24DEC24 **UPDATED**

Around the time of the Montgomery Ward
incident I met some one that is probably
most responsible for the direction my
interests and tastes took. We only spent
a couple years around eachother but the
talent and genuine interest he displayed
in/with electronics and microcomputers
left an impression that saw me carry
these interests into personal hobbies
and professional endeavors.

I was homeschooled. Up until High School
my curriculum and the work therein was
all produced by my mother. She had a real
interest in teaching but none of the
desire to go to school and do it
professioinally. I feel that the challenge
of educating two children she could
then see do things with that education
as adults was most of the motivation.
(Maybe I'm a result of experimental
dark psychology lol).

In 1991, computer labs were a new and
pretty hot topic in schools and in our
state there was discussion that maybe
the poor disadvantaged homeschoolers
may need to attend school at least
a few times a month so they don't
get left behind. This of course never
made it into reality but there was
fear (mostly drummed up by all of
the 'HomeSchool' Christrian Mom-Warrior
newsletters my mother got) that the
satanic school system was working to
pull kids in using mandate requiring
their presence.

In response to this, my mother ran an
ad in our local paper searching for
a "Computer nerd that will teach a
hyper active 7 year old in exchange
for a daily lunch and gas money."
For weeks the phone didn't ring
(Well about the ad anyways). My mom
was sitting down to call in another
two weeks of space in the paper when
the phone rang, this time about the
ad. She talked to the person on the
other line for almost 45 minutes,
asking questions and qualifying the
responses. After the call she looked
back at her notes as I came up to
ask if I perhaps now had a computer
teacher.

"Well, he seemed to be more interested
in telling me about his Bulletine Board
System dedicated to his Dark Wing Duck
fan fiction then teaching computers.
When I asked him if he could show you
how to do things on your Commodore he
told me a 10 minute story about using
one to do something called Packet Radio.

When I asked about his schedule he told
me he couldn't garantee he'd be on time,
everytime because rides a 10 speed bike
that doubles as a crank for a generator
he's designing and he'll have to put the
wheels back on before he comes...

I think he's perfect!"

Joe was a really interesting guy in addition
to being the pocket protector wearing, coke
bottle glasses nerd you see as extras in movies
or in a meme, he also happened to be part of
the super niche doomsday cult that we were
in, just a different congregation, hense why
we didn't recognize him.

He asked about some of the things that I
wanted to learn. I really didn't know other
than I wanted to use computers and maybe build
a telephone. He got super jazzed about the phone
stuff and asked my mother if we could go 'on a
walk'. We walked about three streets down and
he pulled what was then a very shiny Kenwood
TR-2500. He used an attached mic to peck in
some numbers and then after about 30 seconds
I heard the familiar sound of a phone ringing!
My mom answered and I was able to tell her that
we would be back soon. My mind was completely
blown. By 1989 people did have 'car phones' and
the original Motorola bricks but that was all I
had ever seen. We made a few more calls, one
to a readback and another to the Time and Temp
number. Whenever I need a brief hit of dopamine
I always think back to how I felt when I
discovered you could do stuff like this with a
few tools (albiet very expensive tools)

Joe came to our house twice a week and
some times a friend of his would also
come, he (Josh) too was this super cool tech
guy who, like Joe didn't have a job but
also managed to always have stuff. We spent
and entire day getting a digital spedometer
fixed up on his bike and also made a mount
next to the readout so Josh could easily hang
his Casio WH-28 with countdown timer! He used
this to gauge how long it was going to take
him to arrive places.

The two of them had this really odd connection
around DarkWing Duck. It had just come out
and they were really into the writing and lore
based around the characters, where they came
from, the type of animals they were. The few
times I went to Joe's house I got to see his
extensive animorphic art, figuring collection.
I knew that the 'furry' thing has been around
for a long time but this stuff and what he was
into just seemed a lot different, much more
polished, commercial. For the time you would
have had to go to much trouble to be into and
find such things. I always wonder what modern
Joe would think about internet Furry culture.

We played a lot of video games but so as to
be sure I was learning stuff, he had me build
controllers for many of the systems we would
play on. I built an Atari 2600 controller
which covered the 2600 and Commodores we tinkered
with. I also built controllers for a TRS-80,
an NES (Which was a big deal because it required
extra chips).

We eventually had to move because the area we
lived in was starting to collapse because of
loss of industry and my parents yearned to
live in the country, I kept in touch with Joe
on an Indianapolis BBS and eventually we emailed
back and forth every few days. One day he just
stopped and I never understood why. It was much
later that I found out my mom had asked him
to quit messaging me because they were trying
to encourage me to more constructive things
with my life. That really even to this day
irritates me.

It was fun to be around people who were already
initiated to tech and online culture way before
it had mass exposure. Without the experience
I would not have had the comfort level to
dig in and really give all I have to learning
unfamiliar technical tasks.