The kid who wrote about computers

Before the blog, before the day job, before superterran.net, there was a teenager who couldn’t stop writing about computers. The backups are full of it — reviews, how-tos, screeds, a college essay — all in the same unmistakable voice. Here’s the cleaner, tech-flavored slice of it.

“Microsoft Codename: Longhorn — The superterran Review” (2002)

Years before Vista shipped, I ran a leaked Longhorn build (see Computing through the years) and reviewed it like I was on staff somewhere:

I, like most hardcore tech imps, keep a watchful eye on all of Microsoft’s work; and Longhorn is no different. I first heard about longhorn on winsupersites, where everybody’s favorite insider, Paul Thurrott, talked about how it would be an interim release before Blackcomb… Times have changed, and Longhorn has been stepped up to a major release, and it has spiked all of the interest in geekdom.

“Server installation made simple(r)” (2002)

A from-scratch Apache tutorial, written “by the superterran,” explaining web servers to people who’d never run one:

When i say ‘server installation’ i don’t mean taking blade based dell servers and putting them in the corner. I mean installing several background services that allow people (most importantly you) to access your computer as if it was a HTTP Server.

“Steve Jobs and the Apple of Invention” (2005)

Even the schoolwork was on-brand — a history-class paper (HIS 202) on Apple:

Originally, Steve wanted to name his company “Newton’s Apple” because he thought the ideas him and Steve Wozniak had were as radical and visionary as Isaac Newton must have saw the theory of gravity.

TECHNOTES (2004)

Not everything was prose. This is a computer-repair intake form I made for fixing people’s machines — the realest artifact of all:

Computer Loaded With: 98 / ME / 2K / XP · ISP: AOL / ETHL / HTC / RR / JUNO…

A teenager with a service form, a repair bench, and opinions.

The running feuds

The same backups hold gleefully profane teenage screeds against the tech-media personalities of the day — a standing grudge against radio tech-host Kim Komando chief among them (she shows up again, years later, in the 2011 blog). Those are kept in the private archive; the language hasn’t aged into something for a public wall, but the obsession is the point: I was always going to end up writing about this stuff for a living.

Provenance

Excerpted from .doc files in the year-by-year personal archive (2002–2007). The personal, relationship, and cruder pieces are deliberately kept private — this exhibit is the tech-writing slice only.