Xeon's milestones

[Xeon]

Hi all,

This thread is basically a mini blog to commemorate my long existence in CodeGuru. This way, I don't need to waste time to sign up for some blogging account. This way, CodeGuru can help me to suck up all the bandwidth and I don't need to pay a single cent.

Anyway, here the story goes.....

1984 : Born.

1985 - 1990 : A total crybaby. Keep crying almost every minute that my mom almost went mad and broke down. Parents sent me to doctors to see if there's something wrong with me. Got better during 1988 - 1990.
Got into pre-school in 1988. Got bullied almost everyday by very mean girls. They drew on my textbooks and tore it. I cried. They got even happier and abuse my books even further. Some pinch me. Mom asked me when I got home, about why my books are so messy and torn. I said I did it myself. I cried inside.
Those childhood incidents left a deep scar in me till now. Whenever I read or see on TV about parents/caretakers physically abusing their kids(like waking them up in the middle of the night and whipping them for no reason), I swear I wanna kill these dogs in the most cruel way possible.
I can tolerate everything, from racists to terrorists to murderers, but not child abusers.

1991 - 1993 : Enter my 1st year in school(7 years old then). Fought and argued with my group leader frequently until both our parents and everybody's parents(those who were involved) got called up and the whole matter was blown big. Did some fighting and sabotaging(cutting up others' artwork and drawings )
Faked my report card by creating one of my own. Mom believed it and bought me a Ninja-Turtle toy to reward my "high grades". Teacher called later and told her. She got upset. I really let her down. I deserve to die a thousand times.
Parents got called up every year from 1991 - 1993.

1994 : Started to fall in my studies. Never hand in homework and tried to act busy/flustered so that the teacher won't notice whenever I forget to bring my textbooks. Got caught several times for playing other "cheat-the-teacher" tricks. Dad got called up.

1995 : Met monstrous teacher who would flung dusters, chalks and textbooks into my face. Always use the duster and her own finger-bones to knock my head. Very painful sometimes and tears came into my eyes.
Later in the year, got caught in a misunderstanding where a teacher accused me of cheating in my exams.
Actually, I was just leaning next to my pal looking at his pencil case, since it's a beautiful landscape and artistic design.
Got sent to the principal's office for caning, but the kind old man gave me a chance. Maybe he saw Jesus behind me and knew that I was really being wronged. Parents got called up at the end of the year.

1996 : Met another fiery-tempered teacher. Almost same as the previous one, but not so bad. Whenever I didn't tidy my files, she would flung my books across the classroom and let everyone see. Keeps pinching and twisting my ears. Female teachers are demons. When they flare up, the 666 in them is awaken. Parents got called up 2 times.

1997 - 1998 : Passed my final grade school national exam and got into an average high school. An average student. Started to take attention in sex and girls. I was 13 years old in 1997. Parents got called up both years.

1999 - 2000 : Skipped classes a lot of times until the headmaster threatened public caning for all to see. Parents never got called up in 1999, but in 2000, they did.
School introduced us to Visual Basic starters course just for fun in late 1999. Was the last in the class and couldn't understand anything. NOOB. But interest was raging like God's fury : I shook uncontrollably and look forward to every class. Started reading about Visual Basic books. Halfway in those books, the author would mention C++. Captured by the unique name, I dropped all Visual Basic stuff and leapt into C++. Forgot all my school studies and learnt programming all the time instead. Parents got mad and pulled the plug off the PC in 2000. But I still read programming books non-stop and programmed whenever I ****ing got the chance.

2001 - 2003 : Got into a vocational school studying Information Technology. Became the class's God whenever it's a programming class. Teachers treated me like God's gift to them(Jesus) and the whole level started to heard of my name. Skipped all other modules(Networking, Computer Maths etc.) except programming classes. Got an expel-warning from the top management, but all teachers spoke good words for me. I was their Jesus.

Mid 2003 - Late 2005 : Entered army. Same old life everyday. Pretty interesting, but pretty scary now that you compare it with the luxuries of civilian life. Never wrote even a half a sentence of code during these years.

Now : Trying to find an entry-level job and slowly progressing from there. Taking up night-classes in Marketing.

This marketing course is making my brains really rusty and stupid with tons of memorizing the facts and issues in the entire textbook. Will get the certificate no matter what, but I don't believe any single thing in these textbooks. They won't work in the real world. But to get the certificate, we gotta do what we don't believe in, every minute of it.

Today, I went to the library and walked among the ranks of the thousands of programming books, from COBOL to C# to PHP to FORTRAN. Then, I remembered those fun days when I did programming.

Two years ago, when I told Sam Hobbs I was never going to touch code again, he brushed it off and said "Believe me, one day you'll come back to programming". However, I remembered those scary nightmares of debugging hours after hours in Visual C++, tracing resource leaks and thinking up of rocket-science code to achieve certain complicated functions in a working program(those not covered in books).
Then I hesistated and withdrew, I feared.

But I made a decision : that programming is fun, and I'm going to do it for a hobby. It helps to break away from the zombie-marketing crap and makes my brain comes alive and stimulate it. It makes my brain hard and erect, full of blood rushing through it.
Maybe one day, when I'm good enough, maybe a decade later when I'm 31 years old......I may turn professional. Or maybe a free-lancer sourcing for projects. Or maybe my own software. Or maybe a teacher teaching programming to newbies in private schools.

In Spiderman 2, Spiderman got his powers back after temporary losing it. When he got them back, he said "I'm back!!!"
I'm back too, and I'm going to program in C++, not Java or C#.
I'm BACK!

This thread is for everyone to post their life story, their plans and their visions too.
And for my Ree pal, here's a close-up and more detailed video to the blonde goddess I was raving about : http://www.norse-myths.com/M-A.mpg

The world laughs with us,
Xeon.