MEANDERING THOUGHTS

I've been working on the bedroom this afternoon. You can't tell yet, but hopefully by bedtime there will be a little difference. I'm a bit slow- that's okay..I'm progressing and that's the name of the game...
So I'm taking a break.. while I was cleaning and hanging things up, I got to thinking about our first computer. It was a HP and a pretty nifty machine. My goal at that time was family history.. The CD ROM became non functional, and it wasn't smart enough to go beyond AOL 4.0.. and I'm told the memory was at the max.. oh, well.. this was back in 1994. The neat little computerized typewriter I bought for the kids for homework assignments while they were in school yet, had stopped functioning and I was in a quandary as to what to buy..
we needed a word processor.. and one of the girls said.."yes, one with a computer attached to it". So we went shopping. Our first computer came from Montgomery Ward. It's no longer there at the mall, but the computer was a good choice. It took us till 1997 to take the big step to the internet. Once there, what does one do? There was only one person I knew with email- my cousin Jeff's wife, Karen. She welcomed me to the internet. I'll never forget that. Not one other person I knew was online then. So I started my crusade to get my family there so we could communicate. The next person I was able to communicate with was my nephew Andrew who was in the USArmy in Hawaii. It was so wonderful to be able to talk..from there, one by one, my family has taken that big step and joined me on the 'net.
There was a bit of family history out there .. some records online, but nothing like there is today.. and no blogs, of course. And.. oh, yes... it was painfully slow going anywhere. I complain about this PC often about how slow it is and how I can't get beyond AOL 8.0.. but back then, it was minutes literally to go from one site to another until I took another big step and went to the 56K modem which is what I now have.
Mandy and I finally got tired of the slowwwwwwnnnnneeeeesssssss of the first computer and the fact that you couldn't put a CD in the poor machine, so we pulled our resources one day and went out to buy a new computer. Oh.. that was so exciting! We got us a HP Millennium Edition- oh for joy.. in 2000. It's now 2007 and I'm still using this archaic little pc.. Pathetic, but functional. I'm thankful to have it. One day I'll have another new one.. the sound card went bad on this one..at least I think that's the problem, and the CD burner is done for as of several years ago.. and the floppy disk slot is shot. It's been erased at least 4 times, and the original programs returned to it. WOW... and I'm still using it. My monitor is a Dell, thank you Paul and Amy. They loaned me their old one when they got their new computer. The mouse is new, as is the keyboard last winter.
The tower is all that is left.
It would be nice to have the sound back. It gets annoying.. but what I'm finding is that one needs to go to at least an XP to be able to access a lot of sites. Maybe one day. For now, I'm going to struggle along with my old faithful (most of the time). Now everyone I know has a computer that is fancy/dancy and wayyyyyy ahead of me. Look what I started!
Hey.. and I'm still on dial up.. not many can say that either. We may go broadband or satellite one day..who knows.? And most of the family now uses the flat screen monitor.. mine fills my desk, but it works, and that's the important thing.
I'm glad to be online and able to go so many places on the 'net.. it sure has changed over the years.