I'm having something of a strange day, at least in one respect.

<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/MV5BNjU5NzE0Njg4OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjExMTYyMQ@@._V1._SY315_CR20212315_.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1389" title="MV5BNjU5NzE0Njg4OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjExMTYyMQ@@._V1._SY315_CR2,0,212,315_" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/MV5BNjU5NzE0Njg4OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjExMTYyMQ@@._V1._SY315_CR20212315_-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" /></a>I was watching a DVD of one of my favorite movies from the mid '80s -- 1984's "Electric Dreams" -- and I found myself curiously fascinated by the primitive home computer that star Lenny von Dohlen bought and took home with him.

It would be five years after that before I got my own first computer, which cost me $1,200 through American Express and didn't even have a hard drive. All the work I did on it -- whether it was a few primitive games or word processing -- was through two 5.25-inch disk drives. It wasn't real fast, either -- just 286 mHz.

I used that computer for two years, and I wrote four novel-length manuscripts on it. I don't think I was ever more prolific than I was in those two years, on that primitive computer.

I didn't even have Internet.

I'm not sure there even was Internet for the public in 1989.

These days I've got a computer countless times faster and more powerful, a laptop I rarely use that's just as good, an iPod with 8,500 songs and nearly 50 audiobooks , a BlackBerry and a brand-new iPad 2. Not one of them excites me or gives me as much pleasure as that goofy little 286 PC with no hard drive did.

I never had a computer like Miles did in the movie, one that talked to him and fell in love with his girlfriend. Of course, I never got to live in San Francisco either. That had always been my California dream, but my friend Mick lured me south to Los Angeles and everything changed.

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