Sing, "These are a few of my favorite ... links?"
Being intelligent is not knowing all the answers. Being intelligent is knowing how to find all the answers! It is all about resources, and having some ability to retain what you have learned. Both take a little work and a little time and energy. The phrase, "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime" certainly applies.
S E A R C H E N G I N E S
Everybody knows how to "Google it", but there are other options available.
www.bing.com is my all-purpose favorite search engine - if for no other reason, the fantastic photography featured on the home page changes every day. There is an arrow button at the bottom of the home page that can be used to scroll through the past photographs from previous days.
Even though I have had a few years of Spanish, this page is useful for translating everything from simple phrases to complete web pages from German, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Portugese, Italian, Dutch and French into English (and from any one of these languages to the other!). Many people in the English speaking world are completely unaware that there are websites from all around the world, and in many different languages that are more helpful than a webpage in English. While it is true that translation software is never word-for-word perfect in it's translation, much of this information is valuable, this web site takes translation to a new level, making every attempt to use correct grammar and form that is unique to eacn individual language.
(http://translate.google.com/)
Other search engines might include:
www.DogPile.com (yes, that is correct!)
and
These 2 sites are inclusive search engines that search multiple search sites at the same time, and might return more webpages relating to your search than any one site might be capable of returning.
WIKIPEDIA.ORG
The modern day replacement for an encyclopedia set is www.Wikipedia.org .
The difference between this website and a set of encyclopedias is that a set of printed encyclopedias is outdated by **2** years before it goes to print. If yo go to Wikipedia.org, for example, the site it updated within minutes after a famous person dies, a new president is sworn in, for example. It is a live and up-to-date valuable resource for information. I can't remember when a day has gone by in my life that I have not used this site, and many times each day. You can find ANYTHING about ANYTHING - from plants, animals, music and movie stars, any famous person, any ordinary substance - ANYTHING!
W E A T H E R
THE WEATHER CHANNEL
This site is invaluable when planning an adventure that is outdoors.
Just type in your city or zip code for current local radar, hour-by-hour, daily or 10-day forecasts.
This weather website offers the same information as The Weather Channel website, with the addition of current wind speed, humidity, allergy information, etc.
I use these 2 weather pages interchangeably, depending on my needs.
YOUTUBE.COM
I have uploaded 38 videos of my own (search "Tattookub"), and my lowly little videos of me playing my keyboard instruments (Hammond B3, etc), and my parrot, Conrad, have received almost 38,000 views.
It was Youtube.com that taught me how to knit, and many more things that I have learned. You can watch entire episodes of many sitcoms and movies, including The Golden Girls, and many more.
MAPQUEST.COM
A brief segway:
I have already blogged about the benefits of owning an inexpensive hand-held GPS. Unless you live in a tiny town, and NEVER leave the area (which is a sad fact, in itself!), there is absolutely no excuse to NOT own a GPS. Considering the fact that once an initial purchase is made, their use is absolutely **free** forever. They require no monthly data packages, etc, and to use them, you simply get them out of the box, plug them into the receptacle in your car, type in the address (or the name of the store, etc), that is your destination, and press GO. THAT IS ALL THERE IS TO IT! Hand-held GPS devices have a dash mount that encourage hands-free operation, and they are Blue Tooth enabled, so that when you are in your car, and your cell phone rings, you can answer it through the GPS, encouraging hands-free cell phone use, as well. But, in the immortal words of Sophia Petrillo from 'The Golden Girls', "I digress"
.
Back to MAPQUEST.COM:
If I want to know the location of an address / store / event, etc, while I am in my home and sitting at my computer, I use mapquest.com. When I need to know how to actually get there, and I am in my vehicle, I use my GPS.
GOOGLEMAPS.COM
www.googlemaps.com
Have you ever wanted to take a trip back through your old neighborhood, but ... time, money and distance separates you? Googlemaps.com can get you there! There are some small towns not covered on this website, but you can go down any street in a large city, and major streets in most small towns. You might even find your car parked in front of your house, your old school or church - or your work place! I use this website to travel vicariously. If you click on 'satellite view", you will see a little orange man in the upper left hand corner of that window. Click-and-hold on him, and drag him to the street that you want to visit. Then navigate using either the mouse or the arrow keys to go up and down the streets. Don't forget to look left, right and up & down - you don't want to miss anything. The photography is real, and the detail can be amazing.
