# Your experience of Technology in high school



## skycloud86 (Jul 15, 2009)

What was your experience of technology lessons in high school? Did you enjoy it, or did you hate it, or did you find it to be somewhere in between? Did you find it useful or not?


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## jbking (Jun 4, 2010)

*Just to add my answers....*

Note: My high school years were 1989-1993.

I ended up taking 4 courses that involved computers in high school. Grade 9 Keyboarding, grade 10 Introduction to Computers, Grade 11 Computer Science and Grade 12 Computer Science. I enjoyed it and ended up with better scholarships to study Math and Computer Science than Biochemistry though I imagine classrooms would be a little different now than when I was in school.

Making a little video game in assembler on a Commodore Pet was kind of cool in a way. I enjoyed having this virtual world where I had better control than the physical one. Some of what I learned way back then is still useful to me now.


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## MDMStudios (Jan 22, 2011)

I wasn't able to attend a high-school computer class. In what I believe to be direct consequence to that, I built an Operating System.


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## flash_fire (Jan 15, 2011)

As of now.. I have taken courses concerning programming in Java, Data Structures and learned all the C languages... Fun courses if you have a teacher that has a hilarious sense of humor. =)


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## Vaka (Feb 26, 2010)

I learned how to type. I already knew how to type. Apparently there are special typing techniques. I picked them up, but them reverted back to my old techniques after leaving the class.
So, I'm making it sound worse than it really was. I took a BCIS class which did teach me a few things with Microsoft Office.
I'll say neutral.


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## Promethea (Aug 24, 2009)

Lol.. I got in school suspension for "hacking" and had to "fix" all of the computers back to what they were before but I didn't do anything but change the main display screen in dos to something funny

m "Main dicksplayscreen"
n "Nutscape"

i was 15


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## timeless (Mar 20, 2010)

My high school was attacked by killer robots. I had a bad experience with technology.


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## Vaka (Feb 26, 2010)

timeless said:


> My high school was attacked by killer robots. I had a bad experience with technology.


So do blenders give you flashbacks? If so, I feel sorry for you. Smoothies are awesome.


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## Promethea (Aug 24, 2009)

timeless said:


> My high school was attacked by killer robots. I had a bad experience with technology.


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## timeless (Mar 20, 2010)

Promethea said:


> YouTube - Chopping Mall


How did you get the security tapes?!


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## BlissfulDreams (Dec 25, 2009)

I took one computer class and we learned how to do spreadsheets in excel and a bit of database stuff. Overall, it was pretty dry and I didn't retain much of it.


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## Promethea (Aug 24, 2009)

timeless said:


> How did you get the security tapes?!


duh i have been hacking gibsons since i was 15 fukr


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## timeless (Mar 20, 2010)

Promethea said:


> duh i have been hacking gibsons since i was 15 fukr


You hacked a Gibson? That's a truly righteous hack. I'm guessing that was one of your positive experiences.


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## geGamedev (Nov 26, 2009)

Neutral.

My school wasn't very.. well equipped to teach much, as far as technology goes. I did manage to take two years of programming classes as well as playing around in another language between classes. So my "experience of technology" wasn't horrible but that's only because I stumbled upon loop-holes and got to know the guy that maintains computers at my high school. (i.e. the only technologically modern person on staff, imo)


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## Promethea (Aug 24, 2009)

*True story:*

I was a Venice, California systems analyst who telecommuted to Cathedral Software in San Francisco. My interpersonal relationships were completely online and on the phone, limiting interactions with neighbors, and my mother was institutionalized with Alzheimer's disease. My coworker Dale sent me a floppy disk with a backdoor, labeled with "π", to a commonly used computer security system called "Gatekeeper" sold by Gregg Microsystems. Dale and Me agreed to meet, but his private plane's navigation system malfunctions and it crashed..

I traveled to Cozumel, Mexico on vacation, where I met Jack Devlin. He paid a mugger to steal my purse with the disk, then shoots the thief. He seduced me on his speedboat, but I found his gun and confronted him. While fleeing with the disk and Devlin's wallet my dinghy collides with rocks, destroying the disk and hospitalizing me, unconscious, for three days!1

When I woke up, I found that all records of my life have been erased: I was checked out of my hotel room, my car is no longer at the LAX parking lot, and my credit cards are invalid. My home is empty and listed for sale, and since none of the neighbors ever saw me they cannot confirm my identity. fuck. My Social Security number is now assigned to a "Ruth Marx", who has an arrest record. Another woman has taken my identity at Cathedral; the impostor offers me my old life back in exchange for the disk. 

I contacted the only other person who knows me by sight, psychiatrist and former lover Alan Champion. He checks me into a hotel, offers to contact a friend at the FBI, and arranges to have my mother moved for her safety.

Using my knowledge of the backdoor and a password found in Devlin's wallet, I logged into the Bethesda Naval Hospital's computers and learns that Bergstrom, who had opposed Gatekeeper's use by the federal government, was misdiagnosed. 

Fellow hacker "Cyberbob" identifies π with the "Praetorians", a notorious group of cyberterrorists linked to recent computer failures around the country. They plan to meet at Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier, but the Praetorians intercept our online chat. I escape from Devlin—a contract killer for the cyberterrorists—at the park, but the Praetorians kill Champion by tampering with pharmacy and hospital computer records. After I'm arrested by the California Highway Patrol a man identifying himself as Champion's FBI friend frees her from jail, but I discovers he is an impostor and escapes again.

