My Beloved Computer Desk
I just had a thought tonight as I was sitting here after having set up my “new” PC station in my home office. I now have a docking station that I can plug my notebook into whenever I am at home so I can use a regular keyboard, mouse, and large monitor. It all connects wirelessly to my “network” which consists of this computer and my G4 running OSX. I came to realize that this new set up is located on the same desk that I have had for my computers since the mid-80s. I think my parents got the desk for me when I got my Commodore-64, although it may have been a bit earlier - when I was using my first computer, a Texas Instruments, that I won in a drawing. I know this desk has seen a C-64, a Commodore-128, an Amiga, a Performa, a Mac clone, a PC cobbled together by my cousin, and now my Dell notebook (sorry, Apple) that’s docked like a desktop, replacing the cobbled together PC. A couple more years and it will have seen three decades of service.
My strongest memory of this desk is sitting at it for hours playing games on the C-64. My friend Geof always had access to numerous cracked games. Hundreds. I think he got them from a group in Detroit that called themselves Hanover Fist (Hand Over Fist?) I had a mounbtain of 5.5″ floppy disks loaded with all the newest games. Anyway…it was just interesting to stop and think that this desk used to serve as a game station for me back in the 80’s (I loooove the ay-TEES!) when I basically didn’t have a care in the world, and is now where I do most of my deadline-driven work. Which, incidentally, I need to get back to right now. Ugh.