Happy Birthday to David!

It is another special day . . . Today David celebrates his 32nd birthday!! So here's what I've been able to pull from the hard drive . . .

Here's a photo showing toddler David, an independent thinker. David is always proud to work through problems on his own and figure out his own solution. I think that is something we can see in this photo.

I'm thinking he had a small sit & scoot toy at one end of the yard and he needed to figure out a way to get it back to the house. Of course, he could've sat on it and scooted across the yard. There was probably a rope or handle on it so he could drag it across the yard. But instead, he probably did some physics equations to determine the efficiency of dragging the little wheels vs pulling something with larger wheels. In the end, we can see that he concluded that the most efficient method was to load his toy with the small wheels into the wagon which has bigger wheels. Well done, young engineer!

I don't have many recent photos for most siblings, but since David was here in England just a few weeks back, I have plenty of fresh photos. I thought I'd find a few that really showed the strength and endurance that he displayed while he was here. In these two pictures, I guess you can't really see it, so you'll have to let me explain. . . .

This picture is taken in the very north of England. The wall we're standing at is what remains of Hadrians Wall, a 2,000 year old wall built by the Romans to protect the edge of their empire. The wall was built along the top of the hills that roll along the countryside. David did not let his stiff, aching legs stop him from climbing to the top of the hill. At multiple points along the wall he made it his personal quest to climb up to the wall, which was no small feat.

On Sunday afternoon we stopped for lunch along the Bamburgh Castle which sits on a bluff over looking the North Sea. The nice little spot we found to have lunch was in a little patch of sand dune at the bottom of the bluff. David was a real trooper for sticking with us on this one. . . as hiking in the steep sand was not easy for him to do, especially since there are no handrails to hold as you climb down the steep dunes.

David: I think I speak for everyone in the family when I say that you are an amazing example of faith and endurance. You have been through so much, and through it all you maintain a marvelous positive attitude. Here's to a great 33rd year for you! I hope you continue to regain your health and full-mobility in the coming year.

As a lead up to David's birthday, I wanted to post something that I thought he'd get a kick out of. But I also thought this was significant enough for the rest of the family . . .

Does anyone else have fond memories of the families first PC, the compaq? Follow this link and you can see what modern mechanix had to say in their 1983 review of this new machine.

My first memories were the new years eve family extravaganzas when dad would haul it home from the office. Two kids would grab the keyboard & pound at it ferociously in a Friendlyware competition. At the same time five other kids would gather round to gaze into the 9 inch monochrome monitor to follow the action. of course it wasn't all fun & games - John Jr. spent plenty of time on the world's most boring application, the flight simulator, and John Sr. used it for some kind of office work for the 364 other day of the year.

It weighed in at 28 pounds which made it far heavier than I could possibly lift at the time. It seemed massive, but I guess that is only the weight of 5 modern laptops. It had 128k of ram vs a modern laptop which could have 4gb - if I've done the arithmetic right it would take 312,500 compaqs to get the same memory. The best comparison, though, might be the price: $3,600 in 1983 is equivalent to around 10,000 in 2008 dollars. That kind of money could get you quite a machine in 2008.

But i'm sure Dad got his moneys worth out of this thing. Aside from the value it provided at the office, there were hours of good ol' family fun in the early days. After the office upgraded, this became the family's home computer. it was a real work horse for years and years. I'm willing to bet that David kept that thing running until he was in high school. That was the first machine we used to dial onto the internet ("Nobody touch the phone for the next hour! I'm dialling onto Prodigy to find out the weather in Peoria!")

Yes, we easily got our money's worth. I'd say it had a profound impact upon some of the family members. This was Dave's original computer, he might not have become a computer whiz kid if he didn't have the chance to mess around on this thing when he was 7 years old, and if he weren't allow to totally dismantle it at age 17. For me, I spent many hours playing Millionare on that machine - it gave me my first introduction into the world of financial risk & return (I was probably the only ten year old in the area who could explain the difference between a call and a put).

Thanks Dad for being a step ahead of the technology curve. Thanks for bringing home the compaq on New Years Eve.