WONDERHOWTO.COM
I'm sure you've wondered how to do something. It was this site, along with Youtube, as I previously stated, that taught me how to knit, and take my accordion apart, and get it back together correctly! You can learn everything from the most useful, to the most unusual and the most silly on this site. There are insiders tips and tricks to doing virtually anything you ever wanted to do. The subjects contain, but certainly are not limited to:
Computers and software, music and playing musical instruments, arts and crafts, pranks and jokes - and solving virtualy any problem that is a human can conceive. This site is well worth adding to your bookmarks, and USING IT!
F I N D I N G
I N F O R M A T I O N A B O U T A N Y B O D Y ! ! !
WWW.ANYWHO.COM, WWW.WHITEPAGES.COM and WWW.YELLOWPAGES.COM are all useful in finding personal and business phone numbers and addresses. Reverse phone number searches are also available. These sites will tell you if the number is a cell phone number, and if it is, they will require a small fee to tell you who the cell phone number belongs to. Otherwise, the information is absolutely free.
AREA CODE LOOK-UP:
ZIP CODE LOOK-UP:
FINDING SOMEONE'S AGE, DATE OF BIRTH, DATE OF DEATH, etc:
www.vitalrec.com (Vital Records)
Once the site loads, DO NOT enter information in the light yellow dialog box over to the right. If you do, you will be prompted to pay $$. Instead, scroll down past large blue writing that says "Public Records Search" (don't enter anything in this box, either!). Click on the state in which you which you would like to search. Actually, the state that you select now doesn't matter, because you have to select it again on the next page. Once again, a light yellow box pops up to the right. Ignore this one, too, and scroll down. You should now see text that says, "Illinois State Vital Records Office Information" (or whatever state you chose on the last page). To the right of the contact information relating to that state's Vital Records office, you will find red text that says,m "Find Lost Family and Friends", then "First Name, State, Last Name" text boxes. THESE BOXES ARE THE CORRECT BOXES. Type in the formal name of the person you are looking for, and perferably the state that they might have lived in. To check your accuracy, this site MIGHT list a few people who are related to this person. If you recognize the person's name, the age is correct, and the family members are correct for the person you are looking for, YOU HAVE FOUND THE RIGHT PERSON! This much information is FREE. If you want more than this information from *this* page, you have to pay for it.
This site only tells you the person's name, current age, and SOME relatives. It doesn't know when someone dies - so if they died a few years ago, and they were in their 90's at the time of death, this site can easily list them as 117 yrs old! I will soon give you a page that does know the date of death, however!
The next page:
Information gleamed from this page is absolutely free at all times, and it is self explanitory, but it has limited use. The only difficulty remains in the fact that if you are searching a very common name, you might have several pages of results to wade through before you find the person you are looking for.
FAMOUS OR NON-FAMOUS (Ordinary people!) GRAVES:
www.FindAGrave.com is the largest up-to-date virtual cemetery on the internet. This website it not limited to famous people. Many of my own ancestors have their own pages on this site. This site is absolutely free, and anybody can write a page for their own ancestors, or you can browse millions of famous people's memorials. You can find everybody from Elvis Presley to Dixie Carter to King Henry VIII - and millions more! For each person, the website has at least one picture of the individual in his or her prime, and usually a couple pictures, a fairly detailed biography, and an actual photograph of his or her grave, head stone, mausoleum or other memorial. If the person was cremated, the final disposition of their ashes may be given. Witht rare exceptions, it is possible to leave a virtual memorial (flowers, a note, etc), if you would like to do so. I would be embarassed to admit how many hours I have spent on this site, alone. The information is fascinating.
Pertaining to average people:
The following link is to a particular cemetery in eastern Illinois. This is one of 4 cemeteries in the area that hold the bodies of many of my relatives on the Keller side. The large memorial featured at the bottom of this page is the "Keller Memorial", and all Kellers (and many more people!) on this page are my own relatives. Any person can also add their relatives to FindaGrave.com.
