Full circle commands
A story about my granddad’s computer lessons and how they became my way of helping him decades later
Oct 27, 2025
Recently, I’ve been feeling nostalgic. I’ve been thinking a lot about the times opa and I spent together in the attic toying with computers. I must have been 5 or 6 years old. He taught me everything about computers: how they work, how to use them, and — most importantly back then — how to play games on them.
Being up there with him always felt adventurous and fun. We’d walk up the stairs, turn on the loud machine, wait, slot in a new floppy disk, install the game that was on it, and then discover whatever new world awaited us. Jill of the Jungle, Commander Keen, and later, Prisoner of Ice and Fable, to name a few of our classics. It was pure joy mixed with amazement. Playing new games on a flickering screen with just a keyboard.
Back then, early 90s, a keyboard was all you had. You couldn’t just point and click to make the computer do something. There was no mouse. There was no graphical user interface (GUI). What you got was a black screen with a white underscore cursor, pulsing after C:\>. Enter the command line interface (CLI). To use the computer, you had to type commands to make it do things. And opa taught me all the commands.
Want to play that new game? Find it first. Navigate to the right folder. List its files. Found the right file? Run it.
He never entered a single command for me. He’d explain commands, write them down on a piece of paper, and that was it. It was my job to do the rest. Guiding and giving ownership and responsibility. The same way I try to guide my own kid now.
Years later, I’d get the chance to use those commands he taught me to help him in return.
My phone rang. It was opa. He called me up for help. He was locked out of his computer and couldn’t get in anymore. The PC was full of family pictures and he had forgotten the password. “Is there any way we can save those pictures?”
I drove over and headed straight upstairs. After a quick Google search I found a YouTube video showing how to reset a password on an old Windows Vista using the command line interface. Bingo.
I followed the instructions and booted the PC from USB and entered Windows in install mode. Then I fired up the terminal, and like he taught me years ago, navigated to the right folder, listed its files, and copied, modified and overwrote a program. Then after a restart, I could fire up the modified program in terminal at the login screen. From there, with a few commands, I could view all system users and change their passwords. Boom, we’re in.
I ran down, told him his photos were safe, and explained the whole hack in detail, step by step, the same way he used to patiently walk me through computer tasks years ago. A big smile spread across his face, and I could see he was both proud and relieved. All those precious family memories were safe again. And we did it. Full circle.
Those early moments together in the attic shaped my love for computers. They led to my career in product design, designing interfaces that make computers easier to use. I’m grateful for those core memories, the fun we shared, the chance to help him years later, and the career path they opened.
Opa, you meant the world to me. I miss you.