Built from the parts of lesser nerds

Full disclosure: I'm laying in bed, under my covers drinking a bottle of chocolate milk as I write this. Probably the most fitting scenario possible.

Now I'm not claiming superiority or anything like that - I worked at Google and even though I could hold my own in some circles, I met and saw some people who were well beyond me. But that's at Google. When lined up against the relative "norm" of the population I score pretty well on nerd and geek, with computers. For the most part I've managed to keep myself out of the Dungeons & Dragons, cosplay, Anime import, etc. groups. To my friends back home I am the nerd they call with technical questions and many are somewhat impressed that I built a computer for my mom for Mother's Day a few years ago - because the idea of building a computer on your own is so foreign, but mostly because doing that for your mom on Mother's Day is just so gosh darn sweet.

So the other day my mom called me because a friend of her's at work needs to get a new computer - and apparently I have "Nerd to Call" status in the PS105 teaching circle, which is actually nice. So I asked my mom the simple questions, what is she looking to do with it, what programs does she need, how much does she want to spend - the basics. Of course, I got the response I was expecting - bare minimums. That's no fun. But I rattled off some tech. specs to look for on the showroom floor, cautioned about particular components to avoid and threw in some opinion on other things. My mom was happy for the assist and passed along that her friend would be thankful as well.

It was nice to do a mitzvah like that, unfortunately they happen too infrequently for me, but it always leaves me with an emptiness in my mouth. I want more, a bare essentials machine has no excitement for me. Sure, I realize that some people don't do all of the things I do, but why not? It's really not that complicated and it so fun.

So since I've last spoken to my mom I've been compulsively checking out sites and articles for parts and ideas. I keep going back to the idea of a Home Theater PC (HTPC), since the machine I currently have is just about 75% there, but I don't really have money for parts. Besides, as much as I love my box and if asked to sell it would demand an exorbitant sum for it just out of sentimental value, I would want to start over from scratch with a new project, a new idea.

As a way to stave off my frustration with not having the financial capabilities to build a new machine, let alone the space, time or necessary power outlets - I've gotten very nostalgic and tried to back track how I got here to this hobby and occasional obsession.

When I was small my family always had a computer in the house. Sometimes more than one. Either my dad saw the future in them, was equally interested (which I'm pretty sure was part of it), or found a way to steal them from his office without ever being detected. Whatever the case was, I saw them go from a single 5.25" drive to a pair, to a 5.25" and a 3.5" to just two 3.5" disks to installing my first CD-ROM drive a year or so after my dad left. I was maybe 11 at the time and while nervous, still pretty confident that I could install this new piece of hardware. Of course I left out tons of stuff, VGA, Super VGA, DOS, Direct Access, Windows 3.11 and all of that, because that just starts going down a pretty nerdy path. Games were pretty much the driving influence in my interest in the technology. As games got more complex specs increased and mediums changed. A 3.5" disk holds a lot more memory (1.21MB) than a 5.25" (I think they were 785K) so it was more convenient to install 12 disks for Wordperfect than 25. Haha, we actually did stuff like that back then. With games leading the reasoning I also became aware of other great new technologies. I was on the "internet" in 1988(citation needed) without even knowing it. We had a 12.2k modem hooked up for a while. I watched baseball on the Super VGA monitor a couple of times - one machine had a TV tuner card in it. Speakers, microphones and all of these great things that really had no practical use at the time except for showing off or making your kids go "wow." Like the mouse. That was a mind fuck.

Anyway, at 27 it's fairly obvious now that this is part of my life, though I probably would have told myself "well duh" back in the 80s. I suppose there was a chance that I'd grow out of it or lose interest, but there are too many shiny accessories and that's usually my downfall. So I'd just like to hope that my life continues in such a way that I'll always be in a position to explore and keep up with this. Maybe even build a Home Theater PC for my kid when he asks why all the other kids dad's took them to Best Buy and asked them to pick something out and all he got was a UPS truckload from Newegg.

So if you're reading this and you're looking at your old machine, on it's last legs, running slow and unable to do new things, why not give your friend Bob here a call. You'll get a certified, 1 of a kind machine that you can show off to all your friends, and you'll have an extra happy friend.