(Click on "View All Interments" once the page loads to see the Kellers)
www.FindADeath.com is more "death hag" related, and I have spent **many** hours reading the dirty details of many famous people's last hours on earth. Whiel FindAGrave.com is a site that honors modesty and formality of the deceased, FindADeath.com wastes no energy on such matters! All gorey details are exposed. The fun starts, for example, when you click on "search" in the left-hand column. Type in "Ike Turner", for example, then in the search results, click on "The Death of Ike Turner". For some fascinating reading, scroll down when the page loads. Throughout these stories, you can click on pictures to see their actual death certificates, pictures of the house they lived / died in (and other pictures!), including pictures of their graves, and a few even feature one last shot - pictures of them in their caskets. For more gore than the average person can take, type in "Chris Farley". There is an actual picture of him they way the found his body. This, folks, is what a cocaine overdose looks like! Write the results of his last day down as, "Things to avoid in my life!" Incidentally, I was in Chicago, right beside his apt. building while he lay dead in it!
Also very interesting re: famous people's graves (those buried in Los Angeles, at any rate!)
http://www.beneathlosangeles.com/
PRIVATELY OWNED 'PROFESSIONAL' CARS (Hearses, etc
There are several private hearse clubs, including "The Dead Sleds", "The Grim Rides", and "Phantom Coaches"
The Grim Rides:
The Dead Sleds:
Through simple searches and the selective use of specific search terms, you can use the internet to find virtually anything. There are some bits of information here and there that I am trying to find, but I haven't located them yet. I use a word processor program to keep a list of things that I am 'on the look' for, and if I **ever** have spare time, I pull up that list and look a bit more. Once in a while, I get lucky and run across information tha I have been seeking for quite some time.
A hint about using search engine (Bing, Altavista, Google, etc):
I am 'old school' in many ways, and searching for information is one of them. For many searches, I simply type in specific terms that I am searching for. For other searches, I use this format in the dialogue box:
+"City Museum"+"St. Louis"+"hours"
(as an example). This forces the search engines to return pages that contain only these specific words, and in this specific order. If you did not use this format, you will get results that have "Museum Louis St. hours City", and could certainly pertain to a lot of subjects, rather than the City Museum at 16th & Washington, St. Louis, MO.
I will be the first person to admit that the internet can be a pain - a ROYAL PAIN! I also firmly believe that the internet, cell phones, etc, have encouraged laziness and the 'dumbing down of America", in general. HOWEVER.... if we take a moment to reflect upon the invention of computers and the internet, we will find that they were created as a way to **HELP** us do work faster and more efficiently. They were invented to improve our lives, not to diminish the quality of our lives. Actually, computers were invented speed up calculations, and the internet's original intention was to improve communication between scientists. In no way possible could the inventors of the Internet foresee today's internet popularity.
The following link provides the history of the internet:
I have had several people in my life (those who are trying to make excuses for their laziness!) tell me, "Yeah, but you have had computer classes!" Only on a minor technicality are they correct. I had computer classes in both 9th and 9th grade.
The computers I 'trained' on were as follows:
The Commodore 64:
Note that any floppy drives were external devices, sound boards and modems (what is a modem, you ask?) DID NOT EXIST at the time, neither did a 'mouse' or any version of Windows.
Q: Can anyone tell me what "POKE 53281,1 POKE 53280,0" does?
A: This is the command used on Commodore 64's to make a black screen with green writing. Without typing this command immediately after turning on the computer, you see nothing on the screen!
I can still remember many of the "BASIC" programming language commands from high school.
The computer class that I had in 9th grade had this computer:
The Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80 Model III:
Once again, NO hard drives, NO internet / mouse / Windows, and the only sound that came from either of these computers were beeps form the computer's internal speaker.
Please note the 5.5" VERY floppy drives in these computers.
I remember when I spent $1,025 on 16 MB of memory for my first computer. My friends thought I was building a freakishly large computer, and that I would never need that much memory. Can I just share with you that for less than $32, you can buy a memory chip that is thousands or millions of times more powerful than what I spent $1,025 for ?!?
My first sound board was a SoundBlaster 2.0. I still have it in a box somewhere! I paid $200 for it, and it lasted me many years, and is still functional. Even the on-board sound cards that are in the cheapest computers being sold today are hundreds of times more powerful than the one I spent $200 on.
