GrowingUpGeek
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Growing Up Geek: Dana Wollman
Until now, I had conveniently forgotten that I collected Magic Cards. Not just collected, mind you, but hoarded -- a feverish obsession harking back to an earlier yen for stickers, pogs, and Happy Meals. While some kids played Truth or Dare in the back of the bus to I.S. 228, I kept my collection at the ready, wrapped with care in a rubber band. I'm not sure who I intended to show them to, save for a handful of guys who used to stake out a row in the front, but if I happened to have something good, I wanted to brag a little. At thirteen, I challenged a certain boy to a game, thinking that was all the hint I needed to drop. He beat me handily, and I never admitted my crush. Let's just say I've evolved since then. I remember as little about mana as Peter Pan did about owning Rufio in a dissing contest. I seem to have kicked my shyness habit -- so much so that my coworkers have taken to calling me "Brass Knuckles." And while I haven't had to suffer dating for awhile, I like to think I've stepped up my game.
Growing Up Geek: Brian Heater
That's me above, on the left. I'm Robin, reaping all of the benefits of fighting supervillians on the mean streets of Gotham, without the whole thing about watching my parents brutally murdered by a mob boss. All things considered, life was pretty good, growing up in the East Bay in the '80s, save for the fact that my cousin was somehow promoted to the role of Batman – most likely because he was visiting from afar (and maybe brought his own costume up from Southern California). And then there's the whole holding hands thing -- I can pretty much guarantee that ended the moment the photographer parent put the camera down. I mean, Arkham Asylum isn't going to patrol itself. Despite early photographic evidence to the contrary -- and a few select themed birthday parties -- I was never really a DC Comics kid growing up. I'd chalk a fair amount of that up to the fact that, so far as these photo albums indicate, I didn't arrive on a rocketship from an exploding homeland, and was never independently wealthy, as the poor tailoring job on the Robin suit can attest.
Growing Up Geek: Tim Stevens
I didn't even really like Superman when that picture was taken. I think I was three or four and well on my way to being a fat kid. I mean, sure, the movies were boss, and Christopher Reeve was the man -- all suave and all-powerful -- but I didn't know Kal-El from a candy cane. I liked his costume, though, and of course I knew that he was super strong and could fly. I was obviously super strong too. Just look at me hefting that huge mass of leaves all by myself! I thought I could fly too. According to Stevens family legend I tried to jump out of a second story window in those very Underoos. Thankfully I decided to get a good long running start and my sister, two years older, grabbed me before I flung myself into that particular adventure.
Growing Up Geek: Vlad Savov
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a new feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. This week we have our very own Associate Editor, Vlad Savov. Yes, I grew up in the monochromatic nation of Bulgaria. As geek starts go, I doubt anyone could come up with a more unlikely one than being born in a village in the southwest corner of a country known more for its sporting and culinary exports than any sort of technical expertise. That's not to say that Bulgaria was a tech backwater, but it's the sort of place where you spent more time reading about gadgets than actually using them. Fortunately for me, my mother worked in a local computer club, where the bright youth of the day would gather to use Pravetz machines -- finely crafted Bulgarian Apple II KIRFs -- and it was a spot that I would inevitably retreat to after a thoroughly regimented school day. That's another thing about growing up in the former Communist bloc: education was intensive and rigorous, though you shouldn't let that rebelliously turned up collar in the image above fool you, I was madly in love with my studies (as any true nerd should be). Somewhere between that boy pushing buttons and tearing down floppy diskettes for fun and the current London-based cynic pumping out copy for Engadget during the American night shift, my life happened.
Growing Up Geek: Chris Ziegler
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a new feature where we take a look back at our youth, and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. This week, we have our very own Senior Mobile Editor, Chris Ziegler. I can't remember a time when technology wasn't in my blood. Yep, that's me up there, sporting the OshKosh B'Gosh overalls, hunting and pecking my way through BASIC on a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A while basking in the warm glow of a 13-inch RCA color TV with a rabbit-ear antenna and faux wood veneer... in a booster chair. I don't even know if I was eating solid food at this point. Okay, I was probably eating solid food, but what I'm getting at is that I was smitten by all things digital when I was still just a wee tyke... and I never really looked back. You know how as you're growing up, your family and your teachers tell you that what you can do is limited only by your imagination? Well, I think what attracted me to computers so very early on was that they represent a concrete incarnation of that philosophy -- if you've got an idea and you possess the skill to code it, it can exist. That's a pretty magical and powerful realization to a kid fixated on someday ruling the world.
Growing up Geek: Ross Rubin
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a feature where we take a look back at our youth, and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. This week, we have our long-time Switched On columnist Ross Rubin. In the wide-collared world of the 1970s, it wasn't yet clear whether the future of interactive technology would rest in the hands of the PC or video game companies (I attribute this confusion to excessive exposure to ABBA combined with the well-documented brain-melting effects of Three's Company plots). But most of my early exposure to electronics certainly came from the latter camp. We had the original Pong game and the triangular, holster-housing Telstar Arcade. I stared with mouth agape as my adult cousin received an Atari 2600 for his birthday (no fair!). For my birthday a few years later, my parents got me an Intellivision. The flame wars between Intellivision and Atari were the Mac vs. PC arguments of their day, and George Plimpton was the closest thing the Intellivision fans had to Steve Jobs. I would take pictures of the screen for some Astrosmash contest Mattel Electronics ran as well, to obtain different rainbow-adorned badges from Activision for games like Kaboom!, Freeway! and River Raid! In any case, video game consoles weren't the only extra box that graced our TVs. One day, a beige box showed up with a simple switch that transitioned between the broadcast channels we received and a new service delivered via microwave transmission. It was called Home Box Office.
