Category Archives: Personal History

Timeline of computer stuff

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I’ve got a thing about calendars. That’s not quite right. I’ve got a thing about remembering knowing when things happened and I’m really bad at remembering stuff. Even important stuff. So I kept a journal for a while and when DayTimers came along I kept one with me all the time for meetings and notes and all the rest. I think I mentioned my DayTimer purge. These days Google Calendar is my tool-of-choice for keeping up with everything. With links to Google Drive. I came across the computer related list below while working on another project.

  • 1985 – First computer. Zenith with two 7.5 in floppy drives (no HD)
  • 1/6/89 – Jefferson City Computer Club meeting
  • 10/31/89 – Bought computer made by CompuAdd?
  • 12/6/89 – Rick Williams, MSC, Columbia, MO (1st ref?)
  • 4/21/92 – Purchased computer for $3,525.86. 33/386 4 meg; 101/VGA Samsung; 16 SCSI controller
  • 11/16/93 – Computer Concepts demo (?)
  • 11/16/92 – Switched to AmiPro (word processor/desktop publishing) on office computer
  • 6/20/94 – First “notebook” computer; purchased from Bill Bahr (Iowa) for $1700. Made by Toshiba. Base price: $1400; Fax/modem PCMCIA card: $300
  • 11/21/94 – MCI Internet service – $49.95 for software; $19.95/mo – 7 hours free; $3.00 per hour after that. 9600 baud/14400
  • 12/1/95 – Gateway 2000 computer, $3,100
  • 4/24/95 – Comdex, Atlanta, GA
  • 5/8/95 – New ISP (Internet Service Provider). Summit Information Services, Holts Summit, MO. $30/mo
  • 6/3/96 – Comdex, Las Vegas NV
  • 6/10/96 – Ordered IBM ThinkPad
  • 8/23/96 – Ordered ACT 3.0 (contact manager)
  • 4/20/98 – Comdex, Chicago, IL
  • 4/19/99 – Comdex, Las Vegas, NV
  • 7/1/99 – Shut down Straylight
  • 4/21/04 – Signed up for Gmail
  • 5/7/04 – First home wifi
  • 4/17/06 – First MacBook
  • 1/6/11 – Bought Google and Apple stock. 35 shares Google @ $569; 54 shares of Apple @ $368.03. Our investment guys talked us into selling some. “Too heavy in tech”
  • 6/15/11 – Google sent me a Chromebook to evaluate. Sent two for some reason.
  • 10/28/11 – Closed PayPal account
  • 6/15/12 – MacBook Pro delivered
  • 9/20/13 – First iPhone (5s?)
  • 11/14/14 – Began using Dropbox as primary cloud storage
  • 7/9/16 – Experimented with Evernote for notes/journaling
  • 3/20/20 – First Zoom call (COVID lockdown)
  • 7/18/21 – Subscribed to Spotify/Apple Music. CDs officially dead
  • 11/9/22 – First sustained use of ChatGPT. Blog posts begin
  • 5/12/23 – Retired Dropbox; consolidated into iCloud/Google Drive
  • 9/14/24 – TaxoPress plugin for blog taxonomy overhaul
  • 8/15/25 – BookBuddy library export (1,054 titles); taxonomy mega-project

My first BBS

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I joined my first BBS (bulletin board system) on November 18, 1994. It was called Fun City and was operated by Kevin Diehl.

(Wikipedia) A bulletin board system, or BBS, is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users through email, public message boards, and sometimes via direct chatting. Many BBSes also offer on-line games, in which users can compete with each other, and BBSes with multiple phone lines often provide chat rooms, allowing users to interact with each other. Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web, social networks and other aspects of the Internet. Low-cost, high-performance modems drove the use of online services and BBSes through the early 1990s. Infoworld estimated there were 60,000 BBSes serving 17 million users in the United States alone in 1994, a collective market much larger than major online services like CompuServe.

College theater days

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I spent my first two years of college trying to keep my draft deferment and quickly figured out I could do that better as a Speech/Theater major than as a Business major. I got a small part in Taming of the Shrew (below) my junior year which earned me a tiny scholarship ($500 a semester?). In my senior year I played the idiot son John in Lion In Winter. From the review (PDF): “Mays, in an attempt to convey his awkwardness, at times overdid John’s walk.” (Reviews below).

