2/21/96

  Virus in my computer at work.   Must check all disks at home as well.

The bulk of the workday was shot checking hundreds of floppy disks for any computer virus infestations.   These wonderful machines are capable of doing so much yet they are prone to collapse at the appearance of the tiniest snippet of errant code.   I often work at home as well as bring some of my personal writing to work for revision, so the task of cleaning up this latest virus infection is doubled for me.   I am not alone.   It seems that several computers at work have been infected.   We’re trying to track down the source.

I remember, very clearly, the first time I saw a semiconductor circuit used as a counting device.   I realized that the bones of an electronic computer were extremely simple.   We (Mark Johnson (Deceased), Allen Hoch (Deceased), Dave Peck (lost in time), Bob Whalen (address misplaced, hiding somewhere in the wilds of Vermont), John DiGiacomo (unknown, I hope John is alive and well but I fear he might have succumbed to lymphoma) and I, high school students, all, at the time) were in Johnson’s basement.   Bob’s father put together a simple binary counter.   By pressing a button the circuit would count the number of presses and show this total as a binary number using LEDs.   These were just points of light and we inferred that if a light was on it represented a one and if it was dark it was a zero.

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