Week 8: Technology.  What are some of the technological advances that happened during your childhood? What types of technology to you enjoy using today, and which do you avoid?

I was born in 1976 and the majority of my childhood was spent with the latest technological advances.

• We had a color TV with a remote control. I actually had my little brother convinced that I could turn him off with it.  What a cruel big sister I was, wasn’t I?  I remember being so glad when we got that TV set, because I no longer had to be the remote for my parents.   We never had cable though (we lived on an island and it wasn’t available).  We had the good ole bunny ears on the roof – which constantly had to be moved around to get decent reception.
• My uncle lived with us for a while and when he moved in, he brought a microwave.  It was magical.
• I had a “ghettoblaster”, but I probably lived as far from the ghetto as possible.  I loved having a double tape deck.
• I can’t remember what year we got our first computer.  I was probably about 8 or 9 yrs old (just a guess).  It was a Commodore 64 and I thought that it was the coolest thing on earth.  I mean, what’s there not to love about this thing? (We later upgraded to the 64C)

The main screen was this boring two-tone blue color.

And I thought that it was the neatest thing when I read the manual and figured out how to type the code into there so that I could change the colors.  And the font color too.  I had a rainbow of colors adorning our Commodore. I shudder to think of how much time I spent doing this.

I also liked to play games on it of course.  We had a joystick and often played things like Pac-Man (or Woman – I don’t remember which) and Zanac (not Zantac!) .

By far my favorite game was Transylvania.  It was a role-playing type game where you had to type in what you wanted to do. Great graphics, huh? (Photo credit: www.mobygames.com  You can take a walk down memory lane and find all of your favorite old games on there!)

I remember that my little sister always had such a hard time playing this game.  She wasn’t the best of spellers, and the computer often didn’t understand her commands.

It cracks me up now to think how scary I thought this game was.  Especially when the werewolf jumped out at you.

I exaggerate.  There was no jumping – and it doesn’t really look like a werewolf, does it?  We actually had to wait patiently for the next page to load.  I would get so nervous that I couldn’t think what I should type.

Looking back, the game was so silly and the actions took so incredibly long.  I would have to type “put bullet in gun”  “shoot gun at werewolf” etc.  But I really thought it was fun.

I wonder what my kids would think of it – since we have a Wii and a couple of DS’s.  I never could have imagined what technology would be like for my kids.  It amazes me every day.

What a fun walk down memory lane.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2011) that invite genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants. You do not have to be a blogger to participate. If you do not have a genealogy blog, write down your memories on your computer, or simply record them on paper and keep them with your files.