Da-Man: How we met

February 11, 1994 is a date I will never forget. That was the first "date" we went on. It was blizzarding in St. John's and we drove around aimlessly in his dad's black Chevy S-10.

We met in Computer Programming 2602 in the Fall of 1993. I was the geeky chick who sat in the front row amongst my other geeky Biology friends. He was the boy who walked all the way to the back of the class and only contributed by snoring gently.

How did he attract my attention? He was wearing the most colorful jacket I'd ever seen! (I was an eighteen-year-old in my drab military phase)

Weeks later, I stumbled upon him in the back of the library where the VAX terminals were and I was desperately trying to figure out my first piece of FORTRAN programming assignment (due in... 20 minutes!). And, recognizing the jacket, I got up the courage to ask him if we could "compare" assignments. To which he replied, "Sure, there's a billion copies downstairs by the printer."

Turns out he -did- accidentally send a billion copies to the giant old daisy-wheel down in the basement (where another 15 of my frantic classmates were swearing under their breath waiting for *their* printouts!).

Of course, his story is that he picked me! He came to me a few weeks after we "compared" assignments asking me for help. I was a nerdy first-year doing second-year courses in Math and Statistics. He was still trying to pass first-year Math. So he asked me for tutoring help and I, of course, said yes!

We discovered this online game called Battletech 3056 - folks, this was when there were no graphics or a fancy mouse pointer! This ran on an old VAX/VMS system and it was all CLI, all the way! I can remember that Windows 3.1 was making its debut around that time on the University systems (and you had to be a CS student to have access (or a letter from God Himself)) but we cut our little computer teeth on VAX/VMS; we could Gopher anything and Finger anybody!

Good times...

Anyway, we used to hang out on weekends too, going downtown to the comic book place and hanging out by the war memorial. We used to have long conversations on the phone - OK, it was more of a shared listen to static but such was our budding relationship.

Finally, he did ask me out on a date in February the following year. And, since then, we have not turned back. He is my best friend, we've known each other since we were sappy idealistic teenagers, and I can't imagine a better man to spend the rest of my life with!

Happy anniversary my love. Almost half our life eh?