How Puke made me love my computer

How Puke made me love my computer

We’ve been married 26 years now. I still am up late night on the computers, now far from the TV, and she yells at me… “Stop it.”

The night my computer grossed-out my pregnant wife and made me laugh so hard I fell out of my chair with tears of childish joy. It is my first and fondest memory of early PC’s. Sure, for kicks in the 70’s I hacked D&D games in my buddy’s attic all night on an Apple II. But to have your computer eject a floppy disk and howler “Uoo-Waa-Ack” is just sick fun.

We were living in a low rent controlled apartment in Boston. At 28, I was working at a big quick-printing business helping customers with their art and printing. Wang word-processing and photo-typesetting was state-of-the–art. Desktop publishing was in version 1.0 .

The year was 1987. I have a new Apple Macintosh SE computer, with the 7 inch B&W display, and an Apple LaserWriter II. My wife was 4 months pregnant with our first child. I convinced my Dad to “loan” me $10,000 for a Desktop Publishing business to keep my wife busy at home. But, it was really for me!

I really wanted a new thing called a “Modem” to explore this “Bulletin Board Systems” (BBS) phenomenon. The Internet wasn’t even conceived of yet! I found a used 300-baud (top speed then) Hayes Smart Modem for $300.00, that was so cheep! I was up all night for weeks reading, posting, learning, and collecting sound files. I loved sound files!!! I amassed megabytes of sounds. Why, because it was cool.

My favorite BBS “Sysop” (BBS owner) sent Kudos for my “Herculean” effort to upload a special 13MB collection of my best sound. That upload took all night and into the next day!

One Saturday night, my pregnant wife was sitting on the couch while I sort of crouched on my knees in this odd 70’s computer chair in front of my Mac. It was almost midnight. While we were watching Saturday Night Live (SNL), I was downloading an “Init file” called “MacInPuke.” It was suppose to add some personality to my computer.

At midnight, MacInPuke was installed, and SNL was doing “Weekend Update.” The volume setting on the computer was very high so I could hear the beeps and clicks over the TV. I inserted a 3-inch floppy disk into my Mac, and it popped-up on the desktop. I dragged it to the trash. Then magic. As the floppy ejected this roaring upchuck exploded… “Uoo-Waa-Ack, Uoo-Waa-Ack, Uoo-Waa-Ack.” My wife yelled at me “That’s disgusting!” I couldn’t help my self. I had to keep pushing that floppy back in and ejecting it. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t see. I found my self-lying on the floor, on my side, legs still locked in my computer chair. My wife was still yelling, “Stop it, That’s Disgusting!” But, I had to get up and push that floppy disk back in a few more times.

We’ve been married 26 years now. I still am up late night on the computers, now far from the TV, and she yells at me… “Stop it!”