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What do you do on that computer all day long?

This question is one that's been asked by many loved ones and friends over the years since the internet became accessible, After the Atari 800 , our families interest in computers waned a bit. It may have had something to do with the $150.00 dollar bill my mother got in the mail from my brother connecting to some long distant  bulletin board service.. Yeah, that's how it used to be, and back then it was a lot of money for a phone bill. Needless to say it left a bad taste in my mother and father's mouths.

After several years had passed,  my mom got a new system.She became interested in it after a while. She was a teacher and she had discovered a whole new world of utilities and information that could help with her teaching. Personally, I didn't get much past AOL at that time, It was the big thing back then. It had just come out and every one who had a computer was on it(AOL that is).

So many years later, around 2001 or 2002, I got my real first system. It was an E machines 633 MHz Celeron with like 256 MB Ram and two  20 GB Hard Drives, that was after I upgraded a few things, but it was pretty cheap when I bought it at around 149.00 after all the rebates.

Photo via www.beststuff.com

 The first few months I had it, it was being used for business purposes. At the time I was involved in a  business  venture that required the use of a computer. Then the old thing sat around for a little bit until one day when I was reading an article about electronic music. This opened up a whole new world.

Upon discovering recording was possible on the computer, I picked up my guitar and recorded my ass off. In the early nineties, Our band would had to have spent thousands of dollars for the resources that were available on the computer for a few hundred dollars. WIN!

Josef Tal at the Electronic Music Studio 

 Photo: Etan Tal

Well, many years have passed since then. The computer has become an extension of me.Nowhere do I go without my laptop.Now the question that was asked of me originally, what exactly do you do on that thing all day? Here we go. Besides the obvious email, browsing, blah, blah, I am currently trying to write 2 books at the same time, one fiction, one non fiction. Photography has entered things in a big way, so I just got into photo manipulation, which is terribly fun. My mother makes her own wine, so for her, I've been making wine labels.

Mom's newest wine label with pic of my Grandma holding what once was a cat

Just recently, I've been looking into some classes on line or maybe correspondence courses. Of course there's this blog. I've just begun to also, play around with video editing and with this am trying to make a cartoon. By the way, there are a lot of good free programs that are readily available just floating around out there (future post). There's still the old standard, which is audio editing, recording, listening, and all that goes with it. So, I guess you could add songwriting in there.Rework my resume while trying to find work. In between all that, I'm always jotting down my ideas and thoughts.Keep in mind, these are just the things I can come up with off the top of my head. So, in general, I keep myself busy. One of my favorite things is reading comic books, magazines and books. I could go on, but I think I've bored you enough with my story. Until next time...