Molly Explains It All
When it comes right down to it the first thing I remember about computers is Snapple.We got our first computer when I was very young. My sister brought me on AOL and asked me what I wanted my screen name to be. I was drinking kiwi strawberry Snapple at the time so I said "Snapple10" because my birthday is the 10th day of the 10th month. She showed me chat rooms for kids but they seemed so confusing to me I didn’t want to talk to anyone in them.
Most of the time I would play Wheel of Fortune.This was a great game. I would make up three characters so that I wouldn’t have to play with the computer and I could always win. When I got a little more familiar with the internet as I got older I would always go in Spice Girls chat rooms.I was a fanatic and I could talk to people from all over about my favorite thing in the world- the spice girls.
In high school I began to use AOL Instant Messenger. I made my first screen name mol J9. Since mol J was and still, is my nick name amongst my friends from home, and nine was my favorite number. Not terribly original but I made it work. In high school you ran home to get your homework done so you could go online. The biggest thing was making a profile, and if you had a boyfriend- forget about it. You were awesome. Something that all high school girls do (and I was no exception) is making fake screen name and talk to people. I did it for many reasons; talking to a boy I liked to see what he thought of me. Talking to a person I didn’t like and try to become their friend so they might tell me secrets. It was truly a pathetic thing to do but it's something everyone does at some point.
These days the internet is used for homework and less social advantages. Of course I still use AIM, but in comparison to the other work that I do it is a relatively small proportion. In my spare time I enjoy looking up quotes online. Quotes from movies, television shows, music or quotes from famous people. I file them all away in a word document and back it up with a USB stick every few weeks. I had to learn this the hard way. I have this program called Dead Aim. Among the many features are message logs. It is a series of files that contains all the conversations you have on your computer. Well I used to just copy a good quote and send it to myself. So when I wanted to look for a quote I would go into log manager and look around at what I had sent myself. It seemed like a great idea until my hard drive blew first semester of sophomore year. I told the technician who fixed my computer all I wanted saved was my dead aim logs. Luckily enough that was about all that they could save. Now I take better precautions to save my findings.
The internet also plays a really big role in how I get my news. It is very hard to stay on top of current events when I’m at school. At home I can watch the news, even pick up a paper but for some reason at school I spend less time then usual on current events. I can site hop while I’m at work or in the lab between classes. I can visit multiple news paper sites and also look at political campaigns. I have found that it is a much faster way of getting the information I leisurely get at home.
Technology in general obviously plays a much bigger role in my life than I would like to think. A week with out a computer is torture. A fan blew on my lap top this morning so I had to turn my computer off. I felt lost all morning. I couldn’t go about my mornings the way I wanted to. I couldn’t check the weather, I couldn’t check my e-mail, and I couldn’t listen to music as I got ready. I’m hoping to appreciate technology more and absolutely keep up with the new advancements because it is something that will always give you an edge; whether it is in casual conversation, or interviewing for a job. I have found a line between using the internet for pleasure and for work- now I’m somewhere in-between.
