{"id":1417,"date":"2024-06-29T17:42:01","date_gmt":"2024-06-29T22:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/?p=1417"},"modified":"2024-06-29T17:42:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-29T22:42:02","slug":"my-tech-journey-part-3-the-college-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/my-tech-journey-part-3-the-college-years\/","title":{"rendered":"My Tech Journey, Part 3: The college years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Welcome to part three of my tech journey blog posts! In my first two<\/a> posts<\/a>, I covered the computers we had during my childhood. With this post, I’ll share the computers that I used when I went to college. Read on for more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

When I went to college, having a computer was still optional, to say nothing about having a “laptop”. In fact, for my first quarter at the University of Minnesota, I registered in Fraser Hall on a green screen dumb terminal: web registration was still a couple years in the future. Dorms didn’t have Ethernet then, not even the old 10BSASE5<\/a> thicknet. It’s hard to even comprehend the lack of constant broadband connectivity that existed then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, for my first year of college, I didn’t have my own computer. I had a roommate in the dorm who had a Macintosh I would occasionally use, and of course there were the computer labs<\/a>. I survived, mainly due to the fact I was taking a bunch of general classes or random electives like Photography (with B&W film, no digital stuff) and Theater. Writing long papers was not yet required, but I knew it would be in my future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first purchase<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For my second year of college, I decided I needed a computer of my own. I was going to be living in a single dorm, so no roommate to share, and my studying style was “extreme procrastination”, meaning I would wait until the night before a paper was due in order to do it. I didn’t want to spend that time in some computer lab, I needed to be able to do that on my own time and in private!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although flush with money from my Pell Grant, I didn’t feel rich enough to be able to just buy a brand-new fancy computer. Instead, I went to Computer Renaissance<\/a> to get a used computer (and based on that link, they have not changed a bit in 25 years).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
This was the happening place!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I spent $883.93 to get…actually, I don’t quite remember. Maybe it was a Compaq? I’m pretty sure it was a first-generation Pentium<\/a> at a blistering 75 MHz, so even faster than my previous 486DX2. Of course, it had the obligatory modem to connect to the U’s dial-up pool, back when SLIP<\/a> and PPP<\/a> were not just obsolete protocols on some networking test. Beyond that, though, it was pretty nondescript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that computer, I was in control. I set it to connect to my email account once an hour via dialup to get my email, that screech occasionally waking me up when I drifted off. I would write my papers, cranking out 5 pages per hour on any topic under the sun (with citations!), and print them out on an old-school Epson Stylus 300<\/a> inkjet printer. Funny how I can distinctly remember that printer model but not the computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also during that time, I used ICQ<\/a> (just shut down<\/a> three days ago), played SimCity 2000, and browsed the ever-increasing World Wide Web. To join in that fun, I set up the most 90s website ever using Angelfire<\/a>, complete with awesome GIFs and auto-playing MIDI files. And thanks to the wonders of the Wayback Machine, you can still see it here<\/a>. What website doesn’t need a picture of Bill the Cat<\/a> on it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Oop Ack forever, Bill!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Disaster<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So it went well for a while, hauling that computer around between apartments after I moved out of the dorm. Unfortunately, I missed the Ethernet-ization of my dorm by one year, so I had to use dialup throughout college. Noting remarkable tech-wise happened for a while, but eventually disaster struck, in the form of one of the most destructive viruses ever unleashed in the time before ransomware: the Chernobyl virus<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somehow, along the way, I had gotten this virus. Virus checkers were still pretty new, and none were free, and so of course I didn’t have one. This being long before my security career, I barely knew what viruses were or how to detect and remove them. And so, on April 26th, 1999, my computer became a boat anchor, and I lost all of what I had been working on that semester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, I went back to Computer Renaissance for another used computer, plunking down $400 or so. This one I remember even less about, aside from the fact that I used it to relentlessly pirate music using Napster<\/a> when that was a thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Lars Ulrich’s worst nightmare<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At some point I upgraded it with another hard drive and a CD writer, but that was about it. It worked well enough to see me through to graduation, and then to my first job after college. Eventually, I decided that it was time to get a newer computer, and that will be my next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the third post of my tech journey blog series, I’ll be talking about the computers that got me through college.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-2","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t