[CS-FSLUG] That'll be $0.01 ;-)

[N. Thompson]

I'm not sure how many people would have noticed but lately I've almost 
disappeared from the list except when I need to fix something Linux 
related and don't know how or when I feel the need to boast that I've 
actually stuck with a distribution for more then a few weeks (back to 
MDK 10.0 now btw), I've forgotten who almost everyone was although I was 
pretty bad with the names before and aside from Josiah Richie, Tim 
Butler, Fred Miller, Groundhog (who's got so many names its confusing) I 
can't seem to recall who everyone else is (sorry). Things in my life 
have drastically changed, I'm now living in a town probably well over 
twice the size of what I've ever actually lived in before, I need my 
parents to go with my to the mall just so I don't get lost in there and 
everywhere around me other kids are getting jobs and drivers licenses 
even though I'm older and never accomplished any of these things yet. It 
seem like life has slipped out from under my feet and now I'm 
desperately racing to catch up, I don't know what will happen from one 
day to the next, I'm frustrated, intrigued and yet surprisingly also 
content with my situation even if I do quite often like life is just 
passing me by but I don't have the means to make use of that time.

I'll probably be graduating from school in 2006 or 2007 depending on how 
hard I want my workload to be, I work hard every night doing homework so 
I don't have time for a job on the side and I don't have much to do 
aside from what little programming I can learn during what little free 
time I have. I'm 18 now so I can do a lot of things but I'm just not 
interested in anything aside from my education, getting a job if I can, 
programming and my interests in carpentry and building custom computers 
as well as learning how to make machines, computer peripherals and micro 
controllers. I have not turned away from God, in fact now I try to keep 
a log every time I want to write down something before bed and often the 
topic relates in some way to God or the Bible. Kids at school are 
getting drunk underage, a lot of them can't understand why I don't even 
touch alcoholic beverages at all and I personally don't feel the need to 
even risk the chance of becoming intoxicated, I'm more or less alone in 
a crowd at school because they are all party animals in some way or 
another, some of them are unpredictable, others seem bent on remaining 
anti-social, some appear to be associated in some way or another in cult 
like groups and the only think I have in common with the people I would 
consider decent people there is my shyness.

I don't know what I'm going to do when I finish school or whether I'll 
even have gone to the trouble of getting a drivers license by then, I've 
considered the possibility of working for a few years before going to 
college or university, I've also considered going straight to university 
if I manage to get some sort of scholarship. I'm very proud of recent 
increases in my marks at school, last I checked all of my marks in 
school this semester were over 80%, math was 86% and history last I 
heard was 91%. I've developed a strong interest in cryptography and I've 
still got the same concrete interest in programming, I've found history 
to be more and more enjoyable compared to other topics in school and 
I've found out that psychology is something I don't really enjoy much at 
all. I find now more and more my concern is focusing on what kind of 
job(s) I'm going to have as an adult, this are getting increasingly more 
complicated and jobs increasingly less pleasant as time goes on, I'd 
personally like to be self employed but that may be more punishment and 
risk then its worth.

I frequently get this heavy feeling like I've got something very 
important to do and I'm going to regret it later if I don't but I don't 
know what that is and often it leads to frustration. Over the last two 
years or so I've compulsively purchased a few keyboards and mice without 
really even realizing what I was doing, now I have three keyboards in my 
closet, one with a year or two of use, one with anywhere between 6 and 7 
days of use, a mouse with a few months of use, another mouse I gave to 
dad which had a few years of use and my new wireless keyboard and mouse 
which I recently got from Walmart while I was passing through there for 
some reason.

I don't watch TV as much as I used to, in fact I'm down to 1 hour of TV 
a day, I don't really play games that much either any more and my free 
time is spent either doing homework or working on my programs, the 
Internet is also becoming less useful to me, I get so sick of 
advertisements and sub par online services taking the place of good 
software, I'd take a good CD-Rom or printed encyclopedia any day over 
Wikipedia or Encarta online.

Several minutes have passed since I started writing this e-mail and now 
I'm not even sure why I started writing it, I'll send it anyway in case 
someone else can tell me. I did manage to pass some time and think about 
what I wrote though, I guess that counts for something.


Just thought of the subject line, in case anyone doesn't know it has to 
do with the quote "penny for your thoughts", its figurative of course :-) .

-- 
http://www.geocities.com/ntws01/
http://ntws01.blogspot.com/