My parents finally got wise and let me get a computer of my own in late 2003. They let me configure my own dell on their website. I remember spending a lot of time deliberating over components... ...just trying to figure out which ones would give me what I wanted within the budget I had. I'd say this is when it all started. This one had WinXP and much better stuff inside. I really liked that computer. This is when I officially started crossing into the realm of becoming a power user. I taught myself the operating system in and out, learned to get it doing everything I wanted optimally, started running backups, keeping it virus free, customizing... ...I sought to master it. I took apart and reassembled that computer countless times. I found myself completely enamored with all of the components inside. I would often open it up and just look at it... ...just kind of tracing the logic behind it and marveling at how it all comes together to do what it does.
I started researching individual parts and learning about how they all contribute to a working system. Everything from how they're made, to what they're made of, to how they work. I made several upgrades to that box. I added ram, as well as a discreet GPU and one of those swanky Soundblaster 5.1 cards. I went back and did a fresh install of XP on my parents old computer. It wasn't enough to save it - the hardware just wasn't good anymore, so I helped them pick out a new one. They completely ignored my advice and bought the cheapest eMachines rig at walmart <_< I never let them live it down. Every time there were problems or it just couldn't handle what they were trying to do I made sure to remind them that they made a mistake buying that thing.
In 2005, I would be forced to learn a lot more. 2 years prior, I picked up the guitar and found my true calling. I was getting decent at it and looking for outlets. I found it in the form of a crappy distortion pedal with a DI out. One day, I realized that I could plug that into the computer to record my playing. After some research, I found my way to fruity loops and cool edit pro. The very first time I layered different passages and threw a drum track over it, it was like a whole new world opened up to me and it quickly consumed all of my time. I thought "Shit I can really do this! I can make songs!"
And that's just what I did. I still have some of the better ones, which I would say are pretty impressive for a highschool freshman with no clue what they were doing
It really changed the way I thought about music. I found myself seeking out and listening to all sorts of music. And things I struggled to grasp with theory and composition very quickly started making sense as I went along.
But I was hitting a wall. I was getting into VST amp/drum emulation. The latency was unacceptable. Not to mention my rig really couldn't handle loading a ton of tracks/vsts. I couldn't do the things I wanted to do. I would need a new computer.
Shopping pre-builts was depressing. They were SO expensive! This would lead me to build my first computer. I can't remember much. It was a dual-core AMD Athlon with 2 gigs of DDR2, running 32-bit XP. I also got a dedicated DI box to plug into the old Soundblaster card from my old computer. This did the job and allowed me to take my recordings further. Later on I would get a Line 6 pod farm to take the load off. Between working on graphics and recording, I became more deeply interested in OS'es. I felt I had tapped the limit of XP and frankly, wasn't happy with its performance or stability. So I looked to linux. I used the HD from my old build as a test drive. I must've tried a couple dozen distros before settling on Ubuntu. This was a game-changer. It was so fast and stable compared to XP. Everything just seemed to work and I could make it do anything I wanted to with a little time and care. I found the console to be a more superior and intuitive way to get things done. Never looked back.
In 2009, I started making a lot of money working 2 jobs and started getting the itch. I did another build based around a Phenom X3 with 4gb of ram. This one had an acrylic side panel with a bunch of red led's inside. This is when I really got into overclocking. I unlocked the 4th core and spent probably months messing with my OC on that thing. I loved it. I ran a dual-boot ubuntu/xp64 config, which I had painstakingly tuned and streamlined to my liking. Everything was done with purpose and care. I suffered a PSU failure and a couple of HDD failures, both due to bad choices on my part, but otherwise I think I did well for myself.
I started wanting to test my abilities, so I started doing builds for friends, family, acquaintances, and coworkers. I have never had one complaint from any of them and in fact, some of them are still running these builds! How they stand it these days, I dunno. Casual users continue to mystify me. Over the years I have taught them how to be better operators and clearly it has paid off. It felt really good to be doing things like that. I looked back on how much I had managed to teach myself and took great pride in it. Best feeling in the world when you take a skillset you have picked up on your own and use it to accomplish things that benefit you and especially others.
At some point in 2011 I sort of trailed off. I was 21 and off on my own, just exploring other areas of life. Between working, partying, a couple of failed relationships, tragic happenings, and the insane multitude of hobbies and art forms I picked up, I just didn't have the luxury of time, money, or fortitude to keep going. The build I did ran very well and suited my needs fine. Maybe you couldn't game on it but that's what I had consoles for. I made a few slight upgrades to keep it going here and there but otherwise it was totally off of my radar. I had my music, high-end audio, vaping (I was building box mods and exploring coil dynamics in detail,) woodworking, hiking, mountain biking, photography... ...the list goes on. Hard to do that, have a life, and find the time to tinker with PCs. :/
Fast forward to 2018. At age 27, I am calming down and realizing that my time is the most valuable asset I have. My life is more streamlined and I have begun to come into my stride as a person. I've had the requisite ups and downs for learning what is really important. I set goals and I hit them. I barely have a social life and I like it that way. I work a steady 9-5 and moonlight as a handyman doing simple home repairs and water heater installs. I am now single and not looking. I left my sweet "old faithful" build from 2009 with my ex. My focus is on learning as much as I can and building a skillset that is beneficial and enriching to my life and endeavors. I realized that I had a really good thing going with PC building, and that I've always missed it. My living situation is the most stable it has ever been and I actually have spending money... ...and time to do good things with it. Couldn't think of a better time for me to get into PC building.
I did my first build in over a half-decade at the start of this year. I found myself astounded by how far things have come... ...just what you can do with the basest level components is amazing to me. RAM prices and GPU prices notwithstanding, I really liked what I was seeing. I love how cases look and the features they have. Some of this stuff I really wish I had back in the day. RGB is pretty cool in small doses. I did a modest build in a sexy black S340 Elite case. Based it around the Ryzen family with an Asus ROG Strix B350 mobo. 8gigs of ram and a GTX 1050 for when I wanna game a little. Got a Samsung 860 evo as a system drive. SSD's are insanely awesome to me. So snappy. I went with Win10 because I felt like it would actually be a little more challenging for me. Coming from Ubuntu for years, Windows 10 throws me through a loop sometimes, but I like it much better than any of the older iterations and little by little things are coming back to me. Getting up to speed on components was a pretty big endeavor... ...almost like learning everything all over again, but I'm pretty much there now and I've found it all to be really fascinating. The future is amazing. What else can I say?
It isn't much, but I love this build. I love just looking at it, I love the way it runs, and I love that built it. I can't wait to make more upgrades to it. I can't wait to do more builds. I've done 3 this year. 2 for me and one for somebody else. PC's, consumer electronics, and music are really all I care about these days.
Where I go from here, I dunno, but it's good to be back!