NASA My Ass

When I was in high school, just abut twenty years ago, computers weren't new, but the internet was. The Information Super Highway, the World Wide Web, AOL on a floppy disk, all over the phone with that wonderful dial-up noise. I miss that noise. I was fascinated with computers back when the school had that one, brand spanking new, state of the art, Apple 1, that only played Oregon Trail. I don't think I ever made it through that game, I was always the first in the party to die. And it was always dysentery that killed me off. Hunted by wolves would have been an awesome way to die, not shitting yourself to death. Damn it that was a good game, and I didn't learn shit from it. I believe they only had that game in school because the teachers didn't know what the fuck to do with a computer, and a game about “history” has got to be educational. Or those teachers knew it was an hour out of their day to go take a shot or two of booze from that locked drawer of their desk, so they could handle being around us at least until lunch time.

When I got to high school, computers had been around for a while. The teachers knew what games were, and that they were a waste of our time. High school teaches you shit about life you will never use as an adult, I'm not talking about algebra, I use that shit at work all the fucking time. I'm talking about Shakespeare. The only time I've needed to know anything about those shitty plays was because I watch watching Jeopardy and I compete along with the people on the TV. No one has ever asked me to recite Othello because that'll fix your toilet so it can flush again. Romeo and Juliet does not help fix a hole in the roof. I'm not an actor, I've never considered myself to be an actor, and try as hard as I can, to not be an actor. Fuck Shakespeare.

The other thing they tried as hard as hell to teach, was how to use a computer, for practical business applications, that these adults knew was going to be needed because the soon to be robot overlords would need someone to fix them. The school decided to get one of the oldest men they had employed, and he claimed he had once worked for NASA, to teach us. I think it was some bullshit he was spreading to make himself seem smarter than he looked, but I doubt he helped land men on the moon, more likely emptied the trashcans in the bathrooms they used before going into space. I was a junior in high school when I took the computer class. I thought I'd learn something, like coding, or hardware repair. Fuck, I could have gone with typing and just gotten a goddamn A for already knowing how to type and slide through one class for the year. But I did want a challenge, was this going to be one? No, this was how to use Windows 3.11, in 1997, and I already had Windows 98 on the computer I had at home. Shit, they couldn't even get goddamn Windows 95 on those computers if they wanted to. These things were pieces of shit. There was no internet access, even though, by then everyone in the country knew what the hell dial-up was, and I'm sure these things couldn't have gotten on the internet if they were connected. The teacher, I don't remember his name at all because he made such a huge impact on my life, did his attendance with a time clock. A punch card time clock, because it was “Something you will all use one day.” I believe he was milking the job for a better pension. We all had computers in a lab set up, rows of tables with the same tower, monitor, and keyboard set up, all bolted together by a chain, with all those cables hanging off the back. It was a safety first type of mentality in that school. The cases even had the built in locks, I don't know why as there was nothing worth stealing out of them. I remember him setting up a login of some kind in DOS, I don't remember what the fuck it was for. It's just a memory that's clearly taking up space where I could have another Shakespeare play residing. I can remember the thirty-five characters, with upper and lowercase, numbers, those silly special characters that are used for emojis, that was randomized by a program I use to make fantastically strong, and secure passwords to slowdown the most dedicated hackers, from reading my email, from Amazon telling me about today's deals. Because I believe in securing my computer. This guy used LOGIN, for the login. And no one could ever guess PASSWORD, as a password. And this was to get into his administrative settings. Fuck, that's like locking the screen door to keep out a guy with a machete that really wants to murder you. Real secure there, Moonshot.

We had three assignments for the whole semester. I finished them in three days, and I was procrastinating. The first three fucking days of the class. Oh joy, I signed up for a great class there, what with all that learning I did for my life as a functioning adult. I think most of us in that class were done within a couple of weeks, I know there had to be some one that was a perfectionist. I did make a mistake though, I sat too near the teacher's desk, and he watched like a hawk for anyone that dared play that game inverted by the devil himself that would lead you down a life of crime, filled with drugs and whores and showing all kinds of ankle. Solitaire. A card based game that comes with the operating system, that you cannot lose at, what kind of a fucking lesson are we teaching here. Won't someone please think of the children! Third week into the class and I was done fucking around with anything I could with that stupid computer, and he busts me firing up solitaire. Minutes before it was time to go to some other class that was a waste of my time. He scolded me for wasting time when I could be using it on all those hard assignments. I told him I was done with them, he claimed “Liar!” and I called him old and full of shit. And the next day, he formatted the fucking hard drive that stored all my work. I believe it was out of spite to this day. And when I told him that he erased all my work, he had the nerve to tell me about backups. He wouldn't allow a backup with our own fucking 3.5 inch floppy disk, so he canned all my work without allowing for a back up. Asshole.

During this time, I had really long hair, longer than my shoulders, long. It was also a fucking Mohawk. I was proud as hell of it. I'm sure this was a basis of the tension between me and the NASA teacher, what with his 1950s style squared off flattop hair style. It also didn't help that I was an asshole. But I was also going through the semi-goth stage of life. Baggy pants, skater shoes (no skateboard), and walked around with slumped shoulders and didn't talk to people. I floated through school like that, I hated the place, and didn't fucking care. I also wore a big, baggy red coat all the time. It was a very nice coat, and whenever I took it off I got loaded with static. I could have easily powered a small city when I touched metal and zapped it and myself. And the rubber soles to those skater shoes made sure that all that power went into the metal I touched. So when my shit got canned by this guy, I took off my jacket, set it on the chair and promptly put my hand onto the case of his computer. His screen flickered and then went to that tiny bright white dot right in the middle as the computer crashed to a halt. Now if he had been as smart as he claimed to be, you'd think he would have put a good surge protector to use on that expensive personal computer of his. He was pissed, all his stuff hadn't been saved, or backed up. Such a shame. I got a C in that class, and I never turned in a fucking single assignment. NASA my ass.