I’m going to be bespectacled and have been advised to reduce and limit my computer usage considerably. A bit of nostalgia set in on hearing this and I thought about my short journey so far in this wonderland of solid-state and otherwise.

First time I touched a computer
1989, at school in 2nd standard

First command I typed on a computer
“dir”, 1990, 3rd standard

First game I played on a computer
“bricks”, 1991, 4th standard

First Colored game I played on a computer
“Dangerous Dave”, 1991, 4th standard

First program I wrote on a computer
“Hello, Ankit!” in basic, 1992, 5th standard (The pre-teenage rebel in me substituted the “world” by “Ankit”. Why “Ankit”? That’s a mystery ;-) )

First time I held a mouse
1992, 5th standard, Windows 3.0

First Windows Program I used
PaintBrush (MSPaint today), 1992, 5th standard

First “3d” game I played
Wolfenstein 3D (or Wolf), 1993, 6th standard

First hack
“Remote controlling” friend’s school PC by swapping the mouse cords, 1993, 6th standard

First movie I watched on a computer
“The wonderful world of Plants” or something similar, 1993, 6th standard

First introduction to the internet
1994, 7th standard, A demo by an ISP to the whole school.

First site I opened on the internet
disneyland.com, 1994, 7th standard

First commercial movie I watched on a computer
“Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, 1995, 8th standard

First introduction to Linux
Suse 4.x, 1996, 9th standard

First self-taught language learnt
HTML, 1997, 10th standard

First Computer at home
Celeron 466 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 8GB HDD, for around 60k, 1998, 11th standard

First C program
“Hello, Shantanu!”, 1998, 11th standard (Now, do you get it?)

First net connection at home
1998, 11th standard, ISP:Glide dial up. around 250 bucks for 5 hours at 56 kbps + telephone usage charges.

First Quake III Arena game
2000, almost at the end of 12th standard

First major gaming session
2000, QIII Arena, 11 hours straight, Tier1-Tier5, 2 days before my CET exam (Entrance test for my engineering college). For the record, I was so obsessed with QIII back then that I even had a quicky 5-minute game (DM17 map) in the 45 minute break I got during the exam as my home was quite near the exam center.

First “real” hack
2001, B.E., First year. Wrote and installed a TSR onto a friend’s system to print out “U R Doomed” whenever he typed something.

First Linux self-install
Red Hat 7.0, 2001, B.E., First year

Longest Gaming Session till date
December 2001, B.E., 2nd year. Deus Ex, 26 hours with 4-5 breaks spanning from 2-15 minutes max. Finished with all the alternate endings.

First major Q3 Arena lan-tournament
Early 2002, B.E. 2nd year. At NSIT Innovision tech fest.

First Blog
http://iamhuman.blogspot.com, 2004, B.E., Final year

First program in the corporate world
Optimization and multi-channelization of H.264 stitching, 2004

First real project in the corporate world
Epsilon, the new low cost BTS (Base Transceiver Station) by Nokia, 2004

First Laptop
2005, Compaq Presario R4025, AMD64 2.0 GHz, 1GB RAM, 128 MB gfx Card. US$1300

First Windows Mobile Program
ShantzTodayChanger, 2007

Finally bought first domain name
http://shantanugoel.com, 2008

These “firsts” aren’t anything big in themeselves but have been an important part of my life in one or the other way making my love for computers growing at an even faster pace. So what are your nostalgic moments with your beloved machine?