I enjoy helping people, especially with things I am good at and have an interest in which includes computers.  My first "computer" was an Atari 400 that I got for my birthday (I think) in 1980 when I was turning 11. It took cartridges, hooked up to a TV, came with a built-in keyboard and 2 joysticks.  I think the only 2 cartridges I had for it in the beginning was Asteroids and BASIC (I can't remember if BASIC was built-in or if it was on a cartridge).  After several hours of playing Asteroids I decided to "play BASIC".  I quickly figured my way around the "BASIC" program and found that I liked it.  I wrote small, simple programs including a few games.  The computer didn't have any type of storage (not even a floppy or tape drive) so I had to write down my code or it was gone forever when my mom came and turned off the computer.

A couple of years later I upgraded to an Apple ][ e.  This computer was a lot better than the Atari. I think it had an entire 16k of RAM, and even had a floppy drive that could hold ~ 112k of data!  I upgraded it with the 80 column text card (the built-in 40 column text card wasn't cutting it) and a printer port, and all that was only about $1500.

I finally bought my first PC in (I think) 1989 which was a Compaq DeskPro 386s/20.  It came with 1 MB of RAM, a 20 MB hard drive and a VGA controller.  That high-resolution 640x480 display was amazing at 16 colors.  It was on this computer that I started learning DOS (version 3.31 was out at the time).  I learned enough to start doing some test automation in batch files for my company, and then I started learning C++.  A few years later (around 1995) I began doing IT support.  

I can be contacted at my personal email address of gary (at) garyweb <dot> net.