I had to deal with a computer virus at home this weekend, and as I watched my security software find the demon and cast it out, I thought back over my years of using a computer at work and realized something.

It's dawned on me that computers have not only totally changed how I do things, they've changed me, rewired me in a way.

Now I've used computers to write since the early 1980s, the old greenscreen word processors that were really just digital typewriters with memory.

Then we moved up to our first PCs. There was no Windows, no mouse, nothing to click on. You had a blinking C: on the screen, waiting for you to type in the DOS command to run a program.

You had to know stuff to use a computer.

By the early '90s I was using networked computers at work to produce a U.S. Navy warfare magazine digitally, and families got online with Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL. We wuz wired, the whole family lining up at the only computer in the house, connected to the world by slow modem. In the 90s, the only reason Dad got a turn at the computer was that the kids were playing on the Nintendo or the PlayStation.

Yes, I played too, like most dads, after the kids were in bed. Being a Navy man, my friends and I enjoyed military combat games, from special forces-type Delta Force to the historical Call of Duty series. For those who've never played, in combat games you're a soldier and you aim and fire your weapons with your mouse, usually set up righthanded.

Here's what's surprising. Twenty years of that appears to have rewired me - made a bunch of new connections in my brain. Now, I'm a born lefty. I bat, throw, write, shoot, swing a golf club, left-handed, and always have. I tried shooting a handgun right-handed way back then and couldn't hit squat.

That, however, appears to have changed. At a recent visit to a local range, my host handed me a .40 cal. automatic handgun, putting it in my right hand. I was first surprised that it didn't feel that awkward in my right hand, then as I went to transfer it to my usual shooting hand, that did feel a little odd. So I shot righthanded, and I was shocked.

Not only did shooting right-handed just feel right, I was a little more accurate than I had ever been lefty. Over the years, like a lot of guys, I'd shot way more on the computer that at the range, especially with the price of ammo gone crazy, and shooting righty with the mouse had apparently hard-wired my right hand and trigger finger to a new spot my brain. I've been rewired, upgraded.

Has an old dog learned new tricks?

Now I watch which hand I use to do what, and I realize that, although I still use the left hand for things that require strength, now I often instinctively use my right hand when I need precision. It looks like using computers has made my brain continue to grow and learn, nearly balanced me out. Brain 5.5 is stronger and better than Brain 2.5.

So now I'm looking for a new way to strain my brain - learn Spanish or relearn algebra - anything to build a few new neural pathways.

I figure if I'm still learning new tricks, I ain't an old dog yet.