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For Christmas, 1978, we acquired our first computer - a 16K Apple II Computer with a tape recorder for input. My son, Glenn, quickly caught onto programming the Apple II and combined with my past experience with programming in FORTRAN IV for the IBM 7070 and 7040 Mainframe, we sat down together and wrote our first major computer program using Applesoft. As we learned, the program grew and exceeded the memory of our Apple II! Imagine that! and with 16K of memory! We soon invested another $100 into our Apple II and purchased 16K more of memory. For Christmas, 1979, Glenn received 16K more of memory from his grandmother and a Disk ][ drive from dear ole Santa. We were in hog heaven - 48K of memory and floppy disk input/output! We have been devoted to Apple computers through the years: Apple II upgraded to an Apple II+, Apple //e, several Apple IIGSs and an original Mac - upgrading to the latest and greatest Mac though the years. Glenn and I have written a complete set of business programs for our small business, Lawn Pro of Kansas City, Inc, - first written in Applesoft with 3 - 5.25 floppy drives on an Apple //e and later written in Micol Advanced Basic using an accelerated Apple IIGS and Hard Drive. I am the President of the Kansas City Apple II Users Group, Apple Bits Users Group (ABUG) and was the Sysop (System Operator) of the Apple Bits Users Group BBS (shutdown October 13, 1999). My first Internet experience was before it was the 'thing to do' - before the World Wide Web and before Web Browsers. I dialed into a unix account using my Apple IIGS. Unix is a powerful but not so user friendly language so I was asking Glenn and Ian Chai (both students at the University of Kansas, at the time) many, many questions. Glenn started writing a unix tutorial for his 'poor struggling ma', sending me a chapter at a time via email. The idea of Glenn's tutorial was to teach me enough about unix to explore and learn on my own (and stop asking so many questions!). Years later as I was checking out a mailing list called Newbie Newz, I mentioned Glenn's unix tutorial to the list owner. Glenn's tutorial was featured on the mailing list and from there news spread along the 'Information Highway'. Glenn's unix tutorial consist of 14 Chapters and is located on several ftp sites. Kinney Baughman of Appalachian State University has included Glenn's Unix Tutorial in the readings for his Navigating the Internet class.
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