Name: Conceited Jerk / Dezorian / Pretentious Nickname / Royal Bastard / Kotatsuneko / Samhain / Johnny Rehab, among others
 

  Hi! I'm the anecdotal (and parenthetical) Conceited Jerk, and I'm the "Power User" of the group.  I oversee the acquisition of new equipment and software (aka impulse purchases), and am usually the one who puts it all to use.  Or finds a "theoretical use" for the far-flung future.  I also maintain the web site (on occasion), and am a freelance writer outside of the Thugs (which explains why I can be kind of...verbose...) and my normal 9-to-5 job as a warehouse manager.

    I've been into computers since 1984 when, at age 11, I received my first home computer system, a TRS-80 Colour Computer 2 (better known as a CoCo 2). I can still remember the awe and fascination I felt when I first turned the machine on and played my first Coco game, Dungeons of Daggorath... My games addiction was fed by my uncle in Quebec who also had a Coco 2 and would send me tapes upon tapes, magazines upon magazines, books upon books, until I mastered the machine. Eventually, I got a printer (DMP-106), a floppy drive (FD-502), and ultimately, a Coco 3. I had my beloved Cocos all through high school, where they served me well when it came time to write an essay, project, or paper. Heh, they may even have distracted me from writing said papers, my multitude of games beckoning me, screaming, "CJ, you need to play a few rounds of Killer Hawks".

  After a while, gaming started to pale in comparison to the fun I had BBSing. I still remember using UltimaTerm on my 512K Coco 3 with two double-sided drives and a RAMdisk programmed in BASIC...Hell, I remember having a BBS set up on my Coco 3, using a BBS program I typed in from Rainbow magazine. The BBS lasted all of an afternoon, but it was still somewhat of an accomplishment!

  Unfortunately, the glory days came to an end when I went to Red River College in1992. In order to stay current and compatible with the college's systems, I was forced to sell my Cocos to buy an MSDOS machine. Not wanting to stray far from the flock, I headed over to Radio Shack and bought a Tandy 1000 RL, complete with RGB-11 monitor (which I still have) and a games package that included Red Baron and FireHawk: Thexder II (both of which I still have!). Since those halcyon days of thirteen years ago, I've accumulated a literal TON of hardware, usually through online auctions (eBay) or used/thrift stores, but I do the occasional small-scale business/corporate buy-out as well.  I own and operate several different architectures and operating systems, and am always hungry for more.

 If I HAD to choose a "main system" out of all of my machines, I'd throw them all out, Amigas, Macs, Sparcs, and all. Over the last few years, I've discovered that each machine I own is good enough in it's own right, that each can compete against each other in terms of their functionality. I guess that's the mark of a true computer "Power User", being able to use any type of system comfortably and productively, because you know that fundamentally, all computers are the same at heart.