[RKDinOKC]

Mertnin.

When in HS instead of auto shop, wood shop, or metal shop I took electronics classes. There were 3 levels. First was basic electronics circuits. Second was designing and building stuff, most popular were windshield wiper delays for their cars. I built a color organ that was an adjustable sound level meter for 5 frequencies that flashed light strings for the levels of each frequency. The input was both a room microphone and input from an audio source. I used it to drive red, blue, green, yellow, and white light strings on our Christmas tree. The lights on our tree flashed to music and/or the sounds in the room. Every bit as cool as the computerized light shows people are doing with their outdoor light decorations and it was 1976.

Third level electronics was troubleshooting and repairs which was mostly radios, stereos, and TVs. It was the 70s so computers were not really a thing yet. As part of the class I wrote a manual for TV repair. The manual I wrote was used for teaching the TV repair part of the class for years after I graduated. The first thing to check was...Is it plugged in? Am a pretty good technical problem solver.

Me and 2 other kids in my school had a computer class. The computer class didn't even have a teacher. We were just given a login, storage space, and time on the IBM main frame used for the entire city school system. It didn't even have a computer screen. It was an IBM typewriter terminal with a phone coupling that used an actual rotary telephone. You typed on a sheet of paper and the computer typed back. It was the terminal used for the school records keeping. We dinked around on the system and wrote our own programs. You learned programming by listing the commands and then trying to use them. syntax error was the most common output. And yes we could monkey with our grades and attendance.

Oh man, all that stuff makes me sound like a nerd. Guess my saving grace was I partied and hung out with the hot chicks so at least I wasn't a geek.