Learning new skills - An abridged history of my obsession with technology

I've never been great at learning, at least, not in the traditional sense. Learning disabilities certainly don't help!

Despite having an intense interest and being passionate about computers/electronics my whole life, I nearly flunked my Computer Science 20 class. I'll leave that for another time, but let's talk about how I learn new skills. It's probably far from ideal, but this is what has and hasn’t worked for me. First, some context…

For most of my life, I've lived and learned from trial and error. In my case, this would apply to both social skills and self-care, as well as 'marketable skills' like “computer technician”.

When I was a kid, I messed around with the family computer to the point it was getting in my parents' way. They tell me I broke the Windows 95 install, and they had to hire someone to figure it out in a hurry 'cause I brought it down during tax season.

My memory is fuzzy going this far back, but I think the family PC back then was a Pentium II-based computer built by a local shop, while they had set me up with a 486-era machine in the corner of their home office with a worn 2-button serial mouse and a massive and clunky AT keyboard.

This machine ran Windows 3.1, and my parents loaded some edutainment games like "Number Munchers" or "Reader Rabbit". Sadly, no Jazz Jackrabbit. Oh, and my dad taught me QBASIC on that computer when I was a kid. That last bit may become important context for a later story.

So anyway, little kid me liked clicking around and touching ALL THE THINGS when it came to a graphical user interface (or GUI). Eventually, I too suffered from my own fuckery. I broke my Windows 3.1 install in my tinkering and typing "win" into the command prompt and pressing enter would no longer work. I can't remember why we didn’t just re-install Windows on the thing, but I ended up dealing with this problem in my own way.

I remembered some DOS commands my dad taught me to get around, and keeping text adventure games in mind, I would try various words in the command prompt to see if they would do anything. I didn’t quite grasp the concept of using “--help", “/?” or other usual switches to bring up help info, and I don’t think I was reading at a useful comprehension level for technical manuals quite yet. The most important commands that stuck with me were "cd" "dir", and entering executable names to run them.

I don't know how long it took, but I eventually taught myself enough through trial and error to get around DOS, copy files, copy disks, and run stuff, like “Reader Rabbit” and “Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego”!

Fast forward to a few years later - I was getting starry eyed over the things the now-old family computer could do that mine couldn't, now that it was upgraded to Windows 98 SE.

My parents got a Pentium 4 Gateway computer-in-a-box, and the old Pentium 2-based machine that used to be the family computer became fair game to me and my sister. Sadly, I wasn't very good at getting along with my sister back then (I was a great scapegoat for computer issues), so she got control over the old Pentium 2 machine, and I was stuck with my old Windows-less machine for a bit.

One day my dad took me to look around at a local computer shop. We wandered around for a bit, I was fascinated by every little thing I'd see, between the big-box software, the expansion cards, and various computers and parts. They even had an old >10MB hard drive from the 70’s on display, to show how far technology had come since that monstrous, heavy thing was produced. The platters looked larger than 12” vinyl! I was in my own world, drooling at all the cool tech. Meanwhile I guess my dad was talking to one of the staff at the store when he tried to get my attention.

I don't remember if he asked me anything or wanted me to check it over. I just remember he brought an old used Compaq DeskPro desktop computer home with us. I guess it was for me! I was getting a newer computer to myself!

I don't remember the exact specs, but I remember it had a Pentium 1 of some sort with a heatsink, but no fan on the CPU. It didn't have any built-in audio, but it had at least a few 16-bit ISA slots, and 3-5 PCI slots, depending on how many ISA slots you had populated.

The motherboard had PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, serial, parallel, and VGA out. I think it was a 2D Cirrus Logic VGA chipset - nothing special. In terms of storage, it came with a 12X CD-ROM drive, 3.5" floppy, and a 1GB IDE HDD. Couldn’t tell you how much RAM it had, but I’m pretty sure it was EDO-type.

I remember my dad giving me a Gravis UltraSound 16-bit ISA card, a beauty on a long and red PCB. It came with a spiral-bound manual with the IRQ, DMA, and another number used for configuration written in pen near the front, if/when I needed to re-install. I think there were five or six 3.5” floppy disks for the driver installation. I may not have been very experienced back then, but I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that bugger was finicky. Sometimes I'd get MIDI but no other sound, or vice versa.

I didn't have access to Internet for quite a while because I was "too young". My parents barely liked me watching The Simpsons back then, citing "bad influence" for their reasoning. Yeah, fair enough. Back then, I was absorbing everything like a sponge. I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up picking up something rude from TV if they weren’t more particular, and of course I wouldn’t understand what I was repeating because I was a small child. Instead of surfing the net, I'd be busy in my room playing with various software we had collected over the years. Discs of shareware collections, AOL trial CDs, demo discs from magazines, and so on. Pretty frequently I'd run into software that either didn't work very well or wouldn't run at all due to the older hardware.

