Started out working on a Fujitsu using DOS in Japan in '86... an interesting mixture of Japanese and English commands.
Migrated to a Macintosh in '88. Cost me nine hundred dollars to soup the machine up to 2.5 meg of RAM. The SIMMs were made in Japan, purchased on a website based in the states, and then shipped back to me in Japan - go figure.
Landed a job at a computer research facility at the University of Missouri in '92. Started out doing a lot of video, sound, and graphics work. Taught myself a couple of high-level programming languages. Took a Pascal course at the university - hated it. Got certified as a Apple hardware tech. Taught myself a couple of real programming languages. Got into objected-oriented design - why would you do it any other way, I ask you. Taught a couple of computer classes. Migrated back into the DOS and Windows world.
Went to work for the training division of Cerner, a medical software company in Kansas City. Did a lot of design and programming. Taught myself some more computer languages. Taught some computer courses. Got into the real action in the hospitals when the new software was turned on. Doctors, nurses, and support staff, some of who had never used a computer and had no desire to, were suddenly completely dependent on them to accomplish their work. That is where I learned to talk computer to regular people - it is a skill that a lot of computer people don't have a clue about.
Started free-lancing in '04. Bringing people and computers together ever since. ACME Home Computing in '04.
