Back in January, I was asked some questions by Amber Hallet from the Faribault High School Journalism class in regards to technology. Here's the insight I had.
Technology rapidly changed from the 1960s forward. The Apollo Space Program in the 60s showed the average citizen just what was possible with electronics and a lot of brainstorming (and money!).
In the last 10 years especially, technology has become "cool", and nearly everyone uses it. Back in the 90s, you were labeled a "geek" for tinkering with portable electronic devices or computers, but now you're not with the times if you don't use them.
With improving technology comes an ever-increasing need for everyone to have a more thorough understanding of everything. The learning curve keeps getting steeper.
I was a lucky kid and was fortunate enough to have a father that loved tinkering with technology. When I was 4 years old (in 1982), we had both an Apple ][+ and a Commodore Pet computer. In those days, having a computer for personal use was not mainstream, and they were usually purchased by experimenters. There were no easy-to-use graphical interfaces or mice. Everything was input into a computer by keyboard, diskette, or cassette tape, and you needed to remember a different set of commands to make each individual program function the way you wanted it to. Many people created their own programs because there might not have been software to do what they wanted (or it could have been very expensive).
People just started to buy VCRs and Video Cameras were I was young. Our family took a video camera along on several of our family vacations in the early-to-mid 1980s.
This may not be a popular opinion, but I feel piracy has always advanced technology and encouraged people to accept and embrace it. For example, when people found out they could make copies of rental movies on their VCRs at home, people purchased the equipment to do so. When people discovered they could download free MP3s from the Internet through services like Napster, they embraced MP3 as a viable format and purchased the equipment to take advantage of it. In both cases, the piracy was cracked down on, but it left those formats with a huge market share, and opened up the possibilities for future (legal) development of the technologies.
Computers are everywhere. For a typical person going to a clinic, computers are used to register you at the front desk, computers are used by the nurse to record your vital statistics, and computers are used by the doctors to transcribe entries in your medical records.
I had this Casio Data Bank watch when I was in Junior High School in the early 1990s. It stored phone numbers, appointments, memos, and had a world clock, timer, stopwatch, and alarm. You had everything right on your wrist like Dick Tracy. It was every geek's (well, at least my) dream.
Everyone forms into one of about three groups when you show them a new piece of technology.
They certainly didn't have many video games, at least what we would call video games today. I think most people have seen and laughed at the original television "Pong" game, where you hit a white dot back and forth across the screen with a couple lines that you would control with game paddles.
Everyone had landline telephones. In the early 80s you could even call people with just the last 5 digits of their phone number. Cellular telephones weren't even considered an option unless you were a businessman, lawyer, or CEO, because cell phones were way too expensive for the average person. At that time, cell phones came with their own bag, a big antenna, and needed to transmit a lot of power in able to keep a phone call active. People could expect to pay a couple dollars a minute, and that wasn't including the price of the phone.
The bottom-line goal of pretty much every school district is to prepare their students for life-long learning. In society today, you need to have at least a basic level understanding of how to use computers and logic to do basic things.
I graduated from Faribault High School in 1996 and started working at Faribault Public Schools full-time in 1997. At that time, we had Internet connectivity just in the media center at the High School. None of the schools had a network connecting them together. In the offices at each school, there were 2 or 3 IBM PS/2 computers connected together with coax cable that formed a makeshift network. The schools used Macintosh computers at a time when Apple went through several engineering problems, and it was always a struggle to keep them up and running. If you wanted to transfer files from one computer to another, you had to copy them to a 3 1/2" floppy disk first. Several labs at the High School still used the bigger 5 1/4" diskettes. Teachers still routinely used movie and filmstrip projectors in their classrooms.
The Faribault Community passed a levy referendum which gave our District about 4 million dollars to upgrade its technology. In 1997, we installed a wide-area network which connected all of our schools together, and we purchased Internet access which was then routed to each building. Each building got a complete video system which sent television programming to each classroom. Teachers could finally make phone calls from their own classroom telephone instead of walking down to the office. It was exciting for me to get in on the ground floor of such a large project. Since then, we have upgraded all of the network equipment District-wide once. We have expanded the bandwidth of our Internet connection 4 times. We are now on the 3rd generation of computers in the classrooms and around the 4th generation of computers in the labs since the original referendum. Almost every classroom district-wide now has a high-definition video projector hung from the ceiling instead of televisions. Smartboards and document cameras have begun replacing whiteboards and overhead projectors. Lastly, I have seen our staff in the last 15 years learn and better adapt to technology. It has not been an easy road, but I think teachers have done a wonderful job including technology in their curriculum.
Having a father that was so interested in electronics and computers when I was really young had its advantages. I've had the opportunity to work with many systems that people aren't even aware of today. My father is the sole reason that I learned so much about computers, and had the ability to use such a diverse group of computers.
This was my very first computer, a Commodore PET 2001 Series. It looked exactly like this, complete with the internal cassette tape drive and the little chicklet keyboard. Back in 1982, when I was four years old, I remember typing in BASIC programs of my own and saving them on cassette tapes. I also jumped over on my dad's Apple ][ and used to PR#1 and LIST other BASIC programs to paper, and tried typing them in the PET (Little did I know the two BASIC's weren't exactly compatible). My father also had games on cassette tapes in little manila envelopes that he took out and let me play.
