Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Happy Birthday Internet, I failed you.

Dear internet,

     I have failed you. I got nothing done today. I should have been able to, but I overslept and missed my window of opportunity. And then I got distracted... typical terrible day for me here. I then had to drive all over. Now I'm in Dallas hoping to get some studies done.  Also, today is the birthday of the internet! Yay me for failing it on its birthday... But, in lieu of nothing .js/HTML/CSS to write about, I thought I'd write about my beginning experiences with the internet and its included technology. Basically a copy pasta from G+ that I did earlier today, plus a few flourishes. Here goes:

     I was born the same year as the internet, but my birthday is not until November, so I'm not one of the cool people that was born today twenty five years ago. Unlike a lot of people my age, I remember the first time I heard about the internet. The main reason for this is that my family didn't have internet or even a computer till the year 2002-2003 before that we had to go to the library to access the internet. I was about seven the first time I heard about the internet from my oldest sister. She told me about how I needed to go to the big blue E(IE) and then type in yahoo.com and then from there I could search for things. I didn't really do much for a long time, the games were stupid, you had to stand the whole time, there were a lot of loud, whiny kids that, like me were trying to figure things out. This was back when I was somewhat of an introvert, so loud people was not really my thing(still isn't really) I didn't really start doing anything until (again) my oldest sister, who had now moved out and gone to the Navy, gave the family an old computer that she no longer needed. Using dial-up the family would do their emails and my mother would write on there instead of the Word Processor she had before. My parents didn't want me to use the computer and instead forced me to go outside, or read a book, or something. This new technology couldn't be good for a young mind like mine. However, I am somewhat of a rebel(not because I live in Texas btw) and learned the dial-up password(this was in the days when you had to sign into the internet yourself) I tested it at midnight, and woke my brother up from all the dial-up sounds. He made me go back to bed, but I had the password! from then on I would sneak as much time as I could on there. My mother, being the wise old soul that she is, soon figured out that I was sneaking onto the computer. Of course, she thought I was looking at porn and such (that didn't come along till later) mainly because this was the time when the news stations were freaking out about how porn would kill the fertile minds of the youth of America. I just wanted to play games and learn everything I could about how it worked. But, my mother would hear none of it; she started by hiding essential(or so she thought) parts of the computer. Hide the keyboard? learn that there's an on-screen keyboard. Hide the mouse? learn keyboard shortcuts, that you can use the number pad to direct the pointer, and that tab comes in handy all the time. Hide the power cord? make a new one. Really, what I'm trying to say is that there really wasn't a way to keep my offline. But my mother tried her hardest. My father didn't really have an issue with it as long I wasn't on there all day. He also was the one who found me looking at porn when he came home early. "I clicked the wrong link" only worked the first time. The internet and I have had a long and tumultuous relationship. I've known the world without the web, but that's only because I wasn't allowed to know it until much later than most. Today, as you can see, I'm still trying to learn how things work. I'm way behind, and have a lot of catching up to do, but I'm not planning on stopping. As much fun as Reddit and all those meme sites are, I just ignore them (usually) and now I need to learn so much! But, unlike some, I want to learn. I want to know as much as I can! Right now it's just .js and such, but once I get those down enough, I don't plan on stopping there. As long as technology exists, there will always be something new to learn. So, sock it to me baby, I'm ready and willing!

--Martin