It hit me in middle school that computers would be my career and life. Since then I’ve seemed to follow that belief, and in doing so have learned so much. I always had a profound interest in anything with a chip in it. You look right now in my closet and you’ll see multiple things torn apart just to look and see if there was something I could do to it. Obviously, I A) never put it back together and B) never did anything with them. I was also always looking at the back of TV’s and anything I could get my hands on just to see how it all connected and just to observe it. I mean, I note stuff no one even bothers to look at. Anything new that I get/see I have to look at and observe and see what it does.
Since I was born I was raised in a family of Mac users. My Dad has a strong passion for the Mac operating system and the hardware to boot. He’s created a program for his previous job, the first in it’s kind, and did most of the stuff on the Mac (he then ported it to Windows). The family’s first computer was a Mac Classic, named Baby. The next one I remember is the LC (the pizza box I always call it), and then a Performa I think. That was the first one I vividly remember. I first got a glimpse of Windows in about 5th grade, all the machines before were Macs in school. As always, I was interested, though never remember being ecstatic about it.
I then took a hiatus until high school, where i could get some computer classes. This is where i met Mr. Thoyre, an extremely intelligent, though usually bitter technology teacher at Orange High School. I had him all four years of my high school career, and have loved the classes more and more as the time progressed. This is where I was really introduced to the world of Windows and Linux. I had a bit of prior knowledge from the now sadly-gone TechTV (luckily, the cast lives on at TWIT and Revision3). I had bought a P3 800 MHZ Dell desktop, and was trying so many things with it. Mr. Thoyre gave us advice and many other things on computers through projects and lectures.
So, now we’ve reached the present, to be short and brief. I’ve got a Macbook Pro sitting here, and eventually bought a nice hand built AMD box running Linux and XP Pro. In 2005 I had Mr. Thoyre for Linux, and we only had 2 students which was extremely fun. I also lazily got the Network+ certification, offered free through our school system. In between all this mess I’ve managed to create and maintain this quaint little portion of the internet known and FrayedWires. In 2005 I bought web hosting , and instantly stuck Wordpress on it. I know a little HTML, and can kind of interpret PHP. Though my main attraction is computers, I have a large interest in audio and video too. Podcasts and internet TV amazes me, especially Macbreak: THE FIRST HD-recorded online show. I even once created a little tech show of my own. I have a large interest in music, and a large collection of music of all sorts from all countries, even though I could never play or sing music myself. Photography, especially of nature and just natural scenes, are gorgeous.
I am now studying Computer Networking and Information Security at Champlain College in Burlington, VT, and intend to complete with a Bachelors in Computer Science in 2011. I am employed at the Computer Helpdesk at the school, and enjoy the company of the fellow geeks there.
-Nathan