GEEKNOTE:  Hi, my name is Rob Marlowe and I've probably got the greatest job in the world...I get paid to play with computers!

A little background:  I bought my first PC, a Radio Shack TRS-80 back in 1978, and I've been hooked ever since.  That first computer had 4k of memory, and you had to load programs using a cassette recorder.  Hard drives weren't available, and floppy drives cost hundreds of dollars.

I started a computer bulletin board service (BBS) in 1985, and we used a store & forward email system (FIDONET) to send messages to other systems via long distance phone calls. 

In the early 1990s, I attended a BBS conference in Colorado Springs where the hot topic was how to connect our systems to each other using a TCP/IP network...something called an "Internet".  This was all around the same time that a fellow in England by the name of Timothy Berners-Lee had come up with a way of sharing data over the Internet with something called a "web".  Interesting idea.  As they say, the rest is history.

In the coming weeks, I plan to cover a series of computer topics that I hope you will find interesting.  Feel free to let me know if I drop into "Geek" instead of English.  Doing so is an occupational hazard.

Please let me know if there is any particular topic you would like to see me address.

Rob Marlowe, Network Engineer, Gulfcoast Networking, and Deputy Mayor of New Port Richey

http://www.gulfcoastnetworking.com