(me...like 10 years ago....)

Daniel Woolston Developer/Analyst/Engineer Integration Specialist Roboticist Author

This is NOT my resume! If you're on this page looking for a resume', then you have clicked too far! Having said that, here's an informal look at my history with the pc.

	1984: no its not a calculator. believe it or not, its a personal computer. This was the sinclair zx80. it debuted in the mid 80's, while i was just entering high school. My dad picked one up for a hefty sum and kept me in keen supply of coding magazines and blank tapes. yes, blank AUDIO tapes to store the software on. And it plugged into a black and white tv with a horrible refresh rate (it refreshed the screen, or blinked, everytime you typed a letter.) As a developer, you had 1K of memory to work with. And it would run out quick. And the keyboard is flat. Like mouse pad flat. Imagine pressing your finger on your mousepad a few thousand times and you'll have an idea of what it was like to code for the zx80.
1985: Christmas Time for a young Daniel brings with it a shiny new Atari 400! With 48K even! No more insane optimization of code. I could write a seemingly endless program with this bad monster. oh..but wait. again with the flat keys. The 400 did have ridges around the key...but still...pushing plastic. Many a weekend spent in front of this super computer.
	1985: whats this? real keys? they actually go down and click? The atari 800 is when it really became obvious that writing software was more than just making a little dude with a sword walk across the screen. I was able to dive into some 3D vectoring graphics development. Think old vectored maze drawing from a 1st person perspective. It was all just point calculation at that time. The 800 was an awesome computer and probably a little ahead of their time for the “home“ market.
1986: o.k...who HASN'T coded on the commodore 64? I think it should be a rite of passage for all developers. Every college in the u.s. should have a “legacy“ class, wherein, future developers are forced to code on the commodore. I'm still having flashbacks.
	1986: I'm almost embarrased to have this on the site..but here it is. The Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 3. Or as it is commonly known as “The trash 80.“ This thing was a beast. And the drives failed alot. And something about that eerie green glow of the ascii madness. aaaaaggghhhh!
After joining the Air Force, I had access to the IBM and clone varieties that scattered the market. Some assembly skills and much DOS later and ibm compat programs were built. The didnt really do much except for catalog useless information. Like, how many Russian bombers we shot down that day. O.k. I made that part up.

Fast Forward to many years later: after the Air Force
	after College
a few children
And I'm right back to doing what i started out to do. coding. And I couldn't be happier.