I wrote a book! OK, so I wrote a handful of books back in the ’90s when the Internet was young, but this book is especially close to my heart because it chronicles my life “growing up geek.”
Terrible Nerd, by me, Kevin Savetz, who as a child in the ’70s and ’80s was part of the first generation that had easy access to home computers. And I made the most of it, doing everything from writing code on my dad’s Atari 800 to playing Intellivision games until my mom would yell at me to go outside. (My mom finally overcame her WarGames-fueled concerns and let me have a modem, though.)
Terrible Nerd author Kevin Savetz
I also write about my high school and college days, and my career as a technology journalist that ultimately led to my Web publishing ventures such as the 80-plus FreePrintable.net and the Internet faxing service FaxZero.com. There are a lot of personal stories in the book, but also plenty of computing history and tech specs. Plus, I mention my brushes with early BBS and Internet gurus, and that time Microsoft big wigs came to my small town to check on a project I was working on, and my stint as AOL’s Internet AnswerMan. Oh, and in the early ’90s I accidentally brought down the Internet for all of Europe. True story!
Terrible Nerd reveals some secrets, like how I got my hands on various computers so I could try my hand at writing text adventure games, program in BASIC, dial into Bulletin Board Systems, and otherwise experiment with developing technology.
You can buy Terrible Nerd on Amazon.com in print and as a Kindle e-book. It makes a great holiday gift (hint, hint).
I had so much fun researching and writing this book, and I hope you’ll check it out. It’s for nerds and non-nerds alike.