Some of my earliest memories are of me being left alone with a computer. In the late 80’s, just as I was developing a sense of self, our family acquired a surplus Apple IIe and dozens of games and programs on 5.25 inch floppy disk. I dutifully worked my way through all the disks, discovering what each was. I was exploring. My territory was not the backyard or the woods, but cyberspace. At that age there was distinction between game and application. MacPaint and Excel and Virtual Pinball were all entertaining software to me. These early home entertainment games taught me the value of persistence and practice. Many of the games’ challenges required learning through repeated failure and other required learning from other players. My early exposure to the kind of thinking required to play these games has shaped me into the variable-eliminating troubleshooter that I am today.