Jez! this thread is gonna take me hours to read! ,I've only got 1/2 through page1 !
Well I suppose I could give a bit of my story now & read the rest latter
My name is Mark ,I'm 32 (for 1 more mth) & I live in Ash,Surrey in SE England ,I finally moved out of my fathers place (3rd time I've left home!)about 2 months ago ,he lives in Guildford where I've lived for the greater part of my life.
I left secondary school in 1986 with rather medicore qualifications ,I had earlier on planned to do some kind of qualifications in Electrical engineering but my poor maths put a stop to that.So instead I took & passed a National Diploma in Agricultural engineering (at Thame,Oxon) ,I got a job as an Agric engineer (farm equip mechanic) ,after 2yrs I got totally fed up with the poor working conditions (outside 2/3's the time) & the diabolically bad pay ,not to mention the ressesion was hitting the agricultural trade big time.It was interesting to learn about it though.
About 1yr after that I started a National Diploma in Motor Vehicles with the intent of being a Car mechanic ,I passed that in July 1993 ,eventually got a temp job as Mechanic in Jan 95 at the Army Training Camp in Pirbright (yeah the same 1 where those soldier 'suicides' occured!) ,in June they shut it & moved me to the a joining camp in Deepcut............. 2yrs latter they shut that & moved me to Aldershot! ,which was now privatised by Lex Transfleet.
May 98 I wanted out for better wages & wanted to get into car diagnostics ,then got a job in a Peogeot garage which totally put me off being a mechanic!.
Left Nov 99 (by which time I had just joined TA & had been running SETI for 1mth) & went back to Lex at Aldershot!
as a temporary measure.
Oh yeah forgot to say ,whilst at the Peogeot garage I developed my interest in PC's.Though my 1st computer was a Acorn BBC B in about 1983(I loved Elite ) I didn't get back in to the scene until Jan 98 when I got
my own PC ,a Pentium 166MMX,48Mb RAM,3.2Gb HDD etc.Latter that year I added my 1st upgrade ,a Voodoo1 , (sheesh this is gettin too long!) ,since then I must of built a dozen or so PC's & upgraded many more.Anyway whilst at the Peogeot garage I decided that ultimatley I want out of mechanics & wanted in to IT.I finally got around to doing an IT A+ home study course earlier this year ,I should have finished it by now but a few setbacks (crap mentor support & being diagnosed with Diabetes in June) put me off & after 3-4mmths I still havent picked it up yet!.....so if you see me posting here too often tell me to go & do my course!.Anyway atm I am still at Lextransfleet having done just under 1/2 of my course ,but the sooner I'm out of mechanics (cars are so much more cramped to work on now:|) the better.
Damn I'm running out of time!.
Better mention my g/f catherine (aka Cat) who I've been with for a little over a year ,she has posted here once or twice but was almost ignored (her nick is catpuss),she's the reason I havent been here as much as Grant noticed.
I also have a 9yr old son out of a short & disasterous relationship with a woman who turned out to be a headcase(still is!no joke ask T1! ) ,he stays at his grans as I can't look after him & I have him every Sundays ,his mother is supposed to have him on Saturdays but she only turns up when she feels like it:|.
There's a whole lot more to it than that but I don't wont to go into it any further other than to say his mother is still unsuitable to look after him ,& the courts agreed with us last year ,hence he lives with his gran.She does a great job of looking after him.
How I found TA? ,prior to getting my own PC I occasionally surfed the net on my fathers PC through 97 ,a friend recommended going to Anandtech which I did.Fast forward to summer 98 & I 1st heard about SETI@Home on a BBC program Tommorows world & thought ,wow! I want to run that!, Aug 99 I finally got my own PC on the net ,Oct 99 I stumbled across a thread about SETI in Sharkeys forums which reminded me I wanted to run it! ,found that forum to be a flame fest :disgust: so I checked out a few others ,including Anandtechs (I had always wondered what the 'communities' link was about) & discovered they had a dedicated forum to DC ,& SETI was named.The team was in the low 40's back then with less than 150 members & struggling ,I thought this team then had real potential & I was right!.I've been here ever since.
Think that covers it! ,aside from my car which is a 1992 Moondust Silver Ford Sierra 2.0i (8v DOHC) Ghia ,a bit old & has 113k miles on the clock but its a nice car ,goes quite well & does a reasonable 33 MPG ,which is important considering our UL petrol costs 74p/ltr:| :disgust:.
Oh yeah & naturally I don't pay for the labour for my car repairs................... at least not in £'s!
That'll do .........OMG that turned out to be long!:Q (revenge on you other long posters hehe)
Evadman
Was that a joke re PC equipment!?:Q
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Way to many smilies!