I was born in 1984. Later, in 1987, when I was at my grandparents house opening Christmas presents, I got a desk. I loved it. But my brother got a gift I loved even more: a Nintendo entertainment system (NES). He let me have his old ATARI 2600 and I loved to play Frogger. All the other games didn't make sense to me yet. Later we would game-jam to Super Mario Bros and other titles.
By the time 1995 rolled around, I knew that I wanted to be a video game designer. So my parents bought me a one of those thick heavy books that could kill a man that I toted with me to school and read in study hall. It was a book on video game design. It was basically a C++ course and included Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 on a disc. I didn't have a computer then, but my father got a job at Gateway Computers and in 1998 and I got my first PC (a Gateway of course). I put what I read to use and I made a solitaire game with a cow spotted deck (my dad still plays my version). My parents also bought me boxed sets of Linux: first Caldera 1.2, then Red Hat 6, then Debian, and SuSE linux. Also, I had the C Primer Plus book, and later all the books by the Open Source guys: Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and the Art of Unix Programming. Richard Stallman's Free as in Freedom. And Linus Torvalds' Just for Fun (the story of an accidental revolutionary).
I studied computer science in high school. I learned to code in Visual Basic 6 and C. I achieved some network administrator and Linux certifications. I went to college for Computer Engineering but I flunked out. I was never into doing my homework. I went back to school later and never finished my degree, but I got to my last semester in software development. I just never finished my projects because I had more interesting work that was unrelated to my project requirements--like making an IRC client in C++ and Bitcoin trade bot in Python.
I worked for about half of my life in IT support and system administration roles. With Linux, I've developed and operated eCommerce sites. Made mobile apps. I've hosted game servers. I worked as a security analyst for a bank. I worked as a business analyst for a Fortune 100 insurance company. I was a system admin for a very big ISP. I have written code in VB, C, C++, C#, HTML5, JavaScript, Java, PHP, Python, PERL, TCL/TK, and 5 other scripting languages you've barely heard of. I've even written ASP.NET code (but I never had the qualifications to be a Microsoft developer). I've built dashboards, administered databases, and have a big wheelhouse of IT skills. I can even repair computer hardware and solder boards. I have earned half a dozen CompTIA certifications.
A lot of life events happened. I got married to a woman from the Philippines. After my mother died in 2020 from COVID-19, I inherited some cash and migrated with to my wife's country, living in an area with a low cost of living: the Philippines. This way I can "retire" early.
I'm 37 years old and expecting to be a father soon. Now my hobby and "unpaid career" is developing GPL software. I like to find issue logs and fix reported bugs. It's not always easy reading other peoples code, but I want quality Free software and somebody has to do it. Perhaps I will write my masterpiece soon. Perhaps my resume will grow and I'll be a paid free-software developer. Whatever the future holds, I'm sure it will be fun. Thank you for reading.
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