Rumor has it that Patrick Finnegan may have mentioned these words: Yes. but 1967 + 37 == 2004. :-) I guess it depends on your definition of zero. ;-) Or is it... ;-) Depends on the intoxication. ;-) ... Hrm... 6pack of beer (for myself, at least), 3 bottles of wine (Vintage 2000, but was corky... :-(( )... Me: 1967; got the bug when I was 8. Visited an uncle on vacation [holiday] who was in the US Navy; part of his studies was to build a "computer" --> he finished it just before we arrived. It converted decimal to binary and back, and had a "custom refresh," a.k.a. a knob that changed how often the 7-segment LEDs blinked from 1Hz to 1000Hz. My uncle was rather a bit amazed when I learned (quickly) how to run it. Ever since; it was what I wanted to do. He ended up one of the highest ranking NCO's in the Navy before he retired. Seen him twice since then, once when I was 10-11 -> he gave me actual Navy books on math and 'digital computing theory' which I still have... and the second time around 18 months ago. Odd that the person who 'gave me the bug' and defined such a large aspect of my life was so distant and had an (otherwise) minimal impact on my life. Other than the Atari 2600 my brother and I shared the cost in, my first computer was a Tandy CoCo2 with 16K and the Extended Basic. My brother threw in about a 1/3 of the purchase price for my birthday, and I sprung for the extended basic "Just because." This is despite my father's protestations that "My boy won't own a computer thingy until he learns to do it on paper." [[ At that time, he *still* thought that the 2600 had tape cartridges... ;-) ]] That's why I bought it 2 days after he left town. ;-) My father *ordered* me to give it back (and he was a Marine...) until I turned it on and asked him to show me how to have it do it's homework for him. I eventually sold that system to a friend of mine, and bought a CoCo3; which I still own and am ready to upgrade, thanks to Mark Marlette & Company. ;-) My local high school got rid of the cardreader just before I was able to get into computer class (grade 10) --> they had an IBM Series I when I had computer class at grade 11 where I self-taught myself COBOL... My teacher was *useless* and I was supposed to be his "protege" until I could outprogram him - which took about 8 weeks. I finished the first year of education before the 1/2 year break, and spent the rest of the year self-teaching myself BASIC and Pascal. By my grade 12 year, I was the #2 programmer in the school (including all the teachers.) ... Jump to present: I'm teaching myself 8085 assembly on my Tandy Model 100's; a *big* change from the 6809 assembly I've known for 20 years... [[ An aside... ]] Ethan -- it seems so far you're the closest in age to me as I've seen professed on this list, and I may very well be at this year's Hamfest again this year! If I'm not mistaken, you're no longer on the bottom of the planet, eh? Beers? In Person, no less? ;^> ??? IMHO, NEA, and TMI; Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | A new truth in advertising slogan SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy... zmerch at 30below.com | ...in oxymoron!"