Just because I've been busy all day doesn't mean I want to miss the Thursday Three.

1) What was your first computer?

The first family computer was a Commodore 64. We got it when I was in about second grade. I learned to write simple programs to draw asci pictures and things like that. We upgraded within a year or two to a Commodore 128 -- I think we bought it at Target, on which my dad wrote his doctoral disseration. He was thanking his lucky stars not to be typing it on a typewriter and I doubt he could even have fathomed the word processors of today. But the word processor we had for the Commodore played Pomp and Circumstance if you pressed the right key combination. We'll downplay the acquisition of the Amiga and move right into Macintoshes.

My own personal first computer was a MacPlus that I took off to college with me. It was already old then and by the time I got to my sophomore year, it had taken to overheating, growling at me and shutting itself down whenever it felt crotchety. But it had an external 20 MB hard drive. Who could ask for more? But then my next computer was a Mac 145 laptop with an 80 MB hard drive. I felt very cool with that baby.

This question didn't ask you to tell ther details of every computer you've ever owned, did it? I guess I'll stop now.

2) What is the worst thing you ever encountered dealing with a computer?

That would either be when Justin decided to try to install a version of Ultima 7 on our computer and it started reformatting the hard drive or when my daughter got a stomach bug and wretched all over my laptop. The first crisis had to be solved, by Justin going in in DOS and saving all our files that were recoverable and then reformatting and reinstalling Windows. The second was solved by the purchase of a new desktop computer -- that way sick children can't kill the whole machine if they vomit on the keyboard. Actually the laptop still isn't totally dead as long as you don't need to use any arrow keys, j, or sometimes the return key.

3) What is your favorite piece of software?

I used to be a Tetris addict, but now I suppose my favorite software is either Eudora or Photoshop Elements.