Computer Collection of Essays from Scholarship 2006 Dealing with Computers and How They Shaped My Life Hang Zhang-Best Computer Online Store Houston Buy Discount Prices Texas-Directron.com

Hang Zhang

Dealing with Computers and How They Shaped My Life
- By Hang Zhang

At the age of five, I was introduced to computers through my uncle. He was the one who followed technology the most and had recently purchased a brand new Windows 95 computer. My cousins and I frequently visited his residence to play computer games on a piece of equipment that none of our parents could afford. Two years later, I found myself arriving in the United States, the country where computing was booming and where technology was at its forefront. It is here that I now reside, after arriving from the Southeastern portion of mainland China, where new technology and electronics continue to be expensive for the majority of the households.

I arrived in the United States with my mother; my father came four months earlier after acquiring a new job at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Within six months or so, my father acquired a new Fujitsu laptop which featured an Intel Pentium processor with MMX technology. The included two gigabyte hard drive is small for today's standards, with flash memory reaching upwards of 8GB, but for 1997 it was enough for a few MS-DOS based games as well as the occasional web browsing. At the time, I was grateful for finally having a computer in our family that we could use and join in with the revolution occurring around the world.

Within a year and a half, I found myself on the top floor of an apartment building, looking over a reservoir in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. It was here that my father decided to buy me my own computer, a Compaq Presario 5150, with a 350MHz AMD K6-2, 128MB RAM, an 8GB hard drive as well as a 32X CD-ROM drive. This is the first computer on which I was able to experiment with different programs, fix problems that came up as well as experience the wonders of 3D graphics. The computer was marvelous because not only was it better than almost all of my friends' computers, it kept me busy while my parents worked.

In 2000, my family moved to Carmel, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, where I am still living. I stuck with my Compaq until 2003, when I finally realized how far behind I was on technology and finally convinced my parents to let me buy a new computer. After picking all the parts that I wanted, my father ordered the computer, which includes an AMD AthlonXP 2400+, a NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB, 512MB of DDR266, and an 80GB hard drive. Again, this computer put me ahead of my peers and I was able to experiment further. I started digging into the hardware of the computer, researching the different platforms available, and learning about the different buses inside the computer. On Black Friday of 2005, I purchased parts for a new computer build which I am still using to this day. The original parts included an AMD Athlon64 3200+ Socket 939, an Abit KN8 Ultra, an XFX NVIDIA GeForce6 6800GS, 1GB of Corsair PC3200 memory, and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 160GB hard drive. Through the year, I acquired new parts such as heatsinks, fans, a 2GB kit of memory, two more hard drives, an Antec SmartPower 2.0 500W as well as an X2 4200+ dual core CPU. But with the upgrades I acquired for my computer, I was also quickly gaining reputation within the local Chinese community as well as deciding the paths to tread for my future.

At the end of 2005, I started formulating goals for my future. I decided that the suitable major for me would be computer engineering. I now attend Purdue University and live in a dorm hall. Within the dorm, I found my computer skills both with software as well as hardware actually are being put to use. Fellow engineering students know me around the floor as the one who is very knowledgeable about the software packages being used in engineering problem solving (ENGR126) as well as the internals of the computer and how different parts work. Just recently, my roommate's computer started displaying artifacts on screen. There are also other people down the hall who have also started coming to me for help when their computer has shut down randomly or they need help on an engineering problem. For these engineering problems, many of them involve the use of Excel to plot and analyze data. Many of the first year engineering students have not had the experience in manipulating data in Excel. However, I learned to use Excel, PowerPoint and Word in a computer applications course in high school. Another package that first-year engineering courses use is MATLAB. This is actually a programming language with powerful computational capabilities. Having had two years of programming in high school, I realized that with a change in syntax, there actually is very little difference going from Java to MATLAB. Despite the instabilities and the frustration of using incorrect, Java-style syntax in MATLAB, I am cruising through engineering.

In these three months of preparing for tests, listening to lectures, taking notes and taking exams, I have realized three very important concepts. The first concept is definitely the spirit of helping people. Through the years, I have fixed numerous computers for free and never left a problem unsolved. Many families have graciously accepted me as a trustworthy individual who is bound to solve the problem at hand. They have also been known to boast about my technical skills to their friends. Helping people also brings a feeling of self-appreciation. Upon diagnosing and fixing a computer problem, I feel accomplished as if the day could not be any better. Even when I'm just fixing computers within my own house, I feel like I'm doing myself a favor by making my parents' computing experience better. Another concept that I've discovered during my time here at Purdue, is the value of time management. When managing time wisely, I finish homework due in the next week beforehand so I do not have to rush it. During the week, more work is bound to be piled up and there's always the possibility of an all-nighter or sleeping only a few hours for consecutive nights of the week. By managing time wisely, I am able to complete assignments with less pressure. I learned to organize my computer time between gaming and work. Since almost all of my assignments are online, the use of a computer leaves me with a choice between wasting time on a game and doing the online assignment. Self-control plays a big part of time management and knowing when to do what is the difference between success and failure. The third, and quite possibly the most important point of life in general, is the value of education. After coming from one of the best public high schools in Indiana, I hit the ground running as soon as I arrived at Purdue. The material covered in lectures and all of my classes were familiar and it was an easy transition going from high school to college. Learning the computer skills necessary in high school helped me through this semester of college and the material that I'm learning now will certainly help me in my career. Life, as I view it, is filled with continuing progress, just like technology.

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