I was thinking today about the changing vogue in keyboard colors (due to the fact that I was delivered a new chrome computer with a non-matching almond keyboard).� In the 70's, keyboards were black with white letters (much like the black with white letter output of many 70's operating systems).� Then we moved to almond keyboards in the 80's (presumably to match everyone's almond kitchen).� Now all Windows based PCs are coming in gray or chrome.� We saw part of the movie Apollo 13 last night, and the computers in the movie were that strange powder-coated steel blue.� I didn't pay attention to the keyboards though.� I imagine they weren't blue.

When we first got a computer in the late 70's, my mother made vinyl dust covers for each part.� That seems so funny and anal now, like a tea cozy for your computer.� At the time, though, my dad lectured us on always remembering to cover the computer up when we were finished playing with it because "dust is so harmful to the circuitry".� A couple years later, after my parents had given up on the dust covers, my mother made a furry "mouse" cover for the mouse.� At the time, it was a witty and yet-to-be-overdone pun.� It made the mouse rather hard to use though.

Our first computer's only removable media was a cassette player (the home version of reel-to-reel).� My dad co-opted my cassette player, so the neatly compu-cozy covered� machine was accessorized by a tape deck covered in bunny stickers.� I was only 4 at the time, so I don't have a very clear memory about what the tape deck was capable of.� My dad might have ordered "programs" through the mail that came on cassette, I'm not sure.� We quickly moved from cassette to 8 inch floppies (my mom still has some in her basement, they are hilarious looking) to the 1980's standard 6 inch floppy when my parents bought an Apple II.��

Of course, that was before Graphical User Interfaces (point and click) was invented.� Our computer ran on BASIC.� So my dad wrote a program called "menu" so my sister and I (ages 6 and 3) could get to programs like Lemonade Stand.� My dad left a "cheat sheet" next to the monitor and my sister and I learned to recite R-U-N-SPACE-M-E-N-U.� It was our computer access chant.� When the computer was turned on, there was only a blinking white cursor.� Once the menu program came up, all ten programs (yes, ten!) were listed numerically and the user entered the number of the desired program.

See the two disk drives in the picture?� I don't remember exactly when the B drive went away, but there it is.

Sorry, I never set out to write all that.� Gees, I'm old.

One more reminiscence:� My mom, who returned to work in 1983, was given use of her company's portable computer (as well as the ability to work weekends, lucky her).� It was a Compaq, and it looked just like this.� Looks really portable, eh?

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I'd go on to wax all poetic about how I spent the mid-eighties on an Apple IIe, making large perforated Print Shop Banners, but I should probably get back to work now.�

BTW, I stole most of these pictures from a very cool site, called the PC museum (which is also what we call my mom's basement)

BTW, if you here about an incident at Metro on the news tonight, it will be because some ill-informed airport security person tries to remove my beloved tweezers from my luggage.� I do not joke around about errant eyebrow hair.