Modems:
My first modem was definitely a large, external box that connected via a thick cable. This was before the invention of a publicly accessible internet, but BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) were common. I had to tell my computer a specific private phone number to dial (around the world, sometimes, and almost always long distance!), and the computer would connect to the other distant computer. Some BBSs were free, others were not. What was NOT free, however, was the half hour it took to download one picture file (JPG) that was of horrible quality by today's standards. A small game, for example, could take overnight to download - at long distance phone rates. If a call came into my home (no cell phones at that time), my modem would be booted off the phone line, and I would have to start the download all over again!
When AOL arrived on the scene, it was $2.95 an hour. A $150 / month bill from AOL a month was not uncommon for me. You can now get AOL for as little as $11.95 / month.
I installed everything into my own computer: modems, printers, mouse, windows (all versions, and I still own them!)
When somebody tries to pull off, "Yeah, but you have had computer classes!", I tell them that the computer classes that I had in my past are comparable to sending a bumper car course for a half an hour one day, and the next day, expect him to be able to drive a high powered dragster, or a modern long-wheelbase Alcohol Altered car. There is simply no comparison, and one definitely is not preparation for the others.
Just last weekend, I was playing piano in a local art gallery. When I finished playing, everybody in the gallery stopped looking at the art, and applauded me. I overheard one lady say, "I wonder where he took lessons from." I politely answered her, "Ma'am, I have never had formal music lessons." Her friend attempted to agree with her by trying to brush off my talents and abilities, with a wave of one hand in my direction, she said, "Oh, he must be one of those people that can play any instrument at any time. You've heard of those people, haven't you?" I just looked at them dead on while the curator of the Art Gallery looked at the ladies and said, "I am inclined to think his talents are a result of hard work, perseverance and determination." I looked at the ladies, and in with the same wave of my arm, I first waved at them, then in the direction of the gentleman and said, "Vanna, would you please tell this gentleman what he has won?" - then I walked out the door.
The moral of this story:
Use your resources to your advantage, and hard work never killed many people!
The information gained can only serve to enrich your lives.
- Michael
Being intelligent is not knowing all the answers. Being intelligent is knowing how to find all the answers! It is all about resources, and having some ability to retain what you have learned. Both take a little work and a little time and energy. The phrase, "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime" certainly applies.
S E A R C H E N G I N E S
Everybody knows how to "Google it", but there are other options available.
www.bing.com is my all-purpose favorite search engine - if for no other reason, the fantastic photography featured on the home page changes every day. There is an arrow button at the bottom of the home page that can be used to scroll through the past photographs from previous days.
Even though I have had a few years of Spanish, this page is useful for translating everything from simple phrases to complete web pages from German, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Portugese, Italian, Dutch and French into English (and from any one of these languages to the other!). Many people in the English speaking world are completely unaware that there are websites from all around the world, and in many different languages that are more helpful than a webpage in English. While it is true that translation software is never word-for-word perfect in it's translation, much of this information is valuable, this web site takes translation to a new level, making every attempt to use correct grammar and form that is unique to eacn individual language.
(http://translate.google.com/)
Other search engines might include:
www.DogPile.com (yes, that is correct!)
and
These 2 sites are inclusive search engines that search multiple search sites at the same time, and might return more webpages relating to your search than any one site might be capable of returning.
WIKIPEDIA.ORG
The modern day replacement for an encyclopedia set is www.Wikipedia.org .
The difference between this website and a set of encyclopedias is that a set of printed encyclopedias is outdated by **2** years before it goes to print. If yo go to Wikipedia.org, for example, the site it updated within minutes after a famous person dies, a new president is sworn in, for example. It is a live and up-to-date valuable resource for information. I can't remember when a day has gone by in my life that I have not used this site, and many times each day. You can find ANYTHING about ANYTHING - from plants, animals, music and movie stars, any famous person, any ordinary substance - ANYTHING!
W E A T H E R
THE WEATHER CHANNEL
This site is invaluable when planning an adventure that is outdoors.
Just type in your city or zip code for current local radar, hour-by-hour, daily or 10-day forecasts.
This weather website offers the same information as The Weather Channel website, with the addition of current wind speed, humidity, allergy information, etc.
