Your essay is an admirable tribute to your dad and Radio Shack. Thank you and please, don't stick anything metal in your outlets. You might shock yourself. On the other hand, maybe you will receive a few radio station if you have any metal in your body.
Your essay is an admirable tribute to your dad and Radio Shack. Thank you and please, don't stick anything metal in your outlets. You might shock yourself. On the other hand, maybe you will receive a few radio station if you have any metal in your body.
I love this, Michael. Your Dad and my Dad could've have had a grand ol' time sitting silently in opposite corners of my Dad's "shop" amid circuit boards and the whiff of soldering wire. My Dad brought home a Sinclair in the early 80's. The monitor was a portable tv which I would snag in the middle of the night so I could watch Night Tracks under the covers in my room - (a tiny, snowy, black and white screen and the volume extremely low so as not to get busted). My Dad, like yours, spent an enormous amount of time with it. My brother got on board and learned to write code and program games. My Dad wrote a program that kept track of carrier pigeons and sold it to folks through a magazine for carrier pigeon enthusiasts, geeky before it was cool. I'm sorry you lost your Dad so young.
My first programming class was long ago, long before Google and Apple, at a time when “personal computers” were just starting to be a thing. The class was part of a four-semester progression in BASIC, and our teacher, a full professor, told us if we wanted to do “really well” after school, to get a doctorate in computer science and work in the field. She said we could write our own salary checks...and she was pretty much right.
Even today, long after I have forgotten pretty much everything I knew, I still often think of BASIC ‘if-then’ processes, especially whilst playing silly computer games like Monopoly. “If 2+ 2, Then =4”
Your essay is an admirable tribute to your dad and Radio Shack. Thank you and please, don't stick anything metal in your outlets. You might shock yourself. On the other hand, maybe you will receive a few radio station if you have any metal in your body.
Your essay is an admirable tribute to your dad and Radio Shack. Thank you and please, don't stick anything metal in your outlets. You might shock yourself. On the other hand, maybe you will receive a few radio station if you have any metal in your body.
A lovely essay. I have my own Radio Shack memories associated with my grandfather. I miss both of them.
I miss the proper radio shack...
Lovely but so poignant
I love this, Michael. Your Dad and my Dad could've have had a grand ol' time sitting silently in opposite corners of my Dad's "shop" amid circuit boards and the whiff of soldering wire. My Dad brought home a Sinclair in the early 80's. The monitor was a portable tv which I would snag in the middle of the night so I could watch Night Tracks under the covers in my room - (a tiny, snowy, black and white screen and the volume extremely low so as not to get busted). My Dad, like yours, spent an enormous amount of time with it. My brother got on board and learned to write code and program games. My Dad wrote a program that kept track of carrier pigeons and sold it to folks through a magazine for carrier pigeon enthusiasts, geeky before it was cool. I'm sorry you lost your Dad so young.
Beautiful tribute to your dad and RadioShack. My dad also died young and I also associate aspects of our more tactile, hopeful, analog past with him.
My first programming class was long ago, long before Google and Apple, at a time when “personal computers” were just starting to be a thing. The class was part of a four-semester progression in BASIC, and our teacher, a full professor, told us if we wanted to do “really well” after school, to get a doctorate in computer science and work in the field. She said we could write our own salary checks...and she was pretty much right.
Even today, long after I have forgotten pretty much everything I knew, I still often think of BASIC ‘if-then’ processes, especially whilst playing silly computer games like Monopoly. “If 2+ 2, Then =4”
I wonder if coding students even learn that anymore...
Fine work, sir, and let me affirm your observations with my own on the same formative (and deforming) writing tool from the analog sunset, the mighty TRS-80, proton-laptop. https://open.substack.com/pub/norrisc/p/trash-80?r=779k5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true
Ooooooh. Neat!