First, there was Pong. My Dad brought this home one day in the late 1970s. My Paw Paw, Chet Long, was also very into technology.

We got a Commodore Vic 20 in the early 1980s and then a Commodore 64 (I tried to ask Dad for a modem, but he wouldn't have anything hooked up to our phone line). From cartridge games to an IQ test on cassette tape and finally to LOAD START, I loved using that machine!

When the power supply died in the late 1980s, that was the end (my industrious brother Jed did get a good price for the system at a yard sale).

Around this time, Paw Paw had computers at his office, including an early Mac we would play games on (the others were off limits to us kids).

My freshman year of high school, I took keyboarding on our monochrome monitors and WordPerfect for DOS 5.1. Especially due to my poor handwriting, I composed my thoughts on a computer.

We could get passes during study hall to the computer lab, and I could often be found there writing or playing some of the educational games.

My youth pastor, Sheridan Lehman, used a computer to print out some of our youth materials so I got a very early start into a bit of graphic design helping him.

While we had computer labs at Mount Vernon Nazarene College, there was no internet until January 1995. My grandma, Catherine Esch, had started using Juno email at Landis Homes just a bit before that and I had some other friends back home I could email, as well as connecting with folks all over the world via Telnet (including meeting a girlfriend long before internet dating sites were much of a thing).

I also found some great websites sharing news about Holy Hip Hop and started an email newsletter with the contacts I made. It was the first time I saw potential with meeting and fellowshiping with folks all over the world in a real way.

Shortly after moving to central Massachusetts after college, a coworker told me he had a used computer for sale. It was an AST 486 with no monitor. I bought it for $300.