I loved the theater crowd. It was as cliquish as any fraternity or sorority but we didn’t have to dress as nice. As much as I enjoyed it, I never developed an interest in community theater. I still have a recurring nightmare in which I have to go onstage before a huge audience but I have never been to a rehearsal. In the dream, I’m trying to figure out how I can have a script in my hand without the audience noticing. Or come up with a way to adlib through the whole thing.

Before Wikipedia and YouTube

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I’ve been sharing old photos from the early days of radio station KBOA. I worked there in the 70s and my dad before me. I’ve been updating content on the website I created about the early days (1947-1957) of the station. KBOA830.com was my first shot at a website, back in 1997 and didn’t get much attention after the initial setup because it focused on that ten year period.

While updating this week, I kept find relevant stuff on Wikipedia and YouTube and couldn’t figure out how I’d missed this stuff when creating the site. Then I realized Wikipedia didn’t come online until 2001 and YouTube in 2005. And I found other sites with great material about performers and on-air talent at KBOA.

My first interview

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I remember the first recorded interview I did (1972). It was with Bill Walsh and Jack McDaniel, two local businessmen who organized the Fall Festival Parade every year in the little town where we lived. When I got back to the studio and dubbed the audio from a cassette to reel-to-reel tape, I was horrified to hear how awful I sounded. Long, rambling questions. It still makes me cringe.

I grabbed a splicing block, a grease pencil and some splicing tape (look ‘em up) and sliced out my questions. But first I had to record the questions without sounding like a moron… and then — oh so tediously — splice them back with the answers. Yes, the interview still sounded like shit.

No idea how many interviews I recorded during the next 40 years. A bunch. And I don’t think I got much better at it. Looking back it’s easy to see what I was doing wrong: talking too much. I mistakenly thought I was and equal part of the interview. A natural hubris, I suppose.

Few things infuriate me more than listening to an interview with someone who really has something interesting to say but never gets to say it because the interviewer continuously interrupts. Or eats up vast amounts of time with endless, rambling questions.

In recent years I’ve found a way to address this failing of mine. I write out every question I want to ask (trying to stay close to 10) and do my best not to vary. But more often than not, when I listen to the interview, I find I can delete my questions entirely, leaving the listener/viewer with what they came for.

There are some interviewers who add more than they detract. I’m fond of Daniel Tosh’s interviews (if one can really call them that). I like James Lipton’s (Inside the Actor’s Studio) style. But — like me — most interviewers simply can not shut the fuck up and let the subject talk.

Am I alive because of the atomic bomb?

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I’m about halfway through Genius, James Gleick’s biography of Richard Feynman, considered by many the most brilliant American physicist of the 20th century. Feynman was probably the smartest of the scientists working on the Trinity Project (America’s atom bomb program). The first (and only test) of the bomb took place July 16, 1945. American bombers nuked the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few weeks later (Aug 6-9). Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.

My father was in the Navy from May, 1943 until March 9, 1946. He served on the USS Mount McKinley; USS Appalachian; USS New Jersey; USS War Hawk; USS Iowa; and one or two others. All of which saw action in the Pacific.

According to Gleick, building the atomic bomb dramatically affected the lives of the scientists who created it. The Japanese lives lost to this terrible weapon have always been balanced against those that would have been lost in an invasion of Japan. Like my father, for instance. Japan surrenders, they turn the ships around and head home. Discharged March 9, 1946 in St. Louis. Meets and marries my mom (March 23, 1946) who was living in St. Louis. Happy ending. For some.

I’ve been sitting here for a few minutes trying to boil down some meaning from this bit of history. But “what if this event hadn’t happened” is a pointless game. It did happen.

“Nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen. A thing is as it is, because the universe is as it is.”

The ravages of time (class reunion)

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The photo above was taken last September at the 50 year reunion of the Kennett High School Class of 1966. Richard Peck and Larry Mullen standing; Joe Browning, John Robison and another guy seated. I attended my ten year reunion but skipped all the others. I’m glad I went to this last one. Got to spend a little time with Joe whose energy was released back into the Universe this week.

I took the other photo in 1968 in Richard Peck’s basement. A place to drink beer and be as young as we would ever be. L-R: Richard Peck, Jim Bob Green, John Robison, Jane Marshall and Lynn Strickland. Charlie Peck and Joe Browning down front. This photo became (for me) iconic of that wonderful time. How we came to be the old men in the class reunion photo is a mystery.