Be more active in life..not just computer science

[lortech]

I look back when I first started learning how do do Basic in 1983 on a TRS-80 computer.It was a highschool class. I never got into "programming" and after graduation joined the USAF. I was a helicopter mechanic for the US Air-force Special Operation Command. We did some fun ass things on the flight line and did some nice missions sorties. When I was off duty went to the comisarry and lined up on shelves were 286s and 386s. I did not buy after seeing the price. I separated from the service and it took nearly eight more years before I went to collage for IT services. I started to learn linux in 1997. It was mind blowing at a time when windows would crash often with the blue screen of death. I was lucky to be employed at Microsoft on the Windows 2000 dev team as a tester. It was a great paying cush job and the fun part was the food, and going down to the beta room to wait for the next beta CD to be burned on the 100 CDROM burner box. Every time the burner box would burn CD, the Disco Ball would light up the room "I thought that was funny and cute" so once it shut off we got our new CDS. I also got to meet Bill Gates and Steve Balmer and sat down with Army Pilots in the Cafeteria who flew in a General and Secretary of Defence on a Chinook helicopter onto the Microsoft Campus.

I have worked in a dozen companies since then ....but computers and software is getting boring. I hope the most of you take a break and spend more time with family and friends and do other activities. Don’t alienate your self from relatives. Enjoy a little more of life instead of being in front of a screen more often. My biggest regret in life...not holding onto my Amazon stock in 1998. Not investing in my retirement. Not travelling to Europe. I immigrated to Canada and hell of a lot miss it! I was living in British Columbia and loved the drives. I installed computers for small companies all over the province.

Enjoy life.

[lsemmens]

I agree, get out and DO things. Sitting in front of a screen all day can be soul destroying. I note this is only your second post, despite having been a member for a couple of weeks. so, If I did not welcome you back then, Welcome to MintForums. The natives are (mostly) friendly.

[lexon]

I agree. A computer is just a tool. It does not need a pretty desktop.
At 77, I still date, ride a bike maybe 2500 km a year. Dance two or three nights a week. We have rail trails in our part of the USA, actually a lot of the US. I try to keep our city clerk aware of any issues.
Four years in the US Navy as a Sonar Tech. Then three years wiring submarine periscopes and testing the electronics that went into them.
Couple years installing test sections in torpedoes for exercises at a facility in Puerto Rico. Ridding the subs, destroyers, torpedoes retrievers as a civilian when I was in my middle twenties. That was a two year vacation you might say.
Two years as a NASA Tech in a range control center and twelve years using a PDP8/I computer that controlled a 1 megawatt Doppler radar for clear air turbulence studied and severe storm research.
Twelve years at a company building Navy helicopters.
Last years until I retired in 2006 as an industrial machine mechanic that used computers for controlling them. Great career.
Oh, married twice and know how to put the toilet seat down. Nothing more frightening than facing a woman who is nine months pregnant who just found out the seat was left up at two in the morning.

L

[andyO]

I fully agree. Apart from being a believer in the "use it or lose it" philosophy. I find enjoyable physical activity outside to be great for my head, as it were. For me enjoyable physical activity is running in the hills/mountains and I'm lucky enough to be able to do that from my home. If I've had a bum day at work an hour or so away from screens up in the hills/mountains soon sorts me out.

We only get one shot at this life thing, so lets all make the most of our loved ones while we can too.

Erm as an aside, I do, well, lets say happen to spend some time gazing at maps of hills/mountains on my screens...

[AndyMH]

+1, now 66 and trying to retire (they keep dragging me back, money's nice but time is finite). Also ex services, joined RN when I left uni (1973), spent most of my career as a consultant working out what stuff costs (always more than the budget ). My first computer experience was Algol 60 and paper tape, next was programming a PDP8 using the front panel switches.

[alexa9]

I find reading on the computer and watching travel videos much more fulfilling and less of a waste of resources than actually travelling. I find travelling to be the most overrated hobby that young people are obsessed with just to add typical snapshots to their instagram.
Although I am active where I live and love the outdoors, people, sports, and exercising.

[catweazel]

I hope the most of you take a break and spend more time with family and friends and do other activities.

Why? Computers don't take all the bedclothes at night, they don't complain about the dishes, they don't ask for the car keys, they want an allowance or pocket money, when a computer is wrong, it won't argue...

[HaveaMint]

I hope the most of you take a break and spend more time with family and friends and do other activities.

Why? Computers don't take all the bedclothes at night, they don't complain about the dishes, they don't ask for the car keys, they want an allowance or pocket money, when a computer is wrong, it won't argue...

The laptop doesn't complain if you leave the lid up!

[catweazel]

I hope the most of you take a break and spend more time with family and friends and do other activities.

Why? Computers don't take all the bedclothes at night, they don't complain about the dishes, they don't ask for the car keys, they want an allowance or pocket money, when a computer is wrong, it won't argue...

The laptop doesn't complain if you leave the lid up!

[lsemmens]

They do get jealous though! I used to have a screen background of "Seven of Nine" (Star Trek Voyager) on my computer which was set up in our bedroom at home. On several occasions, when wife and I decided to get a little too friendly, the screen, which had been black for several hours would suddenly spring to life with "Resistance is Futile". It could not have been floor movement as a) we were on a waterbed, and b) the floor was solid concrete.

[catweazel]

They do get jealous though! I used to have a screen background of "Seven of Nine"...

Little wonder it got upset.