To give you some context for how obsessed with technology I was back then, I used to do various activities and sports programs after-school when I was a kid, before I got my own newer computer. I used to spend much of my time outside, adoring the flowers, bugs, animals, and the fresh air. Occasionally I would join up with friends and/or neighbours for playing at the park, spray pads, or kicking around a ball in a field.

I also might've been obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog. I would pretend to be him, and I would run EVERYWHERE. I had no 'walk' speed. Only run. My poor parents. Getting a little off-track here though.

That does remind me that one of the games I would play over and over for hours was the "Sonic and Knuckles Collection" released for PC in the late 90s, sporting a "Y2K Ready" badge on the cover art. If that software was working, nothing else mattered. Holy shit did it blow my mind when I played on an actual Genesis for the first time though. The music was just SO much better. And Sonic 2? There are games BEFORE 3 (& Knuckles)?

Alrighty, back on topic

I was a very curious kid, the type who couldn't help but ask "Why?" to everything and would not accept "because" as an answer. I also had to test things myself, regardless of whatever assurances I would get from friends, family, TV, print, or other media.

“OH! This PC game I got says it works on Macintosh! We have one of those in my Kindergarten class, I should bring this disc with me and try it!”, I’m sure I thought to myself.

Sure as shit, “Carmen Sandiego: Word Detective” would indeed install on my teacher's computer.

That was also the first time I encountered a CD caddy. You know, disc caddies? Before slot and tray-loading were a thing? The 90s were a wild time!

So, what did I learn?

Trial:
Carmen Sandiego Word Detective says it works on PC and Macintosh. I tried it, and it wasn't lying! Cool!

Error: I should probably ask before doing these things on computers that aren't mine, even if they're out in the open and accessible. They didn’t seem to appreciate what I was doing.

I'd continue tinkering and poking at things, not really thinking about potential consequences, or how I would be perceived. I was simply feeding my curiosity, trying and learning new things.

This didn't stop. It turned into "Okay, what can I do on this computer without freaking anyone out?", but the savvy adults would recognize this and occasionally provide me a spare old computer to mess around with if I were tagging along somewhere.

Like my uncle, bless his heart. He must've seen himself in me. When my parents took us to visit, they must've discussed my obsession with computers. My uncle set up a folding table in a carless garage, a computer with the side panels off, a monitor, speakers, and a mouse and keyboard. I didn't have Internet access, but I could otherwise go wild on this computer. He also let me play around with whatever software and games he had lying around.

What's this? Hello CD-R labelled "Lindows".

He had some other Linux distros that I tried (and failed) to install, but I got Lindows installed without much fuss. I understood what it was trying to go for, I guess intuitively, and tried to pop in my Sonic and Knuckles Collection CD that I conveniently brought with me on the trip. It got through setup, but the game itself wouldn't run. Probably something to do with DirectDraw or something, I’m not entirely sure. Lindows must've been an early version of WINE.

After a few hours of poking around and trying different things to get it to work, I tried other installers. I got to experience Windows 2000 for the first time, and I think XP as well. He had a bunch of CD-Rs with product keys written in permanent marker. Very few pressed discs. This freakin’ nerd even had some CD-Rs with a bunch of various software and utilities, and an HTML directory that he would make himself to make navigation of the discs easier.

I am endlessly appreciative that man let me, even encouraged me to mess around with most of his tech. Hell, he'd even send me home with spare/old expansion cards, disc drives, and hard drives in my suitcase. This was how I'd usually get software or certain parts before I had anything resembling an allowance. Him or hand-me-downs. So I'd try to trick out my Compaq DeskPro with whatever compatible hardware I had. I found that while I could install a DVD drive, it didn't have the juice to play it.

So yeah, about DVDs - it was relatively new technology, and magazines were starting to include DVDs with demo content instead of CDs.

One day my dad and I were walking around in a big box store, and I spotted an AOpen IDE DVD-ROM drive on the shelf. He tried talking me out of it, explaining my computer probably couldn't even use it. He wasn't specific enough for me to care or understand. When I eventually got my hands on it, I loaded a DVD, saw it pop up in Explorer and thought, "Hah, silly dad". Reading doesn't necessarily mean playback though.

I didn't quite understand why - I was missing a lot of contextual knowledge this early on, of course - but I found that DVD videos would play in my sister's Pentium II machine (the old family PC). That PC had an ATI Rage II+DVD PCI graphics card. I thought that card had something to do with it, so I tried installing it in my Compaq. I got it to display properly after installing drivers, but DVDs still wouldn't play properly.

“Daaaaaad, I want a new computer!”

Somewhere around this time, my parents both got their own massive HP Pavilion laptops with AMD Turion 64 CPUs, a DVD drive, and two 100GB 2.5" IDE HDDs.

I was insanely jealous, but this change meant that it was hand-me-down time!

My sister got the Pentium 4 Gateway, and I got the Pentium II. I immediately started moving components over.

