Sun 25 August 2024

I sent a link to my blog to my best friend from high school, and he sent me back a screenshot of a poll I ran a month ago (dear God, where does the time go?) asking what I should post next on my blog.

The winning entry was for a project to examine how I would "bootstrap" a working machine with nothing more than a very base Debian install, and I actually have the hardware picked out (a damaged old MacBook Air) and the base Debian install done, but the WiFi drivers are giving me problems -- but I'm working on it!

While I have that simmering on the back-burner, I figured it's high time for another blog post, so I'm going to go with my friend's suggestion: What kid-me wanted to do when he grew up.

As a child, I was utterly smitten with computers. The early eighties were a time of unlimited potential, and minimal exploitation. That's like cognitive cotton candy to a starry-eyed kid. From the first day my mom showed me how to write my first BASIC program, I was completely hooked. Now mind you, I didn't do a whole lot of productive things, and I didn't really grow in my understanding of computers until I was a teenager and was able to converse with other nerdy people at my stepdad's college, but it didn't matter. If all I could do was print colored text on the screen and make a little ● character bounce around randomly, I was completely hooked.

At some point early on, I was watching a TV program (it might have been "Get Smart") where a character said that he was a doctor, but then had to explain that he wasn't a medical doctor. From that, I inferred that there was a kind of specialty called "Doctor" that conferred the expertise and respect of a medical doctor, but in another field. SO, I decided right then and there what I wanted to be when I grew up: "A Computer Doctor." (Yes, this really confused my mom. "Computers don't have doctors. They don't need medical attention." haha)

Fast forward thirty some years and actual contact with academia took that dream, stuffed it into a locker, and proceeded to beat it senseless. Alack, Academia. You're not what you once were.

Now if some aliens beamed me up today and said they'd give me space drugs to give me crazy focus and pay my way through university to get a PhD in CompSci or EE, would I take them up on it? MAYBE.

But I have yet to see that flying saucer, so I guess I'll just keep puttering around with whatever it is I do. ;)

To close on a more serious note, if any aliens or humans decided they wanted to pay to get me through a PhD in a technical field and some kind of teaching position, I promise that I will, with every fiber of my being, absolutely take the piss out of the lazy, mindless, and deeply unethical practices that pervade computing today.

Category: Life Tagged: Computing Life Non-religious post Non-technical post Philosophy