Growing Up Geek: Darren Murph
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a new feature where we take a look back at our youth, and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. This week, we have our very own Managing Editor, Darren Murph, who has the distinction of having written more posts on Engadget than any other Editor (and anyone in the world). I'd probably consider myself a mishmash of two things: a hopeless geek, and a travel junkie. Funny enough, one single experience really forced me into wearing both of those hats. But that one instance where a bag phone saved my family's trip to Germany before the euro was The Euro wasn't where it all started. In fact, it's a little crazy that I actually grew up geek. Neither of my parents were privileged enough to have access to any sort of gadgetry growing up, so I most certainly didn't get the urge to tinker with Nintendo consoles from them. But they both ended up owning a mechanic shop, and my father was the king of the local drag strip thanks to his uncanny ability to tweak and mod his stable of hand-me-down Mustangs. Those modder genes that obviously run in my family ended up leading to far nerdier things. One of the first Christmas gifts I can remember asking for (and thankfully, receiving) was a Nintendo Entertainment System. After that, I was hooked. I was an only child, so rather than goofing off with siblings during those long, hot, wonderful North Carolina summers, I got my kicks by throwing down on R.B.I. Baseball with whatever neighborhood kids wanted to swing by and get abused.
Growing Up Geek: Thomas Ricker
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a new feature where we take a look back at our youth, and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. This week, we have our very own Senior Editor, Thomas Ricker. I'm old. In fact, I'm so old that I predate geek chic. In my awkward years, a period that spanned into my early 20s, the term "geek" was a slander; a word reserved for boys with thick glasses, red hair, pale skin, freckles, and a talent for math and science. In other words, me. The kid whose mother made him wear a white t-shirt in the public swimming pool. The kid who wore a patch to help correct a lazy eye. Or, as my best friend described my condition at St. Peter's grade school, "you're everything that I hate." Fortunately (at least that's how I felt at the time) I was also athletic so I ran with the jocks -- the cool kids, the boys whose hair stayed feathered even after the helmet was removed -- both on the field and off, within the highly competitive social circles laced with adrenaline and cheerleaders on the cusp of becoming Cosmo girls. A John Hughes anomaly, to be sure. Desperate for acceptance, I all but abandoned intellectual discourse for the homoerotic embrace of my squat-thrust spotters in the weight room. This left little room for nerding out anywhere but home. I certainly wasn't going to build a variable voltage power supply with our fullback. That's where my father stepped in. Without a doubt, my secret nerdism was seeded by regular visits to Radio Shack with my pops, an engineer who actually built radios for a living. No, not the consumer variety, but top-secret stuff developed for the US military during the height of the Cold War. A man with intimate knowledge of Area 51 and so steeped in classified technology that he saw very early on how CDMA and GPS technologies, once commercialized, would revolutionize consumer electronics. It was during these visits to The Shack that I was first exposed to bins of colorfully-banded resistors and tightly-wound spools of solder. The foundation was set, the outcome was inevitable.
Growing up Geek: Clayton Morris
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a new feature where we take a look back at our youth, and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. This week, we're happy to have Clayton Morris, host of Fox & Friends, Gadgets & Games, and longtime friend of Engadget. I can't remember a time in my life without gadgets. Born on New Year's Eve in Bicentennial Philadelphia, just three days before Apple Computer added an "Inc." to its name, my crib was filled with toys that buzzed, beeped, and burned through batteries. Don't tell Child Services, but I'm sure the soldering iron in the 'build your own radio set' wasn't safe for babies. Boring wooden toys were cast aside in favor of Speak & Spell, Simon Says, and Verbot: the voice controlled robot (although I could never get that damned thing to bring me a drink). There have been two phases in my life: pre-Atari and post-Atari. Even though I was only two, everything changed the day my mom and dad brought home an Atari 2600 in 1978. I could barely walk or go to the bathroom by myself, but I could play Pong with the Atari's paddle controllers and blow up tanks in 'Combat.' On Easter Sunday my sister Nicole and I would get 'Demons to Diamonds' and 'Pitfall' instead of chocolate bunnies.
Growing Up Geek: Paul Miller
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a new feature where we take a look back at our youth, and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. This week, we have our very own Senior Associate Editor, Paul Miller. I remember my family's first computer vividly: it was an Apple Macintosh IIci. My dad was at work when we took the delivery, so my brothers and I ripped open the box and set it up the best we could. I'm not sure exactly what we actually did to mess up the machine, but I remember believing at that age that we had "deleted the hard drive," and it took a visit from my dad's IT guy before we were back up and running. The very first thing we did once we had a working machine was plug in the color scanner and suck an image of a bright red magazine Ferrari bit by bit over the SCSI connection. Sure, there's very little "cred" to the experience -- my first computing experience was in full color, with a windowed GUI and the imaging tools of a professional -- but it was also an incredible way to start a digital life in its own right.
Growing Up Geek: Veronica Belmont
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a new feature where we take a look back at our youth, and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. We're happy to kick off the series with Veronica Belmont. I was born in the year of the ColecoVision. This isn't that unusual or interesting until you factor in that my mother was a VP at Coleco at that time. OK, well, it's still probably not that interesting unless you're me and trying to figure out the defining moments that turned you into a "geeky" adult. An abundance of video games, toys, puzzles, board games... it's a pretty awesome environment to grow up in, especially for a kid whose father also happened to work in the toy industry (he was an engineer for Hasbro in those days). For me, it was just totally normal to walk into the living room and see a pile of toys on the floor, in varying states of production and disarray. I'd take them apart, put them back together, and spend hours trying to find different ways to destroy them. Things haven't changed too much.
