Birth of a nerd
The moment I got my eight year-old hands on a TI-99/4A computer, one of the first things I did was transcribe and run a simple five-line BASIC program. The program performed one task: speak aloud any text I entered.
Apparently, hearing an early 80’s computer voice repeat whatever I instructed it to say was all it took for young me to imagine a future where people would interact with computers that were more like pals and collaborators with minds of their own than the crude tool that sat before me. Sure, I would have admitted that it was a farfetched (if not outright silly) notion. All the same, a little voice in the back of my mind persistently whispered “Yeah, but wouldn’t be cool?”
I surprised myself by discovering I enjoyed programming. Throughout the 1980’s, one could go to any consumer software store at the local mall and find magazine racks chock-a-block with periodicals whose back quarter were devoted to BASIC games and applications programming. The code itself was printed on the page, and if you were so inclined, you could type it in line by line. You would then save your program to cassette tape, or if you were fortunate enough to have a disk drive, 5 1/4″ floppy disks: the preferred compact and durable storage medium of the time.
I copied enough game and application code to quickly begin learning how it all worked. It was inevitable I’d get a number wrong in a data row or forget to close quotes somewhere while transcribing, so errors were numerous. Feedback of this era was terse, much of the time giving away little more than SYNTAX ERROR and a line number when executed. But the line number would suffice. By seeing where the program failed, I’d learn a thing or two.
Over time, I started experimenting with my own programs. I learned how to generate graphics and create crude animations. I wrapped my mind around core programming concepts and began to impress myself with what I could accomplish with a little time and effort.
Kicks
Around 1986, I stopped making video games and started buying them instead. It didn’t take long playing Afterburner, Shinobi, or Zillion for my BASIC programming skills to get rusty. After all, why should I hunch over a keyboard and puzzle over arcane error text when I could pop a cartridge into the ol’ Sega Master System and immediately enjoy something far more polished and engaging?
The Christmas following my 12th birthday, I received my first electric guitar. From that point on, computers took a back seat while music gained front-and-center attention in my life. The social aspect of being in a band was fun, and when playing shows, feedback on our creativity was immediately rewarded. Being part of a group was scratching an itch a solitary hobby simply couldn’t touch, and through my teen years I drifted away from the computer desk.
I remained a technology enthusiast, but I seldom wrote more than short, goofy, and useless programs when the urge happened to strike. Around this time, I did take one more look at my old TI computer after completing an elective typing course. I enjoyed my newfound speed on the keyboard, but not enough to sway me back to studying programming in any serious fashion.
Undeclared
College was an endeavor I was never really set on. It was expected of me to go, and so I did, but I hadn’t the faintest idea what I wanted to study. In retrospect, I should’ve held off on higher education and gone straight to work for a year or two instead. I was far more interested in writing and performing music, anyway. With some reluctance, I began attending community college while working a part-time job. Being a slow left-handed writer, scribbling notes was inefficient and tiring, but man could I type!
It was around this time Apple introduced the very first PowerBook line of laptop computers. I was able to convince Mom that such a device would help me in my studies, so with her help, I got my first Mac: a PowerBook 140. Just like that, my nerd cred was re-established. As an early adopter of sorts, I was almost always the one student in class clacking away at a keyboard, and though I was never reprimanded or removed over it, I got more than a few judgmental looks. “Here comes future boy and his dork-ass compubox.”
One of the perks of the PowerBook line was that, like most Macs of the time, it handled audio pretty well. I installed a sound bank of HAL 9000’s dialogue from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Many years removed from my first thoughts on the future of computing, I was still longing to experience a reality where our machines interact with us intelligently and conversationally, offering novel solutions to problems and allowing us to innovate new ways of being creative. HAL (ignoring his shortcoming of resorting to homicide) was emblematic of smarter systems to come. Meanwhile, my lowly PowerBook would repeat “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that” when encountering an error.
I could write at length about my college days, and some stories might even make for an entertaining read. For now, I’ll cut to the chase: the computer did not make me a better student. I most frequently used it to create flyers for my band, craft newsletters, and manage our mailing list. I would eventually leave college without taking a degree, but I had become a competent clip art editor. Graphic designer? Up for debate.
By the mid 90’s, the Web was starting to blow up. America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, and the like gave way to proper ISPs, and the public at large soon found themselves cheaply connected to the Information Superhighway. Around this time, I was lucky enough to find friendship with a few people who were interested in stretching the limits of design in HTML for artsy multimedia projects. Largely by association with these folks, I was motivated to dive back into coding. After all, I’d be damned if our band didn’t get its own website. I bought a domain (this one), and set to work.
The grind
Like anyone else who suddenly realizes living requires money, I had to face the reality of earning an income beyond what thirty hours a week at Kroger could provide. Over the years, I leveraged my computer skills more and more, and I found my old hobby was helping me advance professionally. During a brief career in advertising, I earned a reputation for being a techie, and I loved being able to tell stories using large sets of call center data.
Eventually, I struck out on my own. I spent a few years as a freelance website developer; mostly helping artists and small theater companies establish an online presence. From there, I found work with someone who would eventually hire me to completely redesign a software package’s UI.
After years of Forrest Gumping my way through the workforce, I could at last say with confidence that I worked in the IT field. I really enjoyed it, too. In IT, there is something new every day. I looked forward to finding answers for issues I’d never encountered before, and I was tenacious about fixing broken things. But nobody told me about the hours to come…
Maybe it was just bad luck, or my inability to set boundaries, or maybe it’s the nature of small business, but I found myself wearing numerous hats and performing duties that required my constant attention. After a while, ten to twelve hour days became the norm. I didn’t turn into an alcoholic, but I did drink more than I should have. Over time, working in IT had become a grind. When I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was look at another screen. My relationship with technology had hit a rough patch.
