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For some reason I was thinking about how I got to this point in my life on my car ride home yesterday. When you have no stereo due to the fact that it was stolen by savages and you have a 45 minute commute, you tend to do a lot of thinking. At this particular time I was thinking about the first time I saw the World Wide Web. It was 1995. I was attending a small private school at the time and while the facilities had yet to be improved to the impressive structures they are now, we were one of the more technologically advanced schools in the state. This was thanks to the efforts of John Couch, one of the pioneers at Apple who for some reason has no Wikipedia page. He had acquired a lab full of top of the line Macs and we had what was at the time a blazing fast internet connection.
Looking at the page of text, if you had told me this technology would end up putting entire industries out of business, I would have never believed you. But it sparked something, just as years before I had felt it the first time my dad sat me on his lap in front of one of the giant PCs at his office, the first time I made a line in LOGO at school, the first time I logged in to BBS to play LORD, and everything after that.
What are your geek roots?
When I was a kid, we lived on a farm and I was stricken with allergies. Since I was inside so much, I took to reading. My parents got me an encyclopedia set, Animal cards, and subscriptions to Discover, Scientific American, and Ulysses. 
I think reading at an early age and parents that encourage us to do so is a common thread. My uncle bought me a set of encyclopedias when I was three and like you, Henry, I think that played a big part in things. 
Being one of six kids in my school in 1982 to take the "Computer" class on Apple II+. Learning the following program: 
Computerwise, it all started with the Macs my mom worked on when I was in grade school, a maze game in 5th grade, a computer class with a typing game in 6th, the Brickle game and computer class in 7th, Myst in 8th, and an 8th period HTML class in high school. Heck yeah.
My mom and my grandma (both avid readers) took me to the library a lot, especially over the summer. By high school I usually had a book with me and would pull it out whenever I got bored. I've always hated to be bored.
My stepdad brought home a 386 with a whopping 2 megs of ram when i was 10 or so. I remember being so excited to get home from school and learning my way around DOS and OS/2. Then the beginning of my gaming, with such gems as the adventures of willy beamish, and other sierra type adventure games. Then when we upgraded to a 486 with 4 megs of ram i remember getting my first copy of Doom and being so excited, as i was one of the only kids on my block that could run it. Ah those were the days..
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