Category: Childhood
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VCR Machine
My parents got a VCR for the family one Christmas. We weren’t earlier adaptors like some folks in town. Some family friends across town always had the latest tech. They had at least two VCRs and had thousands of tapes. Tapes were everywhere with handwritten labels. The quality varied wildly. You had to watch one…
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The Clicker
I have two in the living room – one for the rarely used DVD player and the other for the Roku tv which is constantly misplaced. Most of the televisions and media devices I’ve purchased as an adult all came with remote controls. The remote that came with our sound system had a…
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The Magical Musical Thing
It might have been a Christmas gift or it might have been purchased at one of the many garage sales my mom frequented back in the day. The details of its arrival are fuzzy, however I remember its departure from our lives with great clarity. It sounded like an off key dying wildebeest from Mutual…
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TI 99/4A
Our first home computer was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. It looked like silver typewriter with white letters on black keys. The keys were cube like and could migrate painlessly to an adding machine. It was set up in the family room in the front corner right by a window. Games and accessories would magically appear.…
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LOGO
My first programming language was LOGO. My parents signed me up for a week long computer camp at the high school when I was elementary school. I don’t remember who else attended it but I vividly remember the computer lab with all the Apple IIe’s. We didn’t have a computer at home. It was amazing…
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The Little Professor
I didn’t have one but my friend did. I remember the bright golden yellow color and the red LED screen. I was jealous. It was so cool and fancy. The Little Professor was a backward functioning calculator that was released in 1976 by Texas Instruments. It would ask a question and you’d answer. 3 +…
code & carrot 