[NCLUG] From no Electricity to Linux

[DJ Eshelman]

I'm not sure myself, though I do remember going to someone's house with 
an NES once.  My first gaming system was a PS one in 1999.  I was 
already playing Descent on RedHat 5 at that point, though :)

I remember before we moved to BFE I had a old Tandy computer in 1984; I 
remember doing some fun stuff with that...  but I really wonder 
sometimes how that all translated into me being where I am today.  Oddly 
enough my father was an electronics technician for Ampex until 1985, so 
I think there was some carryover there.  That's a whole other odd story, 
but I learned a great deal about electronics early in life (I learned 
Ohm's law before Algebra).  Kind of an odd mix between tech and lo tech- 
my father never did make any sense to me.  This is also why I don't 
smoke pot- I've seen what it does first hand :)

Actually, I'm willing to bet that most people- that do this for a 
living, anyway- noticed sometime that they just had a natural affinity 
for it.  For me, I remember taking a computer skills course in college 
and spending more time helping classmates than actually listening to the 
professor.  It became obvious pretty quickly that I had the ability to 
help others with computers, so I guess that just evolved to the point 
where I started getting paid to do it.

However- I think there is one aspect of my formative years that carried 
over; when I was faced with cutting your own firewood, finding creative 
ways to entertain yourself and being largely alone for the majority of 
your pre-teen and early teen years- I learned to walk off the beaten 
path quite a bit.

I think there's a spirit of that in my interest in Linux- I've always 
loved that there's others like me that don't just 'take it as it comes' 
but always want to find innovative ways that work for you.  There's a 
large amount of satisfaction in it, and it feeds and feeds on other 
areas of life.

I seem to remember talking to Dan and maybe Michael a few years ago 
about some of this, but that may have been off list :) 

-DJ

Paul Hummer wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>   
>> I spent my teenage years in a home without running water, electricity or
>> sewer- we got phone in 1988 but that's been it.  They moved from
>> Colorado Springs to outside Penrose, Colorado because they wanted to
>> 'get off grid' (read:  Hippies).  I don't know if they really knew what
>> they were getting into...
>>     
>
> How the heck did you get into computers!?  :) I got my NES in '88 (for
> context, I was 5, and in kindergarten).  That was my first intro into
> technology.
>
> - --
> Paul Hummer
>
> http://theironlion.net
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFI0WUaHE2KxYYv8I8RAszeAKCTQrZckH4O5jFVfGX5Pqfvr9IS4ACcDV9i
> ZxwXQgn375rzhK8SP0Py3qQ=
> =M/6K
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> NCLUG mailing list       NCLUG at nclug.org
>
> To unsubscribe, subscribe, or modify 
> your settings, go to: 
> http://www.nclug.org/mailman/listinfo/nclug
>