Pictures: Mom’s drunk on the scanner, again

The black & white photos are my grandfather and my Uncle Mike, I believe. When Mike went to West Point, they handed out copies of one of Grandpa’s electronics repair books in class. Apparently when they realized that Mike had the same last name as the author, they started to give him shit about being really good at electronics, too. It only got worse when he told them it was his dad.

And the bucktoothed kid in front of the 286 is me, proudly showing off the sum total of my activity for the summer between sixth and seventh grades: shoplifting pewter dragon statues from the mall, dicking off on Prodigy, and spending hours a day tracking down Lord Verminaard in Trade Wars 2002 until I blew him and his parter into space for daring to tussle with DRIZZT DO’URDEN and his sock puppet buddy SHARP BLACKWOOD. (When a month before this shot was taken Verminaard had looted my home planet, I went out into the backyard and wept and sniveled at the stars for justice.)

If you have any pictures of you and dorky tech pastimes of your childhood, I would love to see them. Don’t leave me hanging with my whistling gap teeth here. You can email me and I’ll add them to the thread, or just add them t to the BBG Flickr pool. (Tag them “dorkyearbook” and I’ll find them.)

Previously: Things On My Desk: My Grandpa’s “Lemonaid Loader”

Update: The first batch are here.

1. [Joel Johnson]

   Now that I think about it, that may have been the 486. Math co-processor up this, yo.

2. [Anonymous]

   Well unfortunately, my JACQUES HUGHES didn’t survive his duel with the man who disgraced him on the eve of his wedding in En Garde.

3. [HeatherB]

   Only “geek” picture I have is with my Elfquest birthday cake. Nothing tech. Shucks.

4. [Anonymous]

   I added a few of mine to the pool. (“mrbill”)

5. [ROSSINDETROIT]

   Thanks for posting the link to your Grandpa’s books. I just grabbed a copy of “How to solve solid-state circuit troubles” off of Amazon. If it saves me 15 minutes fixing something it will pay for itself. In my experience, the repair books written for practical users like repairmen are treasure troves of useful technical information.

6. [ROSSINDETROIT]

   Wish I had photos of all of my old computers but I had computers – back in the Ford and Carter years – before I had a camera.

7. [Mindpowered]

   I don’t have any pictures of me on the old computer namely because it’s monitor screen was lime green and black.

   Of course, my buddy had 4 colour CGA which was the hot item.

   Oh and nice R.A. Salvatore reference.

8. [ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive]

   I just added a photo of myself from the machine room at UCLA in 1973. Cro magnon!

9. [ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive]

   It was actually 1971. God, I’m old.

10. [Anonymous]

    http://www.sexypeople-blog.com/2009/03/bernanrd_05.html

    Check out this sexy devil.

11. [Dani4a]

    Great album. It would be cooler if people would stop loading it with recent photos of old technology. That’s not the point, people!

    Joel, I LOVE that photo. =)