1996... before the Web entered my life
It all started in July 1983 when we bought our first computer - a tape-based 32K machine - for the kids. It was on special, but the next month that special price was the normal price. For over 13 years I've been helping to bring down the price of computer equipment. You can bet that just after I buy an item, it will be permanently cheaper; or deleted, making way for the faster, better, new improved version.
Kids who have a computer at home don't necessarily become addicted. Five of our six kids can 'take it or leave it'. The same applies to adults. My husband never uses the computer. I'm the addict. In 1984 an editor wrote that even when I was in hospital to have my ninth baby, I was writing for his magazine. He always did exaggerate - it was my fifth baby!
Sometimes I play games, but usually I 'compute'. Oh, okay, I 'fiddle'. I have spent many hours getting problem games to work. I have made countless changes to CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to squeeze out extra XMS or EMS. If a program won't work, I can't leave it alone. I have to try to get it going, even if I don't really want to use the program.
Recently I was sent a disk with 6 shareware games contained in a ZIP file. The letter with the disk indicated that there was a menu system with advertisements, and I was curious. I ran the BATch file to install the programs, but it wouldn't work. I could've left it at that as I already had the 6 games. But I like a puzzle. I tried PKUNZIP. No luck. The file was encrypted. I needed a password. Then I noticed that one EXE file had been extracted. All I had to do, was 'read' the EXE file in a word processor. Yes, you can load just about anything into a word processor. There will usually be some text in a file, even if it is only something like 'This program cannot be run in DOS mode'. In this case, I found PKUNZIP commands, including a 12 letter password. My son (the other addict in the family, now living 400km away) became an expert years ago at finding text inside his adventure games. It helped to know what commands would be understood.
Recently I used the same skill to find words to some songs in MIDi files. A friend had bought a disk of MIDi songs to use with her keyboard. On the packaging it said, 'with words'. In the fine print it said that these words would only appear on a Karaoke machine. Someone with a computer had checked the disk for word files. They were non-existent. So... the words had to be inside the MIDi files. I found them, sprinkled syllable by syllable (karaoke style), throughout the music, which looked like rubbish in a word processor. Once I had found a few syllables, I looked for a pattern. I found a certain character before each word part. Character Map helped me determine which keystrokes were required to Find the character. Even my five year old learnt something.She had heard me explaining the process to one of her older sisters. A few days later she saw me with the word processor and the Find dialogue box, and asked, 'What are you finding, Mum?'
There are always more puzzles. If a program has a time limit, I try to get around it. I might not want to use the program, but I like the challenge. I read lots of computer magazines. I have so many magazines and CDs that I'm drowning in information. And now there's the temptation to start Surfing the Net. Is there room in my life for another addiction?