Traveling Thoughts

It’s amazing what I find everytime I clean my room. I have a crate that contains old papers from middle and high school. Tonight I pulled one out, it’s from my sophomore year in highschool. I was in a regular humanities class that year but my teachers saw potential in me and had me doing some of the stuff that the advanced humanities class was doing.

This paper is dated May 20th, 1998. 9 years ago. It was the final essay of the year. It’s labeled “My Interest” (which makes me wonder what my topic choices were.) I got 300 out of 300 points on it and it appears to be a 5 paragraph essay.

Do you know that you can do over one hundred things on a computer? The first computers started out as machines with no monitor and transistors the size of light bulbs. They were used for crunching numbers. Now, they are used for many different things. I have a large interest in computers. First and foremost, I like computers because I can code my own programs. Next, I like computers because of the games that can be played on them. Finally, I enjoy being able to use the internet.

My main interest is computers, because I can code and use my own programs. I like this aspect of computers because not many people can code their own programs. Being able to program makes me different. It is very exciting to be able to code my own programs and see them work. By knowing how to program, I can create games, screensavers, and many other programs. I am able to code programs that are up to two thousand lines long that can do many different things. The best program that I have done yet was the final project that I did for my computer science class. It was the beginning of a game; a character generator to be exact. It is something that I am very proud of. That program is just one major thing among others. Programming is my main interest and something that I excel at.

Another thing that I enjoy about computers are the games that can be played on them. There are many games that can be played on computers and I just happen to like quite a few of them. There are a few games that I do not like to play. For example, I do not like violent games such as Quake, Doom, or Mortal Kombat. On the other hand, there are many other games that I do like. For instance, I like RPG’s, also known as role playing games. An example is King’s Quest. I also like mystey game, such as, The Dagger of Amon Ra. I also just happen to like those many different card games. A lot of the time games have many different sounds and songs on them. Not only do I like to play the game, but I also like to listen ot the music. In fact, sometimes I spend a whole hour just listening to the music from the disk that the game cames on. Another thing that I like to do with the games is look a the graphics. Most of the graphics on a game can be very detailed, intricate, and very interesting for that matter. I guess that my interest in computer games has to do with the fact that they take one away from the real world. Sometimes I get so involved with a game, that when something pops out at me, I just back and scream because it feels like I am in the game and not just playing it. Although games are just an accessory on a computer, to a lot of kids, they are a way to get away from reality. That is probably why I have an interest in computer games.

Last, I enjoy computers so much because of the Internet. The Internet was first used for military purposes, so that if there was a nuclear explosion, information could still be transferred around the world. It was created in 1969 by the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). With ARPAnet, one computer could talk to any computer hooked up to the network. Now the Internet is used for worldwide purposes form businesses to entertainment. I myself use the Internet for school and for enjoyment. When using the Internet for school, I look up facts and any other useful information that I may need for a report. For example, I had to use the Internet to find information on a report about the history of the Internet. Most of the time I use the Internet to look for many things to use for my own personal reasons. I also use the Internet to send mail to my friends. Although I have never done it, you can also talk to family and friends via chat rooms on the Internet. The Internet makes the computer more lively and I like that.

Everything about a computer is useful in some way. I love to use the computer it makes free time enjoyable and homework easy. I mainly like computers because I am able to code and use my own programs, play games, and surf the Internet. Oh, and do my homework, but that wasn’t worth talking about. The computer is a neat tool and I have a large interest in them.

As I retyped this, all I could say was “dweeb”. I was seriously such a dweeb.  When I say “although I’ve never done it before”  you know that was a confession, hello IM…seriously, as I think back, had I really not ever used IM, was it something that could be done but I just hadn’t…my own paper confuses me…