Technology

I was thinking today of the first time that I was introduced to the internet and was surprised to remember that it was more than 10 years ago. It was when I started my library job at the university, I even had to go for a lesson on how to use the e-mail client. I took to it all pretty quick though. It wasn't long before I had a separate Hotmail account for personal e-mails.

Someone had told me that the first thing to do when new to the internet is to look up information about something that interests you, a favourite author or musician for example. I looked up Terry Pratchett and soon I was a member of a forum of Australian Terry Pratchett fans. In actual fact I am still a member of the forum although I haven't been active for quite a while. I do still log in sometimes and some of the original members are still active. Over the next few years I actually met up with some of the members, 2 from the UK, 2 from Alaska and 1 from Australia.

It wasn't long before I had to have a computer at home. Mostly I wanted to chat to my Australian buddies in real time, which meant, late at night. My first computer cost me £1000, had 3GB of hard drive (yes 3GB!!) and 256mb RAM. It ran on Windows 98. My internet was dial-up and sometimes took 20 attempts to connect. It would kick me off at least once an hour. Mum would complain that she could never reach me on the phone as the line was always busy.

I think I'd had the computer about a year before the kids became interested. Soon there was a rota for internet usage to avoid arguments. Then my daughter came into some money and went and bought herself a lap top. We still have it, it's now called the crap top and Lucy plays with it.

Now we have four working computers (although only 3 are set up) 2 laptops, including the crap top and two broken computers. We have wireless broadband which is mostly reliable.

What do I do now on the internet? Well, I keep a blog (obviously), I have my own website and an e-book that I wrote a couple of years ago, I visit two forums regularly on which I have met many friends, some have even become RL friends. I visit Twitter and Facebook daily and also like Ebay. I love reading blogs and have a folder of my favourites which I visit regularly. I do my banking online and a fair bit of shopping too. I do some writing for an site when the mood takes me, mostly non-fiction but I have dabbled in fiction too. And I like to play online bingo occasionally.