Bill Ward

My Online History

April 25, 2026July 21, 2003 by Bill Ward

This is a time capsule – written in 2003 to describe how my online life had evolved up to that point. Looking back in 2026, it all feels like ancient history.

The Tupperware Guy

April 25, 2026July 21, 2003 by Bill Ward

Yes, you didn’t misread that – I used to sell Tupperware. I was “The Tupperware Guy.”

Ward Photo Archive

August 12, 2002 by Bill Ward

A collection of my photography from the early 2000s, organized by theme: animals, landscapes, water, and scenes of civilization.

On August 25, 1991, the world changed. A college student in Finland by the name of Linus (LEE-noos) Torvalds announced his latest project, a new operating system for the 386 PC that uses the Minix filesystem and various GNU utilities. He named it Linux (LIN-ucks).

My Commodore History

April 25, 2026July 30, 2001 by Bill Ward

When I was in 4th grade (1980-81; age 9), our elementary school got its very first computer – a Commodore PET with 32K of RAM, named Rudy (for the salesperson who sold it to our school). It was a PET 2001 computer, but it had a “real” keyboard, rather than the so-called “chicklet” keyboard. It ran BASIC 2.0 and used an external cassette drive to load software. But I wasn’t in that class.

Overview of Commodore Computers

July 30, 2001 by Bill Ward

In the late 1970’s and early-mid 1980’s, one of the dominant players in the world of home computing was Commodore Business Machines. The most famous and widely used was the Commodore 64, which is to this day the record holder for number of units sold of a single computer model. But there were many others which are not as widely known. Here is a brief run-down of the Commodore 8-bit product line:

A Life of Sailing

April 25, 2026July 30, 2001 by Bill Ward

I’ve sailed all my life. My parents owned a sailboat since before I was born. When I was a kid we would take cruises to Monterey or Moss Landing (really the only one-day destinations from Santa Cruz) for a weekend, and occasional day-sails. I’ve always dreamed of sailing off into the sunset, but I don’t think I have the guts to do it…