Producer Mike's Tech Bio
I’ve been interested in technology since the age of 6. I didn’t really get actively into it and start actively seeking it out and learning about it till the mid 90’s. In 2001 I sat down and read the entire A+ Certification course from cover to cover then built my first PC. That was an old 1.7Ghz P4 and at the time I was in the RDRAM camp. Later on with that system I also made the mistake of going form an Nvidia Geforce 4 to an Nvidia Geforce 5200. Most everything I know about tech and PCs has been self taught. While I have a good bit of knowledge in PC repair and have ran my own PC repair company for the last 6 or 7 years. I have not yet taken the A+ Certification test.
My first Computer was a TI-99 4A. I have worked on and played with everything from the original IBM PC, threw the 186, 286, 386, and 486 systems as well as their various clones. On threw the Pentium, PII, PIII, P4, AMD, AMD 64, and AMD X2 processors. I am big into PC case mods and PC gaming. I have played around with OC on air cooling but have not had the money to dabble in water cooling or extreme OCing. Though I am proud to say I OCed a 1.8Ghz Opty 165 up to 3.1Ghz on air cooling. While it was stable threw most everything even gaming F@H (Folding at Home) would always crash at that speed. So I had to keep it down to 2.9Ghz to be stable while folding.
I have been gaming since the TI-99. My first PC game was Tetris on the IBM. I followed that up with Wolfenstien, The Doom Series and Duke Nukem 3D. I then found my way into the Quake series and other shooters. One of the old school shooters I like that didn’t get much fan fare was Rise of the Triad. My first entry into RPG was on Win 95 in some of the old school games where you typed in commands to interact with the world. I’ve played the full Elder’s Scroll series and the Myst series. I recently dropped my World of Warcraft account.
I have played on just about every Console gaming system made since the early 80’s. I currently own just about every Nintendo and Sega system as well as an assortment of games. The NES I have isn’t the original one but the second generation top loader. But the controllers and light gun are from a first generation system. I don’t have any of the older Gameboys. But I do have a Gameboy Advance, SP and DS lite. As for Sega the Master system I had didn’t work. I have all the other systems except for the third generation Geniuses and CDX. But I have owned, at one time or another, all the add-ons the Geniuses had. I even had the one that allowed you to play the Master System games on the first gen Geniuses. I use to have a couple of Playstations and PS Ones. I still have one of the PS Ones and it has the 4” LCD screen. I currently have a PS2 slim that I got after trading in my dying PS2. I’ve been meaning to get rid of all these older systems and games for a while, for a price. So if you are interested in one of them let me know and I’ll tell you what I’ve got.
On the OS side of things I’ve used DOS and an off shoot of DOS called DOS tree. It was on an old 286 laptop I had that had a little 6” wide LCD B/W screen. It was in a kind of wide screen format. I believe the laptop was called a Snap 1+1. The back half where the battery and storage were at could snap off from the KB and monitor end of the unit. I think it weighed about 15 Lbs. I have also used Win 3.11, Win 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista and Win7. I also have a good knowledge of Free DSB 4.0, Redhat Linux 6.0, Unbuntu, and UNIX. I am familiar with the Apple IIe, Macs, and iMacs (G4 & G5).
On the software side of things I can program a bit in Basic, TI Graphic calculator Basic, C and C++. I have a good knowledge in Turbo CAD, as well as Google Sketchup. I have a basic knowledge of Adobe Premier, Adobe Photoshop (pre elements). Of course Audacity is a common tool but I prefer a little set I found called Wave Pad and Mix Pad from a company called NCH Software.
In the world of gadgets, I have many. One of my favorite gadgets is my iPod Touch. I do not own a Smart Phone yet because I don’t have the money to pay for a data plan. Maybe this can be fixed in the near future. But I love all sorts of gadgets. My most favorite type of Gadgets are watches. I have always been fascinated with time pieces. Watches use to be the Swissarmy knifes of gadgets. Know that Swissarmy Knifes come with USB thumb drives on them they are the Swissarmy knife of gadgets again. For the longest time there where watches coming out with more and more features. Not only could they tell time but they could be a calculator, universal remote, GPS tracker, AM/FM radio, Video player, MP3 player, USB storage, Date book, and so many more options. It used to be amazing how much they could cram into that tiny space. That is until PDAs came along and soon integrated themselves with cell phones. But Watches still appeal to me.