Exodus
Feeling tired and disillusioned after years of struggling over what to do next, I decided to leave IT altogether without so much as a plan or a job offer.
I got lucky and became an executive assistant to a person who was significantly technologically challenged. I enjoyed feeling helpful while setting up home networks , managing Zoom sessions, and other day-to-day stuff, but I knew I was losing my coding and scripting skills. I could hardly remember how to navigate to my laptop’s .bashrc file, let alone recall any shortcut aliases I had created in it. PHP projects languished in forgotten folders. I convinced myself that I was glad to be rid of it. After all, I was making far more as an executive assistant than I ever did in my chosen field.
I had gone to work for a luddite who was surrounded by computers, and navigating him around this world would be the extent of my involvement with technology for the next two years. Despite the great pay, I still felt like something was missing. I missed the creativity that came with even lightly troubleshooting code. I wanted back in somehow, but lacking a formal degree, I dreaded the prospect of landing with a team at yet another small firm.
The wasteland
At this point, I was feeling sadness and defeat. It probably didn’t help that I received news of the deaths of two close friends in a short period of time. Oh yeah, and COVID messed with all our heads. It was a weird time. I think the lockdown period gave many of us an unsettling jolt out of the well-worn work / life patterns we had become accustomed to. I started to question everything. I thought about how many good years I still had left. Would I remain an executive assistant? I realized I didn’t want that future.
With a comfortable sum of cash in the bank, I amicably ended my stint with the CEO. I gave him the reasons listed above, and much to my surprise, he understood. He gave me no grief about it. In fact, he did everything in his power to make sure I had the proper attitude while finding my future.
By the end of February, 2022, I was once again on my own. It didn’t take long for feelings of fear and failure to take hold. I largely retreated from the world. Just prior to the pandemic, I had moved into a larger apartment. It was spacious, and I had plenty of room to spread out and make a nice home. Many of the boxes from my move remained unopened in the three years I resided there. Something was obviously wrong.
A growing self-hatred held sway over me, suggesting that maybe I didn’t want to do anything else. This mind goblin spoke with confidence that I would never again find joy in anything, even if I could manage to convince myself that there was anything I would like to do. I tried to write music, but all efforts petered out into a library of incomplete sessions. I couldn’t find passion in anything. I played a lot of Skyrim. I played a lot of Fallout 4. I was listless and generally unenthused by any notion.
I did write quite a bit during this time, taking advantage of my limitless freedom to sit at the bar at the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club and record a few pages a couple days a week in my diary. At the time, I thought I was just spinning my wheels. In truth, this practice helped me process the defeatist mind goblin’s trickery and it enabled me to see things in a more rational and objective way. It would have been easier to succumb to ennui and self-loathing had I not taken the time to write down my troubles and ultimately declare that I needed to find a way out of this mess.
A retreat, or a return?
I decided that a move was in order. I had been living in the same building for nineteen years, moving apartments only once. It was clear that I was not enjoying the lifestyle I had worked hard to establish. Savings were rapidly dwindling to the “emergency money” threshold, and knowing that Mom could use some help, I decided to relocate to Dawsonville and live under her roof for a while. She welcomed me with open arms.
I’ve been living with her for a month now, helping her out in any way I can. Cooking, cleaning, doing dishes, and taking her shopping are now part of my daily routine. I think devoting myself to assisting her has allowed me to take my mind off of my own troubles and climb out of isolation. In modern America, it’s a cultural expectation to feel shame over returning home. I feel no such thing. If anything, this move has saved me. I have no pride to lose. From here, there is only “forward.”
The rebirth of optimism
Once again feeling like my old self, I’m eager to rejoin the world in 2023. The rapid advancement of “AI” technologies: GANs, diffusion models, and the like, haven’t gone unnoticed by me. I’ve long been a lurker, reading the popular sci/tech literature on the progress of innovations such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion. Waking up, I’m starting to realize that I now live in a world not too dissimilar from what the eight year-old me imagined. The “Gee Whiz! spark of interest has been re-lit.
I had a short conversation with ChatGPT the other day. I told it about my work history, and how I’m now quite rusty behind a command prompt. I asked it to recommend a learning path to reclaim my skills and learn some new ones. I told it that I have an interest in learning Python. It recommended that I download the latest version (links included) and provided several options for available free tutorials and classes. I’m following the learning path it recommended.
My skills didn’t disappear, as I had once convinced myself – I just had to rediscover my sense of enthusiasm for something. I’m happy to say that I’m learning at a decent clip, and when I have questions, there’s always Google, StackOverflow, and even ChatGPT itself. There are precious few excuses for not being able to learn nowadays.
Future Boy and his dork-ass compubox
As one thing invariably leads to another, I’m now playing around with AI art generation. I have great fun crafting and refining prompts, learning how the software interprets my instructions, and figuring out how to get results that approach or even match my aesthetic goal. While marveling at the results, I ask myself: “Is it possible that the future of my childhood imagination is approaching?”
It’s certainly starting to feel that way. Working with these products, I feel like I’m creating and collaborating with something more than mere software – it’s a helper, a subject matter expert, and more. I can’t help but feel some affection for something that so continually impresses me. The software is starting to feel like a pal.
So here I am, back to blogging after a long hiatus. I hope you enjoy what you see.