My father bought my family's first and only computer in 1985, an IBM PCjr. I was 9 years old, and it was located in a common area of the house for me and all my siblings to use. My mother grumbled. "Why do we need an expensive, giant typewriter?" I wrote my first BASIC code on that computer, and gamed on it through elementary school. (King's Quest, anyone?)

Computers weren't a part of my early teenage life at all. Unsurprisingly, computer classes were not popular in an all-girls Catholic high school in the early 90s, though I did take "keyboarding" class, which is where I learned to touch-type. (Most-used skill EVER.)

In college I was broke and didn't have a car so I got a job making minimum wage at the campus computer lab help desk, and that's where my love of computing rekindled. By senior year I'd declared a CS minor (English major) and was managing the student help desk staff of 40 or so. The manager job came with an office that had a door and an IBM mainframe terminal and a PC running OS/2 in it. You know what they say about a room of one's own. I spent a LOT of time in that room, door closed, sometimes all night, programming homework assignments and hobby projects in Pascal, making web pages, screwing around with various bits of software, and escaping my roommate. Still, I didn't own a personal computer; instead I toted a pack of floppy disks around in my backpack.

Finally, in 1997, when I got accepted into graduate school for a Computer Information Science degree, my Mom gave me my first Gateway PC as a graduation gift. ("I guess I was wrong about computers after all.") If I remember correctly, it had a 1.2 GHz probably way under a 1GHz processor, and maybe 2GB of hard drive space—not nearly as powerful as the Nexus 4G.

Got to chew over all the recent Google News with Tom Merritt, Jeff Jarvis, and Kevin Purdy this week while Leo was at the Le Web conference. We spent a lot of time talking about ChromeOS and the Cr-48, and during the show I said I was dubious about a web-only computing experience, and that I didn't know how I'd write, compile, test, and manage code using it. Since then I've received my Cr-48 and begun trying it out for myself, and jQuery creator John Resig described how he conceivably would program on it day-to-day. The fact that there's a terminal with the ability to SSH into a remote server--and more robust "chromoting" remote desktop capabilities to come--make ChromeOS a much more viable everyday computer for me. More on living with the Cr-48 after I spend more time with it.

Really fun episode yesterday with Matt Cutts, one of Google's most friendly and well-known engineers. We talked about the power of links (even negative ones), net neutrality, Google possibly buying Groupon, and Google TV. My tip of the week was doubleTwist's new wireless media syncing feature, AirSync.

Got to talk about Google TV, Android tablets, Google bonuses and more with Jeff, Leo, and our guest Joel Johnson this week on TWiG. I was quieter than usual, working on only a couple hours of shuteye after my trip back from DC, but these guys always keep me on my feet.

This week's was one of the most fun episodes of TWiG we've ever done. Joined my my Lifehacker pal and Complete Android Guide author Kevin Purdy, Jeff and Leo and I got to talk Facebook, Chipotle, and Google TV. My tip this week was to check out the the new Android gesture keyboard, 8pen, but I gotta admit: after playing with it and a few other alternatives, I've settled on SlideIT, a Swype/Shapewriter cousin. More on that soon.

Leo, Jeff and I jawed about the new Android App Inventor, Picnik in Picasa, mobile local search, my 23andme results, and iPhone 4 in this week's episode. My tip of the week: setting up a rich text signature in Gmail.

Jeff and Leo and I chatted about Droid X, Prince, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and the iPhone 4 in our latest episode of TWiG. Also, listeners are helping send an Android phone into space! My tip this week: Chrome to Phone, which pushes your open Chrome tabs to your phone with the click of a button, for browsing on the go.

Great conversation today on TWiG with our guest Chris Messina, who dropped knowledge on the history and differences between OAuth and OpenID--which in an age of "Facebook wants to own all your sign-ons," is an important discussion. My tip this week: to grab the Android Swype beta within the next couple of days while it's still available, as previously-recommended ShapeWriter is no longer in the Market.

This week's episode of TWiG featured Jeff Jarvis Skyping over 3G from a moving car on a NJ highway, Brad Stone from the NY Times who was a total trooper during our criticism of the Times' takedown of the Pulse iPhone RSS reader, and Om Malik of Gigaom, a very smart teddy bear who I'd like to hug. My tip this week: the new Gmail Labs' Maps Preview, which embeds a Google Map into any email that has a U.S. address in it.