Tom Madracki's Discount
Computer Repair Service ™

4620 Van Buren Blvd. #192, Riverside, CA 92503
951-797-9145/714-232-6570    rob@madracki.com

My first experience with a personal computer was in 1979, when a gentleman demonstrated this contraption in my 8th Grade Algebra class. We all "Oohed" and "Aahed" as he inserted a cassette tape into a player that was wired to the computer, and it ran a basic math tables program. Hard to believe how far we've come since then! In high school, I got my first personal computer, an Apple IIe, which I used to write papers (printed onto a dox-matrix printer), write programs in Applesoft Basic, and (of course) play games. I can remember begging my parents for a second floppy drive, so I didn't have to swap disks as often! In my senior year, I took an after-school course at Rockwell International, where I learned FORTRAN by coding individual commands onto a stack of punch cards, feeding them into a reader, and then praying for the results I wanted! Ah, memories...

Fast-forward to 1987, and I found myself in the army, working at a logistics office at Fort Bliss, Texas. There, I taught myself how to use an IBM PC/XT, as well as early word-processing and spreadsheet programs. It was here when I began to seriously study how computers worked, and I began learning skills I still carry to this day. In the 1990s, I went to college, where I majored in Mass Communications and minored in Information Systems. It was during this time I discovered the World Wide Web, and I created a GeoCities website (L-O-N-G before Yahoo! had anything to do with them!). I learned how to code in HTML, DHTML and JavaScript; I have even dabbled into Flash animation designs.

My initial ventures into computer repair and maintenance began at a small radio station in Nebraska, where I worked for nine years. There, I performed regular software maintenance on all PCs in the building, as well as constructing and maintaining the station's website. In 2006, I returned to Southern California and, thanks to my years of personal experience and Tom's tutelage, I have become well-versed in a variety of hardware and software configurations for PC systems.

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