In the 1980s, I made the jump from Atari computers to PC and was an early adopter of Prodigy Online and AOL. I still remember Steve Case announcing the ten-thousandth AOL user. Halcyon days.

The walled gardens of such online services soon gave way to a long list of BBS numbers and terminal programs, all in glorious DOS. When mice came along I thought they were this weird, unneeded extra appendage but then came multitasking and the need to navigate windows in PC/GEOS and then Windows 3.1.

The rest of the world started catching on. Soon I was the "kid good at computers" helping family, friends, and then friends of friends get online.

After getting my feet wet by building custom PC hardware and installing small office and POS systems based on Novell NetWare, I started my own consulting company called "cAPITALOCK Systems and Service". The business itself involved expanding on the existing offerings and adding several others. I became a reseller for several hardware and software products, buying in bulk, and selling to both home users and small businesses, especially those just getting started on the Internet. This was in the age of dial-up.