Geekiness

Posted by stephen on Saturday, 13th August, 2005 @ 22:40

Every now and then I feel like I need a complete change in my life. And that change would be in my career. I feel like there are more interesting and rewarding things I could be doing than working with computers.

I don't actually believe that's true though. I have the best job I could ever ask for right now, it's all about bringing about social equality and building communities and thus is very rewarding, and I get to play with all manner of new toys which is what I love doing.

I remember talking to Matt A about this a while ago, before I had this job. And he said to me he couldn't imagine I'd ever be happy doing anything else and that I'd eventually get bored and want to go back to computers. And I think he might be right, this may well be what I was born to do.

I spent most of my childhood in front of my Amiga 500 making it do god knows what. I don't really remember now, it's hard to imagine as I find computers without an internet connection practically useless these days. But I did find something to do and I loved doing it. And I learned so much in the process.

I'm incredibly fortunate to have a career built on my childhood hobby, and I've taught myself everything I've needed to know. There aren't many decent career paths that let you get started that early.

Anyway, on to the little anecdote that inspired me to create this blog entry...

I think I must have been born to be a geek, I used to take a screwdriver to everything to open it up and look at what was inside. I've always had an insatiable desire to understand how everything works.

But the really telling evidence is the little bit of my childhood my mum likes to bring up now and then. Back when we had a ZX Spectrum +, I must have been somewhere between 5 and 7 years old. I'd sit there in front of the thing, mum sitting next to me. She'd read out the BASIC programs from the book that came with it, and I'd carefully enter each of the commands she recited into the computer. And then the excitement of typing RUN!

Just writing about that brings back over memories from later on, writing little shop keeping programming in AMOS on my Amiga and then printing them out on our old Citizen Swift 9 dot matrix printer, and taking them downstairs to show mum, beaming with pride at just how many sheets some of them ran to!

Thanks mum. I couldn't have got this far with out you. And sorry for the phone bills that started coming in when I finally got my hands on a modem!