Now wanted for murder, I travel to Cathedral's office where, using my impostor's computer, I connect the terrorists to Gregg Microsystems and uncover their scheme; once the Praetorians sabotage an organization's computer system, Gregg sells his Gatekeeper product to them and gains unlimited access through the backdoor. I email evidence of the backdoor to the FBI from the Moscone Center and tricks Devlin into crashing Gregg's mainframe, undoing the erasing of my identity. We battle on the convention center's catwalks, where Devlin falls to his death. The film closes with me and my mother reunited and the conspiracy exposed.


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## flash_fire (Jan 15, 2011)

*wow*

I am deeply moved by this story Promethia. I had no idea that you had that sort of experiences in your life... I have nothing else to say except that is the most amazing story I have heard in the last 168 hours! ... In other words, that was an epic job at telling a story =)


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## timeless (Mar 20, 2010)

Promethea said:


> I was a Venice, California systems analyst who telecommuted to Cathedral Software in San Francisco. My interpersonal relationships were completely online and on the phone, limiting interactions with neighbors, and my mother was institutionalized with Alzheimer's disease. My coworker Dale sent me a floppy disk with a backdoor, labeled with "π", to a commonly used computer security system called "Gatekeeper" sold by Gregg Microsystems. Dale and Me agreed to meet, but his private plane's navigation system malfunctions and it crashed..
> 
> I traveled to Cozumel, Mexico on vacation, where I met Jack Devlin. He paid a mugger to steal my purse with the disk, then shoots the thief. He seduced me on his speedboat, but I found his gun and confronted him. While fleeing with the disk and Devlin's wallet my dinghy collides with rocks, destroying the disk and hospitalizing me, unconscious, for three days!1
> 
> ...


Did I ever tell you about the time when I received a transmission from Vega on my satellite dish, which contained plans for a device to travel to an alien planet? We constructed one, but it was destroyed in a terrorist attack. Luckily there was a second one built secretly. I went to Vega, but they claimed that it didn't work. BUT THERE WAS TWO HOURS OF STATIC ON THE TAPE. Also my father was an alien.


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## Proteus (Mar 5, 2010)

I transferred schools halfway through high school, to this public school in New York. I didn't really like it, mainly because I was the victim of a prank they did to all new students that involved me getting locked out on the roof during a rainstorm. The next day in the computer lab I got into the school's network (which was an absolute joke in terms of security) and set off all the sprinklers while everyone was switching classes as a means of revenge. Those uptight pricks never saw it coming, and I watched it all in the hallway under an umbrella.

I also enjoyed hacking into tv networks and such then. In those days we didn't have skype, if you were hacking someone's system you could just send them this big IM window that worked without a client as well as sending them random pics that would lock up their screen. Actually ended up meeting a girl I dated for a while doing this.

It wasn't all bad though. Eventually I met up with some other kids in the school and got up to all kinds of high tech pranks and schemes. There was this one local government official that was always out to get us, so we ruined his credit score, changed his status to 'deceased' with all his utility companies, and damn near got him fired.

One day things went way too far when one of our crew ended up getting busted by the FBI, but it turns out he had been set up by the technology officer of some huge company. We, along with dozens of other hackers around the world, had to get together to crash his company's entire server. It was pretty crazy because we had to log in through payphones in a subway to keep from getting caught on top of all that.

The days of 90s information technology...it was a lot more primitive than today.


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## Awakening (Nov 30, 2010)

I'm doing half of my high school online... I love it!


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## Promethea (Aug 24, 2009)

timeless said:


> Did I ever tell you about the time when I received a transmission from Vega on my satellite dish, which contained plans for a device to travel to an alien planet? We constructed one, but it was destroyed in a terrorist attack. Luckily there was a second one built secretly. I went to Vega, but they claimed that it didn't work. BUT THERE WAS TWO HOURS OF STATIC ON THE TAPE. Also my father was an alien.


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## RocketMikari (Feb 14, 2011)

I didn't get computer lessons in school but I did great figuring it out on my own. I took computer classics in college, already knew everything they said in like half of them.


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## ThisAnonymous (Feb 24, 2011)

Oh man, I had an awesome teacher in high school. He was also a philosophy teacher at our school so somehow he was able to interject something worldly into everything we were learning. When he was teaching us astronomy and all the tidbits that went on with it, I was very much humbled by the size of our planet compared to... the galaxy. People who think that the earth is at the center of the universe (except those aerospace engineers who have to deal with launching satellites into space) have a whole thing coming to them.


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## pgpalmer (Mar 23, 2011)

I was home-schooled during most of my high school years, so my access to technology was limited to a PC running Windows 3.11 and the public access computers at the local TAFE. I didn't have home interest access, the TAFE internet access was on an educational-sites-only whitelist and the public library's access, while unrestricted, was expensive. So I'd have to say that my access to tech was poor during those times.


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## LegendaryBoobs (Sep 1, 2010)

My experience was fine...
I had to retake computer 101 which was annoying
In accounting we learned Excel which was fine, just boring
When I took Marketing we created lots of ads which I enjoyed
We're always using tech...its a part of life for a student in HS post 1990


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