[stella] self introductions

Subject: [stella] self introductions
From: Schwerin <schwerin@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 02:11:45 -0500
Well, seeing as I'm averaging a question a day I guess I should introduce
myself.  Hi.  I'm Andrew Schwerin.  I am 22 years old, living in a Rt 128
suburb of Boston.  I was introduced to stella by Chris Wilkson.  I was
introduced to Chris Wilkson by a high school friend who knew of the two of
us.  All this happened because I happened to buy a VCS at a yardsale in
mint condition from someone who claimed to be a Lucas programmer and that
Lucas had given him the console as a gift after the project was done ("Jedi
Arena"? I'm not sure).  Either way the system had never been used.  I can
elaborate later...

My illustrious programming career started when, due to my lack of athletic
inclination, my mother enrolled me in a computer programming day camp, the
summer before fifth grade.  This proves my theory that you're never too
young to be a geek.  We learned about writing Applesoft BASIC on stock
Apple II's (yes, yes, the requisite 10 PRINT "My name is Andrew":GOTO 10).
Before getting picked up by parents we traded software, excited to finally
have some sort of binary file, something which could be BRUNed.

BASIC, and LOGO were reinforced in school.  My parents bought me an Apple
IIGS.  I found Roger Wagner's Assembly Lines and was in awe.  So THAT'S
what all that funny stuff is when the machine crashes.  I read it over and
over, page by page, somehow admiring the nice pictures of people and
stoplights for each chapter.
I went to my teacher and begged for an assembler.  My first one was a line
based assembler written in BASIC! Oh My.  Tedious.

I finally took the plunge and bought Roger's Merlin 16+ assembly package.
Then I bought a crate-full of Apple IIGS books.  Then I ran my dot matrix
through the runs printing out assembly listings...going through and marking
green for good code, red for suspect.  After a while of this, I got so
caught up in achieving small application goals I couldn't see the forest
for the trees, let alone the tree, I was somewhere in the bark...

A free-form liberal arts college offered freedom from pesky requirements.
I took Intro C, C++ Data structures, Procedural Animation.  It was
Animation I got the biggest kick out of.  I went on to write some graphic
demos for my mac, finally feeling the power of a structured language on a
machine with more than 16 colors.  I also studied lots of music theory.

I dropped out, discouraged by a lack of academic structure, burdened by a
sudden personal illness.  And now, I work out of a temp agency, hoping to
land a nice shiny entry level programming position.  And in the mean time
work on my own projects.  Oh, and I'm in a rock band too; I play keyboards.


I think my 2600 interest comes from the fact that I had one as a kid, have
two now, and already know 6502 from the apple ii days.

That should be enough for now...:)

-Andrew Schwerin
schwerin@xxxxxxxx



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