(Late report, filed c. 1977. Sorry, I sort of didn't have any school since then.)

Um, well since 1977, I dropped out after my first semester - seems I got only passing grades in my minor (well, B- there) and one elective.

The other elective, well the midterm required labwork that I missed and missed the make-up, so I was charitably given just an incomplete.

Calculus, a prerequisite for my major, I flunked with like a F---- I think had he graded on a curve, the whole class would've failed.

Algol, another of my Major courses, my midterm was supposed to be this program to parse natural language conversions (like an iPad app 'Wolfram Alpha' does, of course WA is 40923232391 times better because it has a search engine and the whole Internet behind it). I turned in code that was completely buggy, so I got a D.

My first semester looked like $360 (in 1970's cash, so easily twice that today) down the toilet, plus the study books, which I lost a packet on selling back to the bookstore. I was one of the people who got to register LAST because A) I was a freshman; B) the wonderful randomized selectionator decided I was in the last day's group. So the bookstore was totally picked over, no used books available That was probably another $100 pissed away there, too.

So, after looking at my miserable academic start, and considering just how much HARDER I wanted to push myself to "win this thing," I said uh-unh, not at these prices. Not when I'll graduate with the skills to program an IBM 360 in Algol or COBOL or some crappy ancient programming language like that (FORTRAN anyone?). I wanted to learn 8080 Assembly Language, coding in C and Pascal, like they were doing in UCSD and other better campuses, but my SAT wasn't good enough… plus NO campus was working with microcomputers in the classroom or labs!

So I decided I'd just go directly to work for companies that would, or did. And I started out with Computer Sciences Corporation, a big government contractor. They gave me basically a computer janitorial job (feeding the big mainframes their magnetic tape reels and boxes of fanfold green bar paper which they ate rapidly). Gave myself hemorrhoids lifting those heavy boxes of paper and carrying them to the printers over the next couple years… a condition I still have today. It's terrible to contract that kind of old man's ailment at age 18…

I tried lifting differently so's not to rupture those backside veins, and I guess that's when I first fractured my back's disc between vertebrae 6 & 7 in the lower lumbar region. I am not really designed for power lifting, it turns out… I left that job after these ailments sort of got to me…

So that was my Summer of 1977. No sex if you were wondering if I left that out… made friends in college to be sure, but as I stopped attending, stopped hearing from them. Moved out of the Dorm after like a week or so of the frats (or other jerks) at all hours of evening/morning partying it up, banging on doors with baseball bats, etc...

Now it's clear what went wrong in my life, and the message was clear and screaming in my face back in my college days. You declared the wrong major. You're walking the wrong path.

My dad brainwashed me into believing money = happiness, because success can mean security, which is comfortable. Happy people are usually comfortable people. But the logic doesn't work backward. Comfortable people aren't all happy people. Boredom is not a state of happiness, nor is complacency, or a number of other very comfortable, secure states of being. But since my dad was so narcissistic, he really drilled into me his set of values and goals, and I swallowed it. Mom's a bit of an enabler, so it was a 2-pronged attack on my psyche. I was surrounded by the same propaganda, without dissent. Go for high paying jobs. Computers > writers, journalists, poets, songwriters. Most creative jobs need a supportive spouse to keep them solvent while they work toward success.

So it never crossed my mind that doing well at English Composition and Literature, and passably well at Politics and History was telling me I had a much better aptitude for becoming a professor of history, a politician, an English teacher, a creative writer, poet, or songwriter. I'd have explored where these branches had led only if my total frustration and focus on MUST DO COMPUTERS had not obsessed me.

My angle on the whole thing was the gaming angle. I had my success, just with a company that had accidental fame and fortune - and never took off from there, so I got on board after their big, famous flash in the pan and nose-dived with them, sinking with the ship practically until the Sheriff locked the doors on the building.

It wasn't the only time I picked a loser, either.

If there's anything I've learned, it's been SCREW these guys who want 30+ hour weeks out of you - they're either gonna pocket the profits themselves, or gonna just turn it into a pattern of abuse. And it is a sure sign something isn't stable. Most people won't stand for it. They have families that need them. Unfortunately, I worked WAY WAY too many hours for too many companies that did just that to me. And because of a federal regulation, programmers can never unionize. We will always be on a salary, which means no overtime, no double-time, no extra pay for working weekend days, no consideration for working on holidays. Basically, this salary you make gives them 24/7 access to you. I highly recommend NOT giving out your cell/pager/text numbers. And watch out if they give you one of these electronic leashes. THIS is why I don't own one today.

So, there's one gotcha about working for computers I never knew - a regulation that was set back before I was born. They figured that because computers are (or would be) vital to national security, the government could not abide by a programmer's union ever being formed, for it could lead to a breakdown in services (the ARPAnet I guess, back then)… should a strike occur. They didn't consider viruses, but I think they knew nobody else would know how to fix/repair/reboot/change diapers on a computer…

So that's one of these big glowing wounds on my timeline that Dr Who's TARDIS should be fairly well attracted to. When this message disappears, you'll (not) know that weird old man went and put the right word in my left ear and sonic screwdriver'd my life into perfect spinal alignment!

30+ hours OVERTIME weeks...

**reads and then studies twice as hard, and goes to bed real late with the door unlocked and the light off, ears half perked as she waits**

**and waits...**

Meep?