Tales of the graphing calculator

Graphing calculators are really fun to mess with. When I first got a graphing calculator for school, I immediately tried using it to play games. It took me a whole day to figure out how to find games, install them, and run them. While doing so, I learned more about computers than I have learned anywhere else. 

Installing games on a graphing calculator taught me a lot of things about how computers work. There are lots of different programs out there that interact with each other and sometimes fail to interact with each other. So many different things float around the internet that perform interesting functions.

The best way to learn how to work with computers is through Google and experience. Google is your teacher and your own computer is your textbook. 

Learning how to operate computers with some level of technical proficiency has saved me many times, from knowing how to re purpose an old hard drive from a broken computer and recover data to fixing the various problems that come up while you're working with your computer normally. It's very hard to teach computer savviness. You have to learn it on your own. It's like language in that it's very hard to teach. 

For example, the different file types and how dangerous they are to your computer. .exe files should only be run when you trust the source. Zips are dangerous to unzip if you don't know where they're coming from. Et cetera, et cetera. It takes experience to become adept at avoiding the bad stuff and sticking to the stuff that won't harm your computer. 

And then there are pop up ads and devious advertisements that pretend to be something they're not. The only way to learn how to deal with those is to get burned a couple of times. 

The internet is a wild place. There are lots of ways to do something, and all of them are usually going to be complicated. 

In conclusion, I advise you to watch yourself at all times, and to experiment and use Google to figure out what's going on behind that screen of yours.