chaos at home / treasures of a forgotten era

My home is still in chaos. It is almost three weeks we are covered in dust, as we are changing most of the house’s floor (after 50 years, it was really in bad shape). Terrible. Everything is dusty, everything feels uncomfortable, we cannot get good rest at any time… But well, today the workers began with the last (and largest) area, and it seems in one week it will finally be over. This, of course, has led me to bump into many things I didn’t expect to find - This is, after all, a house where my mother lived before she went to Sweden, and we have years and years of stuff in every possible place. Yesterday I got really surprised when I found this certificate: The certificate for the first ever computer course I had, at IDESE, for three weeks in July 1985 (nine years old). And the best thing about it was not just finding it, but looking it was signed by the Mexican Perl guru Salvador Ortiz! :-D That put me into old-memory mode… Linking memories from little computer-enthusiast kids (and, of course, looking at Amaya’s and Tolimar’s comments on Elizabeth Garbee (Bdale’s 13 year old daughter addressing a Linux developers conference) made me come to one of the greatest experiences I had, and that sadly does not happen anymore: One year after this course I mentioned, during summer of 1986, I took another set of computer courses in Fundación Arturo Rosenblueth’s Centros Galileo. After the course, we were allowed to stay in their C64 lab. Some of the most interested students (me included) were invited to prepare a project to take part in a conference on computers and education - Kids from all over the country flew to Mexico City, showed off their programs (mostly games), played together, and I understand there was also adult-oriented conferences. Over the years, I have met at least two other people who took part in the conference - I am still in contact with one of them, good ol’ perl hacker Amnesiac.