Open Elements

I was recently trying to think back to my first computer; I remember that I lived in Los Angeles at the time and my grandma would sometimes take me to the Glendale Gallerias. If you don’t know about the Glendale Gallerias, just picture a huge fancy mall. They had a Radio Shack and every time we walked by it, I would plead and beg obsessively to my grandma to please buy me a computer; which I’m sure didn’t sound pretty.

I had pleaded so many times to her and somehow one day it worked and she agreed to buy me one of the least expensive models. I was thrilled! I had never used a computer before and didn’t even know what they were used for; the only thing I knew was that I had to have one. It was the summer of 1985. I was 13 and had only been in this country for 2 years.

Back in those days, Radio Shack carried Tandy computers; I don’t remember the exact model I had now, but I suspect it was the Tandy Color Computer 2. In many ways, this was the beginning of life in America for me as I began to take part in the PC phenomenon.

As I recall, one of my fondest memories with this computer was that it had the ability to produce sounds. The computer manual provided some examples to get you going using BASIC programming language.

One of the drawbacks of my Tandy computer was that it had a very limited amount of memory. I remember this very vividly because I wasn’t able to save any of the music programs that I wrote, which would sometimes take hours to complete. I would have to start from scratch each time I used the computer.

This wasn’t the best solution, but at least I had a computer to experiment with and I believe it made me a better typist. A year or so later I discovered that I could plug a tape recorder to my Tandy computer and save my programs to a cassette. If you remember cassettes, the cool thing about them was that you could record over the same cassette many times. It didn’t take me long to save up my money and buy the tape recorder from Radio Shack. That tape recorder changed things drastically because I could start writing something half-way, save it and come back to it another day.  Back then this was a huge improvement!

How about you? I’m interested to hear about your first computer story in the comments section. How old were you when you got your first computer? What type of computer did you have?

I’ve been thinking about doing freelance web design for quite some time. I’ve even worked on a few paid projects, but haven’t pursued it beyond that.

This weekend, I started reading The Web Design Business Kit to further understand the business side of things and liked what I read so far. While reading the 1st few pages I started to think, “yes I can do this” and as I continued to read the thought of running my own business became just a little clearer in my mind.

Funny coincidence. Today, I stumbled upon a post by Shane titled 2008 Goals: Scare Yourself in which he talks about his goal of making a million dollars in 2008. (Good one Shane!) The idea behind this is to set a goal that makes you reach further than what you are comfortable with. He also believes in telling the world about it, that’s why he blogged about it.

This made me think about my situation once again, so I’ve decided to take the first step and set my goal.

I want to run my own web design business

With that being said, I look forward to learning tons more and pushing myself past my own comfort zone.

If anyone else wants to join me in this challenge, you can start by setting your goal and saying it out load to yourself. I’d love to hear about it in the comments area.

Mario Seijo
web developer

Things have been quiet around here for awhile, mainly because I’ve been really busy getting things done for my trip to Italy.

AnaLuisa and I flew to Rome on Saturday and we’ll be here all week. Upon arriving into Rome, we took the train to Termini (the center of Rome), then took the subway to our hotel located near the Spanish Steps.

After getting settled, we headed out to dinner and took a walk down to the Spanish Steps just as I had planned (Keep in mind, she had no idea of what was about to happen). Once we arrived at the top of the steps, we were approached by one of the many flower vendors and got a few flowers for AnaLuisa. We continued down the steps and took seating about half way down to take in the lively atmosphere. There were a bunch of people relaxing, drinking beer and wine (from corked bottles) and kids of all ages having a good old time.

It was late and AnaLuisa was getting tired, so I knew it was time to do what I came here for; The moment was right so I decided to just come out and say it despite a small pinch of nervousness.

I have something to tell you. baby, we’ve been together for a while now and you know I love you and that you are my best friend. Will you marry me?

I was delighted to hear her answer, ‘yes’. Then we hugged and gave each other short soft kisses. Funny thing, she wasn’t tired after that moment anymore and we stayed around a bit longer.

We’re going to Naples tomorrow, I’ll try to write more later.