Truer words were never spoken . . .

You know, in the last month since I was sort of forced out of forums due to the crash of Win2k, I noticed a change in attitude in myself.

Not reading all that insecurity that people post all the time

(is this a scam? that idea won't fly. market's too crowded. you'll need to [fill in the blanks with something costing money] . . . ad nauseum )

I was free to just face the immediate obstacles, and come up with my own solutions. None of that "will this work?" "what do you think about this idea?" nothing. Just do something!

I don't know if it was a post on SOW, or something that appeared in Seedzine, but I took stock of what I had to offer, and what kind of stuff I knew.

First pass: "Shoot. All I got is me. Sigh. And what do I know anyway?"

I guess God was getting a little P.Oed with me, because this thought exploded in my head:

"All you got is YOU, AND THAT'S MORE THAN ENOUGH!"

That thought kept rattling around in my head. As I was trying to troubleshoot the constant disk churning that signaled a problem with my OS, I began raking stuff off the drive as quickly as I could.

There were two possibilities: 1) somehow I picked up a bug that was wreaking havoc, and/or 2) I was operating in dual boot mode, having already installed Linux on a separate drive, and Billy G. don't play that!

I suspected the latter. I intended to uninstall Linux just to see if Windows would behave better, so I shut down and tried to boot to the Linux partition . . .

I got a blue screen that said essentially, "If you're seeing this screen, you are potentially screwed. Reboot, and if you see this screen again, you are "Sho' Nuff" screwed."

I saw that damned screen 6 times . . .

(I know this is getting long. Go get some tea or something and come on back.)

Fortunately, I know how badly Windows can behave, so it was sitting in a partition by itself. I decided to try and re-install it before I gave the drive up as dead. I had been pretty careful of not putting any but the most brain dead programs, those that think "you-have-only-one-drive-and-it's-called-C-and-if-you-put- me-somewhere-else-I-won't-work-so-there" in the partition with Windows.

I reinstalled successfully, and got the machine going again. Then I realized that I had been lulled into complacency by the longevity of Win2k. Since it behaved itself well for more than a year, I had let my email, firewall and browser live on that partition, too. All was lost!

Then, because it was still possible I'd been compromised, (there are programs that can fly under your firewall, change the settings, and give itself permission to do whatever) I set out to construct a firewall that would reside in RAM on a beat up old machine. It would also be a router. If compromised by a trojan or worm, it couldn't reach anything important, and restoration would be as quick and easy as rebooting from a floppy.

Hmmmmm.

I learned just how much I'd forgotten, and in trying to make that work, I saw some stuff I was overlooking. Full fledged Linux will run happily - complete with Webserver, Email Server, and a host of other goodies - on a '486. In fact, I remember installing a Unix system on a '286, using 5-1/4 inch floppies.

My beat up machine is a pentium!

[The department I worked in had a '486 which ran Unix, and was serving about 50 people.]

THAT'S when some of the unused brain cells and little-trodden neural pathways in my head came to life!

No, a coherent (to anybody else) plan did not emerge, but a definite direction out of whole cloth leading to what I wanted, did.

And I really had to do only ONE THING AT A TIME!

When problems arose, instead of giving up and getting frustrated, I gave it to my sub-conscious,

(ok. I said "Awwright arready, God. You got a plan? I ain't! So now what we gon' do, huh?" I always talk to God in the Black dialect. I can get my stuff said quickly before He commences with the pronouncements! :^> )

But back to the attitude change. I got up early every morning, eager to approach my tasks. I went to bed at night only when I thought I was so tired I'd mess something up if I kept working. I was bouyant! excited! hopeful! HAPPY!!!!!!

I was having fun. I was doing what I love - tinkering with computers, and learning stuff, and writing stuff down.

So, yep! You're absolutely right. If you're not having fun, if there is no joy, what's the point?

Money? Yeah, I still need it. But God made some promises that I fully expect Him to keep.

Otherwise, I'm screwed.

Thanks for reading . . .

Marye
P. S.

Boyd and Brian, expect email from me later.

Question for everybody who might've gotten this far:

Are there 'bots that monitor the domain names people search for? I have found on more than one occasion that in searching for a name and finding it available, if I didn't register it immediately, the name would be gone the next day! It would be owned by one of the domain name hoarders. . .