Which leads me to my father's Apple ][. This is still one of my very favorite computer platforms. The simplicity of the platform is still unmatched even today. You inserted a disk in the drive and you flipped the power switch on. Bingo. Your program or game was up and running. Thanks to several pirate groups around the nation, users with Apple ][ computers had the most applications and the most games available on any other platform. I think my father still has this system in storage today.
Ah yes. The great-great grandfather of all computers today. An original IBM PC. Actually, I used a PC/XT most of the time. It had an Intel 8088 CPU that ran at a blazing 4.77 MHz (compared to several thousand today). This was before compatibles, and this was IBM's answer to the Apple ][, which was still the major player. In my opinion, games available for this computer still didn't match the quality of Apple ][ games, and there certainly wasn't as many of them. Nonetheless, my knowledge gained on this computer right here I still use at work today. Remember DOS? Amazingly enough, Microsoft has kept excellent compatibility between systems over the years. I would say that almost ALL software developed for this computer here in the early 80s will still run on Windows XP today. You won't get that with a Mac.
The remainder of these systems I have used myself, but don't mean as much to me as the two up above.
Apple ][c (Portable version of the Apple II)
I think about everyone had a Commodore 64?
Macintosh 512k. Mine had a second external 3 1/2" floppy drive as well. What blew me away about the Macintosh is that the sound quality was so much better than anything else I ever heard. This is still a system worthy of merit, unlike the bloated Macs running anything more than System 7.1.
A Wozniak Signature Edition Apple ][gs. We still have this today.
And to start my "strange and unusual computers I've worked with list", here's a Commodore 128. You could choose to make it run as a Commodore 64 to play your old software there, or as the full-featured 128. The GUI available on this system was similar to that found in the Commodore AMIGA and the Apple ][gs Finder at the time.
Here's a Kaypro "Luggable" Personal Computer (before there were laptops). It ran MS-DOS 2. About the only thing cool about the system was its size at the time, and that the keyboard folded up and latched so you had a big metal "box" you could lug with you if you needed a computer on the go.
Here's my introduction to the world of CP/M. It's a Morrow Micro-Decision 2. Ours looked identical to this one here, except it had a ADMS-1C terminal on top of it for output. CP/M was a predecessor to DOS, and the commands were fairly similar. I remember working with a program called "NewWord", that looked almost exactly the same as Wordstar.
Here's a cool little laptop complete with a 4x20 character LCD screen, internal micro-cassette drive (that could be removed to fit other accessories), and a thermal-transfer printer that used paper that you might get if you buy something at your local grocery store. It's an Epson HX-20.
Believe it or not, this one is still with us today. It's an Epson PX-8, and this little laptop, with a much wider screen than the HX-20 above, ran a full CP/M operating system. This one also had an internal micro cassette drive. Back in 1996, I used to have this computer under the seat of my 1978 Plymouth Volare to check my Packet E-Mail on the road.
These final two are really scary. Here's an IBM System 36 mainframe. I remember working on this at South-Central Technical College. In addition to this big tower, it had a huge external hard drive attached to it, 100MB I believe.
Here is a WANG Mainframe. It was huge. Very huge. And this was just one part of it. We had this out in our garage, and I think my mom probably wanted to kill my father for it. There was a WANG Terminal on top of this unit, and next to THIS unit was an external hard drive subsystem, with a set of platters probably 16" in diameter, and there was probably a stack of 6 of them each. We also probably used enough electricity to light Manhattan in the process.
Those were my toys growing up.
Geocaching ... a simple game of "treasure hunt" by using your GPS Receiver.
What is Geocaching?
Geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) is an entertaining adventure game for GPS users. 
Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a GPS unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.
So what's the big deal? You gave me the coordinates so I know where it is. Seems pretty easy.
It is deceptively easy. It's one thing to see where an item is, it's a totally different story to actually get there.
What is usually in a cache?
A cache can come in many forms but the first item should always be the logbook. In its simplest form a cache can be just a logbook and nothing else. The logbook contains information from the founder of the cache and notes from the cache's visitors. The logbook can contain much valuable, rewarding, and entertaining information. A logbook might contain information about nearby attractions, coordinates to other unpublished caches, and even jokes written by visitors. If you get some information from a logbook you should give some back. At the very least you can leave the date and time you visited the cache.
Larger caches may consist of a waterproof plastic bucket placed tastefully within the local terrain. The bucket will contain the logbook and any number of more or less valuable items. These items turn the cache into a true treasure hunt. You never know what the founder or other visitors of the cache may have left there for you to enjoy. Remember, if you take something, its only fair for you to leave something in return. Items in a bucket cache could be: Maps, books, software, hardware, CD's, videos, pictures, money, jewelry, tickets, antiques, tools, games, etc. It is recommended that items in a bucket cache be individually packaged in a clear zipped plastic bag to protect them.
Are there Geocaches in Southern Minnesota?
Absolutely! Actually, the majority of geocaches around this area are found in the rural parts of counties. There is a lot of them around the area! Here's a link to the latest list of Minnesota geocaches: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?zip=55021&dist=100
I am interested! How do I sign up to find out more about geocaching?
Check out the Geocaching home page at: http://www.geocaching.com. For a list of Frequently Asked Questions, go to: http://www.geocaching.com/faq/. You can sign up for a free account from the main page.