I was excited at the prospect of having a tower PC. It was different and exciting! This thing was tall - it had like four 5.25" bays, and multiple 3.5" bays. I filled it with as many drives as I could fit. My DVD-ROM, the CD-ROM it came with, two hard drives, and a floppy drive. I left my GUS card behind because the Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 this tower came with gave me better results, both audibly, and in terms of software compatibility. Oh, and plug-n-play! No more manual IRQ and DMA configuration!

I'd get more cards and parts from garage sales, nag my parents to take me to computer shops and look at parts. I would occasionally get what I wanted, assuming it wasn’t overly expensive.

Eventually I got the Pentium 4 machine, and while the machine ran great, it was pretty restrictive in terms of expansion. A MicroATX motherboard, and some expansion slots were missing from the cheap motherboard Gateway used, namely the AGP slot that would’ve been appropriate at the time.

At this point, I decided I needed to build my own computer, like the ones I'd read about in the computer magazines my parents would get me!

I can't remember all the specs, but it lived in a generic white case (end of the beige era), two USB ports at the bottom middle of the case, a few 5.25" bays, a couple 3.5" bays.
GigaByte GA-M51GM-S2G (or similar) AM2 motherboard with GeForce 6100 iGPU
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ CPU
1GB DDR2 RAM
80GB Seagate IDE HDD
Generic PSU

This was SO much better than any computer that came before. I was trying EVERYTHING, including a lot of older software I had kept.

For the longest time, I was running Windows XP on this machine. I found that most of my older software would work, although usually with some quirks.

This was the beginning of what would be my career in technology.

Not only would I play a lot of games, but I'd try all sorts of software, just to see what it was and how it worked. Only really stopping when there were prompts asking for mailing info, or a credit card.

I would find easter eggs, break shit, and everything in between.

It really just kind of snowballed from there. I kept applying trial and error, not really conscious of what I was doing, just that I needed to, as the kids say, "Fuck around and find out". It's like I was wired for it.

As I got older and getting a job was closer to becoming a reality, I started to notice gaps in my knowledge as my parents would pay me to help with things here and there, like migrating a dead work desktop and its contents to a brand new one.
Protip - Copying the contents of one hard drive overtop another is not a good way to migrate your OS and data.

This was when I started to realize that I couldn't simply get by on curiosity - I'd have to seek out other software, see how other people use their computers, and learn more. That being said, I've never been good at 'book-learning', especially if it's something I'm not particularly interested in, like dry-ass productivity software. Now, I’m not talking about software like Microsoft Office, 'cause they had little assistants like Clippy and Merlin the wizard. That was cool to me.

If you drop technical documentation or a service manual in front of me for a thing I'm interested in, yeah, I might pound it back in a few hours, then continue to re-read sections afterward. I'd read technical documentation like I would computer magazines, if the interest were there.

So where trial and error doesn't work, interest and access to documentation does wonders. If I didn't understand a word or term, I'd see if there was a glossary. Failing that, I'd look it up online.

This method of learning new skills generally works well for me, as long as the information I'm reading is making sense to my brain. The struggle there is when I'm trying to learn about something niche, proprietary, or obscure, and there's not much publicly known about it.

Compared to trial and error, this was a lot safer because my anxiety would help prevent me from attempting something before I had a good understanding of why and how. I was afraid of accidentally breaking or taking down a system that wasn’t mine, and the “how” alone is almost never enough for me.

If documentation itself isn't helping me understand the thing, I try to aggregate what info I can gather from forums, chats with assorted nerds, articles, etc. I don't generally like learning from a single source, unless it's objectively the best option, or the only option.

So back to the writing prompt that sparked this 3000+ word rollercoaster - “How do you go about learning a new skill? Is it something you consider yourself to be good at?”

Trial and error gave me a great start when I was working purely in the bubble of my own personal hardware. When that was a riskier or unsafe option, I actually had to learn, and hope I was interested in the subject enough to absorb everything I’d see about it (using my data aggregation style of learning skills). Then there’s good, old-fashioned practice - that's another fantastic way I learn skills. Putting the things I’m learning into practice as regularly as I can to get them to stick.

Theory is one thing, but when there's a specific task you set out to do, learning the ins and outs of the process and how to do so as efficiently as possible is another skill in itself, I think. That possibly goes along with critical thinking, I would think? I find most people can follow a guide and be content enough with that.

Sure you can rip an audio CD to your computer, but HOW are you doing it? Are you ripping a lossless exact copy of the original disk, or are you ripping to 160Kbit MP3 willy-nilly? Are you picking up what I'm putting down?

My answers to the prompt - as a generalist, I'd like to consider myself good with computers and technology in general, but I know that there's still so much more I want/need to learn.

There are some subjects I like to dig deeper into, like virtualization and networking, but my general thirst for knowledge of anything ‘tech’ is never-ending.