Written: August 12, 2003
Well, have a seat, because I'm going to try to be long-winded. I'm going to lay out my personal history with computers, and how CmdrPlunge has become my online alias. Enjoy.
While I was in elementary school, my dad brought home a Commodore 64 one day. I had some learning software on it, like Math Blaster, and a flight sim of some unremembered title. Once in a while I would type in some code from an instruction book, and the computer would output sound.
In middle school, there was a room full of Apple II computers (with monochrome green screens) that the different classes would use to type up and print out various writings. In the school library, were two more Apple II computers, with color screens. The librarian had a box full of five and one-quarter inch floppies with various programs on them. I remember playing "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" and "The Oregon Trail". The family Commodore 64 wasn't getting used, and it was apparent that a new computer was needed. I pressed my dad for a Macintosh, because that's what we used in school. We got a Performa 630CD.
The Performa got more use in a month that the Commodore ever got. It came with some learning CDs, and some reference CDs. My dad used it for Quicken, and spreadsheets. I used it for word processing, games (my favorites being A-10 Attack! and Escape Velocity), and once we got it, again to help with school, internet access.
By this time, I was in high school, and my friend and I were playing head to head in "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" in a computer room during lunch breaks. Although not a network game, we would also play "Hellcats". The first time I went into that room full of Mac LCs, I sat at a computer that had CmdrPlunge as the network name in Air Combat. I asked my friend how the heck CmdrPLUNGE got to be a name for a flight simulator pilot. He said he wasn't sure, but thought it came out of a book. I sat at that computer every time I went in there since then.
Sometime during my high school years, I took a computer class or two. They were in a computer room full of Mac Classics, or SEs, or something that looks like them. They were all networked, but had no games. They had security software that would prevent running software from floppies, and not allow applications to be copied from floppies to the hard drive. It also prevented changes to the preferences. The system folders were rendered invisible with ResEdit. Pretty darn tamperproof, until I discovered the keyboard shortcut to unlock the security software. At first I didn't do anything too obvious. Just changing around the preferences to suit my preferences. Then I got bold, like adding a moaning sound to the list of system alerts. After the floppy with ResEdit, a certain sound file, and instructions was circulated around the classroom, most of the computers were moaning quite profusely. The teacher got fed up, and went around to each of the afflicted computers, attached an external drive, booted from it, trashed the old contents of the internal drive, copied fresh contents from the external drive, booted from the internal drive, and voila, the computers were once again beeping instead of moaning. And the keyboard shortcut was changed. Darn.
I'm not sure which I signed up for first, AIM or Hotmail, but my name, without numbers, was already taken. Feeling that adding numbers would be a cheesy way of creating a unique user ID, I set about thinking of something else I could use. It didn't take long for CmdrPlunge to come to mind, I tried it, and it worked! After that, creating user IDs for myself has never been difficult.
Now the Performa was starting to show it's age. I was again suggesting we get a Mac, because all of our programs and files would easily transfer to the new machine. But dad wanted a PeeCee, because that's what he uses at work. Well, dad has the bucks, and Dark Days descended upon our household. From my point of view anyways. We got a refurbished Gateway, with a 400 Mhz Pentium 2, and all the trimmings.
After high school, I took a computer art class at the local community college. I learned how to use Photoshop and Illustrator on some 604e Power Computing computers. It was wonderful to once again be operating in Mac OS even if it was only two nights a week. I definitely excelled in that class, only a few other students worked at a similar pace to me. It was an awesome learning experience. I learned all about Illustrator, an application that I had little to no previous knowledge of. I found out a lot about how to use Photoshop, which before then was a large, expensive, confusing version of SuperPaint to me.
I have to admit that using the Gateway wasn't all bad. I learned a lot about PeeCees, upgrading hardware, troubleshooting Windows, etc. I now know more about PeeCees that many of my Mac-bashing "friends". "Dude, my computer is acting up, can you help?" I should start charging a fee. I'm proud to say that I only spent $10 of my money on the PeeCee. I got "Descent Freespace" and it's expansion pack.
All the saving paid off because last year I got a then top-of-the-line iMac 17 inch widescreen with 800 Mhz G4. I've been in a state of bliss ever since. My first upgrade was a home network, because I couldn't be free as long as I had to use the PeeCee for internet access. I set up the iMac, the Performa (once I got it a PDS ethernet card), the Gateway, and later on, my brother's PeeCee on the network. Not bad I think, for not ever having set up any part of a network, let alone an entire one from scratch before.
That's how it stands today. The Performa has a SCSI scanner on it, I transfer scans from it to the iMac for editing. When my brother got his PeeCee and all his stuff off the Gateway, I reformatted the Gateway's hard drive, reinstalled Windows, reinstalled the programs my parents use, and put back all of my parent's documents and files. The Gateway was getting sluggish from all the programs and games that had been installed and uninstalled over the years. A fresh start has done it good.
I was recently at a Salvation Army where I laid my eyes upon a Macintosh SE. It had a $10 "as is" price tag. I felt that I had to liberate it from certain doom, determine it's status, and either restore it to Mac society, or give it a proper funeral. It works, however, one of it's two floppy drives has an insatiable appetite for floppies. I'm going to replace that drive with a hard drive, then it will be able to operate as an independent machine.
That's my history with computers, I hope you've enjoyed this little interlude, and I wish for you success in whatever you choose to do.