I use these 2 weather pages interchangeably, depending on my needs.
YOUTUBE.COM
I have uploaded 38 videos of my own (search "Tattookub"), and my lowly little videos of me playing my keyboard instruments (Hammond B3, etc), and my parrot, Conrad, have received almost 38,000 views.
It was Youtube.com that taught me how to knit, and many more things that I have learned. You can watch entire episodes of many sitcoms and movies, including The Golden Girls, and many more.
MAPQUEST.COM
A brief segway:
I have already blogged about the benefits of owning an inexpensive hand-held GPS. Unless you live in a tiny town, and NEVER leave the area (which is a sad fact, in itself!), there is absolutely no excuse to NOT own a GPS. Considering the fact that once an initial purchase is made, their use is absolutely **free** forever. They require no monthly data packages, etc, and to use them, you simply get them out of the box, plug them into the receptacle in your car, type in the address (or the name of the store, etc), that is your destination, and press GO. THAT IS ALL THERE IS TO IT! Hand-held GPS devices have a dash mount that encourage hands-free operation, and they are Blue Tooth enabled, so that when you are in your car, and your cell phone rings, you can answer it through the GPS, encouraging hands-free cell phone use, as well. But, in the immortal words of Sophia Petrillo from 'The Golden Girls', "I digress"
.
Back to MAPQUEST.COM:
If I want to know the location of an address / store / event, etc, while I am in my home and sitting at my computer, I use mapquest.com. When I need to know how to actually get there, and I am in my vehicle, I use my GPS.
GOOGLEMAPS.COM
www.googlemaps.com
Have you ever wanted to take a trip back through your old neighborhood, but ... time, money and distance separates you? Googlemaps.com can get you there! There are some small towns not covered on this website, but you can go down any street in a large city, and major streets in most small towns. You might even find your car parked in front of your house, your old school or church - or your work place! I use this website to travel vicariously. If you click on 'satellite view", you will see a little orange man in the upper left hand corner of that window. Click-and-hold on him, and drag him to the street that you want to visit. Then navigate using either the mouse or the arrow keys to go up and down the streets. Don't forget to look left, right and up & down - you don't want to miss anything. The photography is real, and the detail can be amazing.
WONDERHOWTO.COM
I'm sure you've wondered how to do something. It was this site, along with Youtube, as I previously stated, that taught me how to knit, and take my accordion apart, and get it back together correctly! You can learn everything from the most useful, to the most unusual and the most silly on this site. There are insiders tips and tricks to doing virtually anything you ever wanted to do. The subjects contain, but certainly are not limited to:
Computers and software, music and playing musical instruments, arts and crafts, pranks and jokes - and solving virtualy any problem that is a human can conceive. This site is well worth adding to your bookmarks, and USING IT!
F I N D I N G
I N F O R M A T I O N A B O U T A N Y B O D Y ! ! !
WWW.ANYWHO.COM, WWW.WHITEPAGES.COM and WWW.YELLOWPAGES.COM are all useful in finding personal and business phone numbers and addresses. Reverse phone number searches are also available. These sites will tell you if the number is a cell phone number, and if it is, they will require a small fee to tell you who the cell phone number belongs to. Otherwise, the information is absolutely free.
AREA CODE LOOK-UP:
ZIP CODE LOOK-UP:
FINDING SOMEONE'S AGE, DATE OF BIRTH, DATE OF DEATH, etc:
www.vitalrec.com (Vital Records)
Once the site loads, DO NOT enter information in the light yellow dialog box over to the right. If you do, you will be prompted to pay $$. Instead, scroll down past large blue writing that says "Public Records Search" (don't enter anything in this box, either!). Click on the state in which you which you would like to search. Actually, the state that you select now doesn't matter, because you have to select it again on the next page. Once again, a light yellow box pops up to the right. Ignore this one, too, and scroll down. You should now see text that says, "Illinois State Vital Records Office Information" (or whatever state you chose on the last page). To the right of the contact information relating to that state's Vital Records office, you will find red text that says,m "Find Lost Family and Friends", then "First Name, State, Last Name" text boxes. THESE BOXES ARE THE CORRECT BOXES. Type in the formal name of the person you are looking for, and perferably the state that they might have lived in. To check your accuracy, this site MIGHT list a few people who are related to this person. If you recognize the person's name, the age is correct, and the family members are correct for the person you are looking for, YOU HAVE FOUND THE RIGHT PERSON! This much information is FREE. If you want more than this information from *this* page, you have to pay for it.