[lsemmens]

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NIPMcttZx9s/V ... BRyan4.JPGMore like this one!:D

[Portreve]

With a few exceptions, it seems as though I've worked little more than burger-flipper jobs (meaning: worthless but I needed a paycheck and it was all I could get) and I just feel my life has largely been lived in neutral.

I did not get on at all with my peers in K-8, and entered high school "knowing" I was a worthless P.O.S. I enjoyed high school and made some life long friends there, and also elsewhere during and immediately following that time, but it took until about six years or so after high school to finally understand my way out of the hole I had dug for myself. And during that time, I was heavily into self-sabotage to prove how much of a failure I was. Actually, part of what became the catalyst for positive change was recognizing the contradiction: I was worthless, incapable of anything, and a failure, and the self-sabotage was a successful effort on my part. In other words, I was a success. Hence the contradiction.

I'd gotten my first computer when I started high school, and I've been a technology enthusiast ever since.

The period of ~1995-6 — 2000 is where I recovered from where I was, but by 2000 I was where I should have been in high school. And by then, I was working whatever jobs I could find to stay afloat. I didn't really start a period of new growth until about 2008, and of course by then the economic collapse happened.

I've never really traveled but I want to. I'm tired of the geographical area I live in because Florida is and has always been the armpit of places to work. I mean, it's gotten better since the 1980s when I moved here with my parents, but it still sucks. I know it isn't the only place that sucks, but it's also not the best place to be. I also have a lot of problems of a political nature (which obviously I won't go into here) and so I know I want a change of scenery and am debating what to do.

I don't mean anything suicidal by this, but if I'm going to live another 40-50 years and wind up at the end of it like I am now, I have no interest in living that life; it'd be better it ended now because I have no interest in living a worthless existence.

[HaveaMint]

.

There are a lot of good things being able to live a simple life. I think your beating yourself up for no reason, you are stronger than most because of the life you have lived. The fact that you have lived a life (from the sounds of it) with a coin toss would have brought most to their knees. Dining on Yachts eating Caviare (yuck) ain't all it's cracked up to be. I prefer the simple life.

[lsemmens]

Portreve, you can do whatever you choose to do. Sometimes, not as well as others, but guess what, there are some things that YOU can do better than them. My attitude has always been "crap happens, you make good fertilizer with crap, you can grow lovely flowers in crap". It's not what happens to to you, but what you do with it. I could wax lyrical all day on this sort of stuff as this is my life! No! I am NOT a millionaire, I live on a pension, for reasons outside of my control, but we still have a wonderful and fulfilling life.

[lexon]

I forgot to mention. I retired in 2006 and live on a pension. It works. In the US, it is call SS check. It is enough. I work out and stay healthy even at over seventy seven.

L

[catweazel]

I work out and stay healthy even at over seventy seven.

Hello, junior

I smoke, eat pizza and stay up all night writing code. I'm 85.

[AZgl1800]

Made a lot of mistakes in life, retired with a damn good 457k, and a 401k

but somehow, I aligned myself with a worthless piece of crap felon who was the slickest talking guy you ever saw who could actually perform miracles in business, right up until he would loose it all.... and somehow, it was 'my problem' and I was beholden to dig him out of that problem.... with more money of course.

so, I retired in Dec 2010, and all of the 3/4 million bux that I had worked so hard for in life, has disappeared, the ass jerk is in prison where he belongs, but that is not getting my lost money restored to me....

fortunately I have a defined pension plan, which added to SSI gives me enough money to pay the bills, and buy a 10 year old used motorcycle a few years back, and recently a 2001 Suburban to pull a 15 year old Toy Hauler my daughter purchased with her money.

we go out and eat at different places, enjoy visiting with friends, and go to different motorcycle rallies around.

Next Friday we are going to Eureka Springs, Arkansas for the Labor Day weekend, I have a lot of friends who will be there, all motorcycle forum related...... we talk, eat, and be merry....

next March we are going to Atlanta, GA to see my son, and her brother.... then to Florida to see more motorcycle friends, a 3 day event, and then we are going to just drift around and see stuff neither of us have ever seen before. No hurry to come home, the Toy Hauler is our home away from home.... we have two big dogs who love us to death, and give us a lot of enjoyment. we can stay in state parks at low cost, or just in a rest area off the side of the road somewhere....

Plan to put our feet in the ocean, we have heard there is actually a big pond all around this here USA....

I read a lot of books, get out and mow the grass ( we have six acres with trees and grass )
Help the recently divorced neighbor lady with her mechanical issues with lawnmowers, swimming pool piping issues....
she is a very needy type person, but my daughter gets the brunt of that it seems....

I am fortunate to have my daughter living in my home, she is great at making sure I don't miss a meal, she runs an @home type business to make a few bucks here and there.

I spend a lot of time on the computers, have a few extra ones laying around to experiment with...
it is all to keep my brain active and interested in something besides just watching TV.

Sure wish my brilliant IQ had known enough to say "No" to folks who seem to just want your money.....
what I could do right now with about 700k in the bank

[lsemmens]

Hope you are riding American Iron AZgl1500, but, from your tag, I'm guessing it's a rice burner. What's more I'm guessing a Lead Wing. But, of course I've been wrong in the past. IF you have a spare Harley could you post it to me?

[lsemmens]

I work out and stay healthy even at over seventy seven.

Hello, junior

I smoke, eat pizza and stay up all night writing code. I'm 85.

I'm calling your age as BS, given that Catweasel was born some centuries back...............