I grew up with a fascination for electronics. In the early 80s, the highlight of my trip to Wal-Mart, Kroger’s, or almost any shopping center was the gadgetry — arcade games, or video game consoles.

Somewhere along the way, my elementary school wound up with about 15 Apple IIe computers. It was love at first sight. The tutorial bored me in short order, I had to learn more. Oregon Trail held my fascination for a little while. I remember drawing a picture on a graph, then feeding the corresponding coordinates into this art program, and seeing my masterpiece onscreen… “ohmyGODlookwhatIdid!” [For the curious, the "art" was a frame around the letters H, E, L, and P -- followed by two exclamation points. ]

A year and a half later, I was so excited about owning a Commodore 64 that I didn’t notice the lack of a storage system for months. I was so proud, buying my own tape drive with my birthday money later that year. I lost the artistic tendency, and learned BASIC. Two years of subscribing to COMPUTE!’s Gazette kept me entertained for years.

I discovered the PC clone in 1991-92. It took some getting used to — I eventually grew out of programming, as I knew I wasn’t creative enough to make a classic like [insert Apogee shareware title of choice]. I settled for just playing, and started tinkering with hardware. Soon enough, I was working for a small business, building machines and helping the hospital install a network.

Somewhere along the way I lost interest, for about 4 years. It coincided with my first 4 years in the military, and a lack of money; however, 1997 brought with it some good fortune and I rediscovered my electronics fascination.

It was like being “newly digital” again.

I found that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Hardware was harder in some aspects, yet easier in others. Programming was changed; BASIC was no longer viable as a software language, but there were programs that did things visually. I had heard of the internet as a thing colleges use to communicate; now EVERYONE had America Online 3.0 and the “World Wide Web.” The geekiest of the geeky used Netscape 4.0. Heck, people paid to use browsers in some instances. Hard drives had gone over a gigabyte in size! Good night, what WOULD they think of next?

Of course, I’m sitting here typing this on a machine that while not THE UBERBEAST, is more than adequate for me and can handle any game or application I give it. And the one thing that has never changed… has held true for me over the past 18 years, is this:

I NEED MORE POWER.

Entry inspired by Adam Kalsey’s distributed anthology of early computing experience, found by way of Disarranging Mine and The Big Pink Cookie.