Saturday, January 2, 2010

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If you want to know the title of this post, you can translate binary code at: 
http://www.roubaixinteractive.com/PlayGround/Binary_Conversion/Binary_To_Text.asp
    My interest in computers grew when I was a senior in high school. Everyone was saying that your future would be guaranteed if you went into computer science, or engineering.  I stupidly believed that I could not do either because I thought the math would be too difficult. Engineers were still using slide rules then and reams of continuous feed paper filled with zeros and ones was pretty much the extent of what I knew about computers.

To digress a bit.  Above is the logo for the University of Missouri-Rolla where my father taught Russian and Russian Civilization.  It was the engineering branch of the University of Missouri.  My Dad, being in the humanities, fought that image. The University had previously been called the Missouri School of Mines and has recently changed its name again to the  Missouri University of  Science and Technology. I am glad my Dad wasn't living when they made that change. He fought so hard for the liberal arts. In the old logo of  Joe Miner, Joe has a slide rule over his shoulder. I put that there for any reader who may be too young to know what a slide rule is.
    So about the same time that Bill Gates was building a PC in his garage (or so the legend of Bill goes), I went away to BYU, unsure of what to major in, but sure that I wasn't smart enough to major in computer science.  I don't regret finally landing in English and Communications. That likely is the best fit.  I just should have taken a few computer science classes along the way.

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