Hack-Man Computer Page

Last updated 23 August 1997

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This turned out to be more of a bio of myself than any useful info about computers. If you could care less about Yet Another Computer Nerd's life, just skip to the bottom of this page for links to some other computer-related web sites.

I first got interested in computers when I was about ten. This was back in the mid-1970s when that was still uncommon, as computers weren't a household appliance. Back then it was mainly teletypes at the college where my father taught and then the teletype at the junior high school that I attended in Moorhead, Minnesota. When I tell people people I was using computers for five years before I used one with a monitor, one response I got was "didn't that make it hard to tell where the mouse was pointing?" Ouch. That made me feel old.

I've been hacking on Apple II machines since about 1980. When I started at North Dakota State University, I was introduced to TRS-80s (oh joy) and learned FORTRAN (WATFIV) to bring the number of computer languages to two (after Apple BASIC). In the following years I picked up: That's 15 languages, if you're keeping score at home. I'm almost certain I know more than that, but my mind is kinda fuzzy right now so I can't think straight.

I worked on Apple IIs, Apple Macs, Apple Lisas, IBM PCs, IBM Mainframes, HP, Sun, and Apollo workstations running UNIX and VMS at the University of Minnesota, Augsburg College, and Honeywell, Inc. I finally woke up and noticed that there's a lot more freedom to be creative (not to mention money) doing contract work, so after nearly nine years at Funnywell I switched to contracting in the summer of 1994.

I've done contract work for Owatonna Tool Company, Medtronic, Computing Devices International, Rosemount Aerospace, Shadin Company Incorporated, and FMC/United Defense.

I've worked through the Computer Aid, Sysdyne, and Tech Power contract houses.

My editor of choice is GNU Emacs in an X-Windows/UNIX environment.

In 1987 I finally bought my first computer (unless you include the CASIO pocket computer I got in 1983 which has 4K of RAM, a one-line display, and only has BASIC): an Apple IIgs. I had to decide between an Apple and an IBM, but since I had a few thousand games and other programs for the Apple II line and only ten or twenty for the IBM line, I went where the software was. That kept me happy until 1993, when I bought a used Apple IIe at a silent auction for $113. That allowed me to do gaming on the IIe (hooked up to my 120-inch TV ) while I could reserve the IIgs for more important stuff (there's more important things than games?) In March of 1995 I finally broke down and bought a 100MHz Pentium with 16 MB RAM (which I ran out of the first night, even with disk caching), a 1280 MB hard drive (which I filled in about a week), a 28800 modem, and a quad-speed CD-ROM drive (which I havn't really used for anything but playing musical CDs).

More recently, I picked up another 1280 MB hard drive, a tape backup, a 9600x9600 dpi flatbed color scanner, and a CD-R (compact disc reorder).

I do volunteer work for the Twin Cities FreeNet (one of the most disorganized organizations I've ever seen (and I've worked in a post office)).

Given a choice, I'd rather be hacking C code on a UNIX box than just about anything else in the world.
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Enough about me, if you want to see some links to other computer-related web sites:

I've sped up my web pages; load the damn graphics already If you haven't been there already, check out the main page of OttoWorld!

Copyright © 1994-1998 Otto E Heuer. All rights reserved.