doordesk-js/dennis/static/blog/20220506-change.md

Content_Type: blog Title: Change Date: 2022 5 6

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"
(Hunter S.Thompson)

There comes a time in one's life, perhaps multiple, when there is an unquestionable need for change. Maybe you're not sure how, why, or where it came from, or where even it is you're headed, or how to get there, but here you are taking your first steps toward a new life. A journey into the unknown. I've just set out on one of these journeys, and even as I sit here typing this now I can't help but feel a little bit nervous, but even more excited. I have absolutely no idea where I'm headed to be quite honest. But I know where I've been.

Growing up I would always be taking things apart, I HAD to see what was inside. What makes this thing, a thing. What makes it tick? Can it tick faster? For no particular reason I just had to know every little detail about what made the thing the thing that it was and why it did what it did. It's a gift and a curse of sorts. Quickly this led to taking apart things of increasing complexity, our home computer for instance. Luckily I was able to get it put back together before my parents got home because it was made clear that this was not allowed, and the CPU didn't seem to mind the sudden absence of thermal compound either. I must have been around 7 or 8 years old at that time, and it still puzzles me just what is going on inside there.

I have a better idea now, naturally I had to figure out just what all those pieces were, what they did, and how they did it. What if I replaced some of these parts with other parts? As I honed my web searching skills to try to answer the seemingly endless hows and whys I ended up building myself a little hotrod computer and then raced it against other peoples' computers because why not, right? And I actually won! It was an overclocking contest called the winter suicides, a kind of computer drag race. Highest CPU clock speed wins, you have to boot into Windows XP, open CPU-Z, and take a screenshot. If it crashes immediately after that (and it did) it still counts. I got some pretty weird looks from my father as I stuck my computer outside in the snow but that was a small price to pay for the grand prize which was a RAM kit (2GB of DDR400 I believe) and RAM cooler.

After getting comfortable with hardware I started to study the software side of things, I tried teaching myself C++ (and didn't get very far), I did teach myself HTML and CSS, some JavaScript, and started playing around with Linux. It took until only a year or two ago to finally be completely on Linux full time (gaming holding me back), I even have a Linux phone now (Pinephone Pro). At this point I reached high school and my attention moved from computers to cars.

To be continued...