This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz
by Obie Fernandez.
Original Post: Toys just aren't the same anymore
Feed Title: Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?)
Feed URL: http://jroller.com/obie/feed/entries/rss
Feed Description: Obie Fernandez talks about life as a technologist, mostly as ramblings about software development and consulting. Nowadays it's pretty much all about Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
I grew up in constant exposure to tools and tinkering. I can't remember very well when I started taking apart electronics and mechanical devices, but it was probably around first or second grade. Nothing was safe from me and my best friend Nate -- also a total geek. My old neighborhood in Hackensack NJ is littered with little office parks. I don't know what kind of businesses they hold now, but back then a lot of them must have been tech-related. We'd walk around the neighborhood looking in the dumpster areas for discarded equipment. The best score ever was an entire late-70s era Xerox machine because we managed to pull a working 5mw red laser out of it!
Anyway, there isn't much of a point to all of this except nostalgia. When I was up visiting my parents a few weeks ago I went through old boxes in the garage and found some of my old stuff. I threw out most of it. I did bring back a few of my old Transformers that were still in one piece and my old experimenter breadboard that I'm holding in the picture above. Oh yeah, and a RadioShack Armatron. God, I was such a RadioShack nerd!
Unfortunately, my collection of transistor, chips, capacitors, etc.. was nowhere to be found. Neither were any of my X in 1 experimenters kits. I think my grandfather bought me that breadboard at RadioShack almost 20 years ago. I don't think it was *that* unusual 20 years ago for a kid to take an interest in electronics at such a young age. Nowadays, pffft! I'm sure it is extremely rare. Electronics components have gotten so tiny that it is almost impossible to play with them.
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