The purpose of this document was an exercise to help me, the author become more aware of the state of the art in the field of computer technology. What I have learned since December nn, 1997 when I attempted my first venture onto what I thought of as the "super-information highway" is that most of my concepts about information, networks, knowledge structure, et cetera had to be stretched, expand, and refined to an extent I never would have thought necessary. I had read books by Marvin Minsky, Terry Winograd, H.A. Simon, Von Neumann(duh), and many others back in the early 80s. I had learned to program in Basic and Assembler. I read Niklaus Wirth's book "Programming in Modula 2". I had some wild dreams about what could be done but when I came back to reality I knew that there was no way I could buy the hardware I would need. I did not know about Moore's Law. I did not know jack about hardware other then what I had read in a Scientific American special publication about IC fabrication. Frustrated and not seeing a solution I gave up and got lost in the world of the working man trying to keep a roof over my head, food on my table, and beer in the 'frige.

I guess it could be called a "mid-life crisis". I am middle aged and it sure as hell was a fucking crisis. My world lay completely shattered. End of story. As I was trying to put myself together I would talk to my brother on the phone. He had bought a computer some months before and was telling me some exciting stuff about the World Wide Web. It sounded really interesting so I (who use to have considerable book knowledge of AI and such like) went over to the local library and put my name on the waiting list to use one the Internet stations. I sat down and grabbed the Dove bar of soap shaped thing cause that was what the others were doing so it seemed like the thing to do . . . Netscape Navigator 3.0 the screen said. It had a nautical theme to it. That was cool, I had learned to sail small boats when I was a teenager so I could get behind that. I moved the mouse around and clicked on stuff. There was no fear. I had learned to program on a TRS-80 Color Computer and knew that the worst thing that could happen was that it would crash. A crash is simply an error that the program can't handle and invariably meant I had forgotten to put a semi-colon or some other simple thing in somewhere. I don't recall now if I actually "went" anywhere. Soon my time was up and the experience was a failure. That was because I had a specific destination I wanted to go to. My brother had told me the address of his website. I did not know how to enter a URL in the location box. I didn't know what a "URL" was in the full sense of the abbrivation. After some phones calls and more trips to the library I was soon "surfing the 'net". About this time I saw a flyer for a "computer technician training course". I went to the meeting. The local YWCA was putting together a crash course training program to teach individuals to be computer technicians. The goal was "A+ Certification". Six hours a day, five days a week for two months. There was just the twelve of us and it rocked. At the end I rummaged through the parts bin and put together a 80486-25-SX system. The big bucks went to buy a monitor. Couple of times a week I would go to Cyber Shock, an internet cafe' and download software and upload updates to my website at geocities. Every few weeks when time expired on various application packages I would scrub the hard drive and reinstall.

I live in Montana and the economy is ranked right at the bottom of the barrel in the nation. I was not able to find work as a tech. Then I got laid of from the job I had as a cook. I took my time looking for work hoping that something in the computer field would come up but I hired as a carpenter first. I am a highly experienced carpenter. I even ran my own framing company in Denver for a number of years. What was I doing in Montana? Trying to get out of construction for one thing. The fringe benefit to bending nails is that I can now afford to build decent hardware.

Since I am still putting my life back together I work my 40 hours a week, Monday through Friday then come home and put in another 40 to 50 hours here in front of my computer. Yeah, I know. Believe me it feels weird to be pushing forty and have no social life. That is what I get for quitting alcohol. I get my brain back . . . However, I have recently met a wonderful woman . . . but that is another story.

The rest of this branch of the story is that I am on semi-paid vacation. That is, I am drawing unemployment during a temporary lay-off. I live very modestly so that I can spend my extra money on computer products. So being on vacation simply means that I have to delay upgrades. More importantly is means I can focus fully on computer technology.