Crimsonietta.net

If the following is any indication, my parental units failed the ultimate challenge of, er, parenthood.

Ever since I was young I’ve been well-surrounded by the monstrosities we nowadays call personal computers. When I was actually old enough to understand that my father wasn’t just putting shiny chips and circuits together for fun like I had been doing with my Disney-themed puzzles, I became intrigued with the machines (and why it was considered a no-no to hold a magnet up to the screen to see the pretty colours).

My father’s office used to occupy my younger sister’s room, the largest one in the house save for the master bedroom. Along the wall he had placed a wooden table/desk and a white bookshelf, but neither held many books or papers. Rather, they were covered in wires, circuits, motherboards, chips, screws, and everything a decent EE needed to do his job.

For the most part, my father worked on his company tasks (he’s an IBM employee) at home as well as at work, but he also fixed up computers to resell. As such, not only were the desks covered with itty-bitty items, but just opening the door of his office would present you with a floor matted with more computer parts than it had space to hold. Sitting in the midst of the sea of technology made me feel small and filled with awe. So -this- stuff was what made the computer tick; -these- were the electronic tools that lit up the monitor with amusing pictures (albeit with only 256 colours and pixellated).

When I was four or so, my father showed me a “laptop” from the early 90’s. This laptop was about 20 inches long, with a 10-inch or so screen that flipped up. It actually looked incredibly similar to this one:

Only slightly longer, and tan-coloured instead of dark gray. This [not-so]-little computer became my new instant plaything. I could remain engrossed in pinball for hours, seeing as how the software my father possessed came equipped with not one… but 10 variant fields for my enjoyment! Ohh, how I loved the CMYK-coloured graphics, the annoying 8-bit music, the jerky, arcade-game-esque movements of the slightly flattened pinball, and the satisfying tap of the keys as I mashed them.

Back in those days, I had to ask my father to type in the commands into the black DOS prompt to successfully navigate to said software’s executables and start up my daily round of games. Computing was a foreign and elusive thing to me, and it shocks me nowadays how spoiled younger children are with fancy graphics, point-and-click intuitive interfaces, and full-spectrum audio. It amazes me how far we’ve progressed from the days where I clearly remember the small drive case (later evolved into what we know as the “tower”) that the incredibly large and heavy monitor had to sit upon. I remember the squarish, loud-clicking mice (the ones that, heaven forbid, were NOT optical, but trackball); I remember the chunky keyboards with the loud springs; I remember the days before flash drives and USB, back when floppies and small-capacity CDs were god.

Excuse my bit of nostalgia there - it’s just rather amazing the progress that we’ve made in only 15 years’ time to faster, more powerful, and lighter computing equipment. But I digress.

As I said, my father used to do all the dirty work for me, and it wasn’t until the loading screen of the software finally came up that he would scoot back and let me take the reins of the keyboard once again… but one day, things changed up a bit.

“Daddy, I’m typing in some stuff to the black box, and it’s telling me there’s something wrong.”
“There’s nothing wrong, you’re just not typing a command it recognizes.”
“Well how do I type a command it recognizes?”
“Here, let me show you how to save text to memory so you can print it out again.”

And thus started my journey into computing. With wide-eyed wonder, I watched as my father entered a few simple keystrokes, saved a sentence (I’m trying to remember if it was “Hello world” or not), and with the input of another statement, the computer magically spit out exactly what he had written.

… I was utterly fascinated.

Eventually the poor laptop died and was sent away, but bigger, better toys cropped up for me to play with. I would spent several hours every week playing games on my father’s Win95 machine, oftentimes running into countless problems that I often just solved by mashing the ESC key or force-powering off and back on again (hey, that’s Windows for ya). Ever since a young age I had wanted to be a programmer “just like Daddy”, and I had thrown myself headfirst into web programming (yes, I know; not course 6, but bear with me here) at the age of 11, but I had always taken this dream for granted.

A tragic thing happened sometime in 9th grade, though, where I managed to fall under false delusions that I would enjoy myself thoroughly in a foreign language major because it was “easier” than a major in the sciences. I could already speak English and Chinese; was learning French, Japanese, and Portuguese; and had previously studied Spanish. So why not? As a result, for nearly 3 years I submerged myself in the world of the foreign tongues, mastering with ease all the grammatical forms and vocabulary that was thrown at me.

But something was wrong. Terribly wrong. I looked at my class schedules. I saw it full of science courses and only a few foreign language ones. I thought about a career with a single major in one foreign language and shuddered; did I really want to spend my days doing translation? Sure, good money, but how many people get those coveted spots? Sure, in high demand, but would I enjoy it?

As I continued to mull over my predicatment, senior year started; the electives in my schedule eventually found themselves identified as advanced math/science classes, and I found myself loving them with a renewed vigor that hadn’t been kindled since elementary arithmetic class. I immediately switched my planned major back to EECS, and I know I have made the right choice. The world of science is and will always be the one I love best. Yes, foreign languages came easily to me, but I felt most at home surrounded by the breaking-edge thrill of modern technology, faced with problems that were solvable if only we try. Instead of simply sitting around fiddling with my techy toys, I now want to contribute to the movement - to help optimize, improve, invent, create… in hopes that my work and that of my colleagues could bring as much enjoyment, amazement, and awe to the world as it did to me when I was young.