Trying to get off the scrap heap.
Beside the typical minor ailments that comes with getting older it has lost most of the downsides that came along just very few generations ago. The times are long gone were you became a big boy at your religious confirmation by getting the social privilege granted to wear trousers at sun-/ holidays and other special events. Even the oldest dudes now-a-days embellish the landscape by wearing shorts and other boy gear on a year-round basis and at all suitable or unsuitable occasions. But pretending being one of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys won’t help you keeping up with modern technologies or grasp how they really work, even worse if it don’t does what it’s supposed to do.
Noticed the train but missed it anyway.
Back in the early to mid 1980’s suddenly the possibility to buy a home computer became somehow a thing to mainly middleclass households in Germany. Not out of any real purpose, but to have such a new tech toy. After the big leap from Tele Tennis to Pacman in the early 80’s, providing your kid with such a Commodore 64 had became a kind of swagger and way to silence the demand of a spoiled brat, keep the kid happy, safe, more at home and somehow show off how progressive they are in still the age of “No Future“.
Unfotunately my mother never grasps the reason why she should spent so many Deutsch Marks for a beeping box, for a boy who already spents to much time in front of a alltime flickering screen in her sense. So teenage Christian had to move on without having the chance to catch an early train to Future World.
Trying to keep up but somehow slowly.
In the very early 90’s the Commodore Amiga became C64‘s successor – at least within my sphere – but at that time I already had to provide for my own living and therefor couldn’t afford to spent big money on the next hot tech toy. So the next chance went just by for me to board the Future World Express. Life got on and I got married in ’93 and had two daughters (’94 & ’97), bought a pickup truck and found all different ways to spent my hard earned money. So I somehow never got my act together to buy a personal computer, after all there wasn’t a real purpose for a guy like me to using such a thing in a rational way. Computers back then were nothing more than a fancy and overpriced electric typewriter, only if you had hooked one of those crappy 9 needle impact matrix printers onto. It was still the time before the internet became a real thing in Germany.
I finally bought my first PC in 2004, it had a ridiculous 12 GB internal harddrive. Ultimately I managed to get on board the late-night train to Future World – that’s not even 15 years ago!
A newbie at the keyboard.
Luckily a programing-illiterate like me got somehow rewarded for the late start, because thanks to Windows XP I was able to dive right in without even having to know any real coding language basics. A good friend provided me very early with CorelDRAW, so I was able to learn how to use the computer to tinker graphics etc. I never intended to use the computer as a gaming device, right from the start it was meant as a tool to get stuff done.
Learning how the computer works and how to handle it’s programs in my mid 30’s wasn’t an easy get go, but over time I was able to accomplish unexpected things although legit computer buffs would “lol” screechy loud, when I show off what I am able to.
Still an underachiever!
But here I am and doing fine so far – at least in my opinion. Obviously I still could use some elaborate computer consulting, but were to find a skillful person with enough patience and a still affordable charge out rate? I do not even know what exact search keyword I should punch into a search engine to find such a person within my area – Germany in general and my hometown in particular may be still a kind of behind in development of a findable and usable enviroment for IT support searching people like me. So hang on and bear with me, while I still trying to fit into this Future World.