This site only tells you the person's name, current age, and SOME relatives. It doesn't know when someone dies - so if they died a few years ago, and they were in their 90's at the time of death, this site can easily list them as 117 yrs old! I will soon give you a page that does know the date of death, however!
The next page:
Information gleamed from this page is absolutely free at all times, and it is self explanitory, but it has limited use. The only difficulty remains in the fact that if you are searching a very common name, you might have several pages of results to wade through before you find the person you are looking for.
FAMOUS OR NON-FAMOUS (Ordinary people!) GRAVES:
www.FindAGrave.com is the largest up-to-date virtual cemetery on the internet. This website it not limited to famous people. Many of my own ancestors have their own pages on this site. This site is absolutely free, and anybody can write a page for their own ancestors, or you can browse millions of famous people's memorials. You can find everybody from Elvis Presley to Dixie Carter to King Henry VIII - and millions more! For each person, the website has at least one picture of the individual in his or her prime, and usually a couple pictures, a fairly detailed biography, and an actual photograph of his or her grave, head stone, mausoleum or other memorial. If the person was cremated, the final disposition of their ashes may be given. Witht rare exceptions, it is possible to leave a virtual memorial (flowers, a note, etc), if you would like to do so. I would be embarassed to admit how many hours I have spent on this site, alone. The information is fascinating.
Pertaining to average people:
The following link is to a particular cemetery in eastern Illinois. This is one of 4 cemeteries in the area that hold the bodies of many of my relatives on the Keller side. The large memorial featured at the bottom of this page is the "Keller Memorial", and all Kellers (and many more people!) on this page are my own relatives. Any person can also add their relatives to FindaGrave.com.
(Click on "View All Interments" once the page loads to see the Kellers)
www.FindADeath.com is more "death hag" related, and I have spent **many** hours reading the dirty details of many famous people's last hours on earth. Whiel FindAGrave.com is a site that honors modesty and formality of the deceased, FindADeath.com wastes no energy on such matters! All gorey details are exposed. The fun starts, for example, when you click on "search" in the left-hand column. Type in "Ike Turner", for example, then in the search results, click on "The Death of Ike Turner". For some fascinating reading, scroll down when the page loads. Throughout these stories, you can click on pictures to see their actual death certificates, pictures of the house they lived / died in (and other pictures!), including pictures of their graves, and a few even feature one last shot - pictures of them in their caskets. For more gore than the average person can take, type in "Chris Farley". There is an actual picture of him they way the found his body. This, folks, is what a cocaine overdose looks like! Write the results of his last day down as, "Things to avoid in my life!" Incidentally, I was in Chicago, right beside his apt. building while he lay dead in it!
Also very interesting re: famous people's graves (those buried in Los Angeles, at any rate!)
http://www.beneathlosangeles.com/
PRIVATELY OWNED 'PROFESSIONAL' CARS (Hearses, etc
There are several private hearse clubs, including "The Dead Sleds", "The Grim Rides", and "Phantom Coaches"
The Grim Rides:
The Dead Sleds:
Through simple searches and the selective use of specific search terms, you can use the internet to find virtually anything. There are some bits of information here and there that I am trying to find, but I haven't located them yet. I use a word processor program to keep a list of things that I am 'on the look' for, and if I **ever** have spare time, I pull up that list and look a bit more. Once in a while, I get lucky and run across information tha I have been seeking for quite some time.
A hint about using search engine (Bing, Altavista, Google, etc):
I am 'old school' in many ways, and searching for information is one of them. For many searches, I simply type in specific terms that I am searching for. For other searches, I use this format in the dialogue box:
+"City Museum"+"St. Louis"+"hours"
(as an example). This forces the search engines to return pages that contain only these specific words, and in this specific order. If you did not use this format, you will get results that have "Museum Louis St. hours City", and could certainly pertain to a lot of subjects, rather than the City Museum at 16th & Washington, St. Louis, MO.
