I have worked with computers for most of my adult life. My last semester in college our professors introduced us to the a wonderful new tool: A computer with a software program called a Word Processor. This was absolutely amazing to me. I have always been a lousy typist and this would let me change spelling and correct formatting before printing anything out. This was miraculous! Maybe because it seemed so miraculous I became totally intrigued with the computer software industry.
I graduated from college, got married, had two babies and had a husband still in college. Daycare would have cost more than I would have been able to make working and so I decided to try my hand as a stay-at-home working mom. I tried tending other peoples children and I was overwhelmed with the needs of so many little ones. I needed to figure something else out.
My husband and I decided I would type papers for students from our apartment. Laptops were non-existent and personal computers were expensive. We scraped together every penny we could find and bought our first computer. An Apple compatible computer called a Franklin Ace. I was really uptown with two 5 1/4″ floppy drives. Color monitors, hard drives and laser printers were not yet available. I had a typewriter like printer that used ribbon just like a typewriter. I was so pleased and in business!
My next computer I bought about 5 years later. This time I was really on the cutting edge with a color monitor, DOS operating system and an unheard of 10 mb hard drive, and both a 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. I didn’t think I would ever be able to use up all of the hard drive space on the computer! What a treat to be able to load my WordPerfect word processing program on my computer and not have to swap out floppy drives. Oh I was in computer heaven!
From there progress has never stopped. Bigger hard drives, photo and laser printers, scanners, bigger and slimmer monitors, no floppy drives, zip drives flash drives, DVD drives, CD and DVD burners, windows operating systems and software that will do everything. My computers have really evolved over the years. Now a little laptop and iPad do incredible tasks for me, things I never dreamed I would be able to do! What a wonderful technical world we live in.
As you can see I have been involved in the computer business one way or the other since the 1980s. In the ’90s I even sold and repaired computers. My business has evolved from a simple typing business to video transfer and production, scanning, photos, website creation and even networking. Now I have left those businesses at home and am a library director over our county library. That is a dream job!
But I still get all the questions: “My computer isn’t acting right. Can you fix it?” or “I have all these ads popping up and I can’t get to my internet sites.” “My computer won’t start.” “My computer is so slow.” So many questions and no time to help fix all these problems. That is the reason for this blog. I have taught computer classes for years and maybe I can help a few of you get your computers running better and help you understand some of your programs better.
I’m excited to start my blog. I have moved from a mother of toddlers to a grandmother of toddlers and I am loving it! By the way I have drug my mother with me all the way. She is 79 years old and owns 2 desktop computers, a laptop, an iPad, 3 scanners, 3 photo printers and a laser printer. I love my mom and these two grannies have a ton of fun geeking out together. So let your fear slip away and come geek with us!!!!