Hi All, and Al Sheeny,
I do relate to where you come from Al. I too was a marbles wanna be champ. Cycling, gunpowder. "slug-guns" and street baseball.
I was a bad a.. kid. Even when I was a young adult I played practical jokes on peers etc. Touch powder, gunpowder, hand cranked generators for shocking results.
The emergence of the Commodore and Amstrad computers presented a challenge. There were games to play and to copy. If you could get by the protection. I learnt the Z80 microprocessor code from books. Games galore.
The peers were safe I wanted to play computer games. I had to break into the protection. If it had not been for these games maybe I was destined to work on more practical jokes and try to improve them.
The advent of the PC, my sons and daughter became very computer literate. More so than I was. I was by then losing the initial enthusiasm. I had taught my kids in the beginning and they were teaching me.
I went through the whole wringer. Al's time from marbles to computer games and now its a tool for communication and soon to enhance this newly found hobby, astronomy.
Cheers Marty