I will be the first person to admit that the internet can be a pain - a ROYAL PAIN! I also firmly believe that the internet, cell phones, etc, have encouraged laziness and the 'dumbing down of America", in general. HOWEVER.... if we take a moment to reflect upon the invention of computers and the internet, we will find that they were created as a way to **HELP** us do work faster and more efficiently. They were invented to improve our lives, not to diminish the quality of our lives. Actually, computers were invented speed up calculations, and the internet's original intention was to improve communication between scientists. In no way possible could the inventors of the Internet foresee today's internet popularity.
The following link provides the history of the internet:
I have had several people in my life (those who are trying to make excuses for their laziness!) tell me, "Yeah, but you have had computer classes!" Only on a minor technicality are they correct. I had computer classes in both 9th and 9th grade.
The computers I 'trained' on were as follows:
The Commodore 64:
Note that any floppy drives were external devices, sound boards and modems (what is a modem, you ask?) DID NOT EXIST at the time, neither did a 'mouse' or any version of Windows.
Q: Can anyone tell me what "POKE 53281,1 POKE 53280,0" does?
A: This is the command used on Commodore 64's to make a black screen with green writing. Without typing this command immediately after turning on the computer, you see nothing on the screen!
I can still remember many of the "BASIC" programming language commands from high school.
The computer class that I had in 9th grade had this computer:
The Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80 Model III:
Once again, NO hard drives, NO internet / mouse / Windows, and the only sound that came from either of these computers were beeps form the computer's internal speaker.
Please note the 5.5" VERY floppy drives in these computers.
I remember when I spent $1,025 on 16 MB of memory for my first computer. My friends thought I was building a freakishly large computer, and that I would never need that much memory. Can I just share with you that for less than $32, you can buy a memory chip that is thousands or millions of times more powerful than what I spent $1,025 for ?!?
My first sound board was a SoundBlaster 2.0. I still have it in a box somewhere! I paid $200 for it, and it lasted me many years, and is still functional. Even the on-board sound cards that are in the cheapest computers being sold today are hundreds of times more powerful than the one I spent $200 on.
Modems:
My first modem was definitely a large, external box that connected via a thick cable. This was before the invention of a publicly accessible internet, but BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) were common. I had to tell my computer a specific private phone number to dial (around the world, sometimes, and almost always long distance!), and the computer would connect to the other distant computer. Some BBSs were free, others were not. What was NOT free, however, was the half hour it took to download one picture file (JPG) that was of horrible quality by today's standards. A small game, for example, could take overnight to download - at long distance phone rates. If a call came into my home (no cell phones at that time), my modem would be booted off the phone line, and I would have to start the download all over again!
When AOL arrived on the scene, it was $2.95 an hour. A $150 / month bill from AOL a month was not uncommon for me. You can now get AOL for as little as $11.95 / month.
I installed everything into my own computer: modems, printers, mouse, windows (all versions, and I still own them!)
When somebody tries to pull off, "Yeah, but you have had computer classes!", I tell them that the computer classes that I had in my past are comparable to sending a bumper car course for a half an hour one day, and the next day, expect him to be able to drive a high powered dragster, or a modern long-wheelbase Alcohol Altered car. There is simply no comparison, and one definitely is not preparation for the others.
Just last weekend, I was playing piano in a local art gallery. When I finished playing, everybody in the gallery stopped looking at the art, and applauded me. I overheard one lady say, "I wonder where he took lessons from." I politely answered her, "Ma'am, I have never had formal music lessons." Her friend attempted to agree with her by trying to brush off my talents and abilities, with a wave of one hand in my direction, she said, "Oh, he must be one of those people that can play any instrument at any time. You've heard of those people, haven't you?" I just looked at them dead on while the curator of the Art Gallery looked at the ladies and said, "I am inclined to think his talents are a result of hard work, perseverance and determination." I looked at the ladies, and in with the same wave of my arm, I first waved at them, then in the direction of the gentleman and said, "Vanna, would you please tell this gentleman what he has won?" - then I walked out the door.
The moral of this story:
Use your resources to your advantage, and hard work never killed many people!
The information gained can only serve to enrich your lives.
- Michael
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