User:^zer0dyer$
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[edit] Who is Me?
I am me! My user handle is zer0dyer because I look up to those who have the talent, creativity, and ability to be hackers, which is not the same as people who try to do illegal things - those are crackers. Dyer is my last name! I'm from Southern California. Below, I will tell you about how I got into Web development.
[edit] try { CISCO($me); } catch (Exception $e) { echo $e->getMessage(); }
Back in high school, I thought I'd be like Jimmy Fallon in that sketch he does on SNL, where he plays a cocky IT guy. So, I found myself in a CISCO computer repair class called A+. The arrogant teacher there taught us binary, and then it was pretty much every man/woman for him/herself as we trudged through the curriculum on the intrernet. Granted, the teacher was a network wizard, he even had an impressive rackmount server he setup in the classroom. There were a few students who had been in the other CISCO classes and already knew him. They pretty much hung out together with the teacher and worked on their own things while the rest of the class was pretty much abandoned. Later in the semester, he did stop to explain how RAID works and in different configurations. Wow, he actually condescended to us n00bs who weren't masters! Thus was each day for the rest of the semester: using an old Windows 95 machine, without much help for the work, and sitting on a deformed stool that rocked and made my butt sore!
[edit] No Turning back
Due to the fast pace of the semester, I wasn't doing too well on the tests which was primarily memorizing, memorizing, and....oh ya, memorizing! Each chapter had you memorize the history, models, ports, whatever, you name it, for dozens of hardware components. Clearly, the better way to get good at this stuff is to JUST DIVE IN, as my friend would say. I decided to get caught up on as much of the assignments as possible (I had to do some at home - usually no homework). So, all my work paid off and I ended up with a B+ for that semester! The next semester, our teacher was leaving for the wealthy Bay Area (near San Francisco), where he and his sugar mamma would reside. Taking the next course, following after A+, N+ (Networking), would have meant my schedule getting seriously distorted, so I decided to just find another class for the latter end of the semester. By chance, I remembered my old keyboarding teacher teaches a Telecommunications class, where HTML was taught. Luckily, only after a week had passed in the second semester, I was able to get in to Telecommunications without incident. Incidentally, Telecommunications is an inaccurate term for that course, since all that was taught was HTML.
[edit] HTML......and BEYOND!
Unfortunately, the Web design teacher treated her classes like children and patronized many students. However, she left me alone for the most part. I found that the class had already gone over the very basics of an HTML page. It didn't look like it made all too much sense to me at first, so I figured I was already behind due to coming in a week late. So, since I found myself vaguely interested anyway, I went home and conveniently avoided homework to Google search "HTML tutorials." Many many many results were populated, but I managed to find davesite.com, which is where I managed to learn the whole rest of the semester in one week, plus more. As I continued to study, I found that not only was my teacher incompetant, but that she and the text book was teaching horribly deprecated (outdated) markup. Things like servers, CSS, JavaScript, or back end were never mentioned once. Naturally, the teacher and I butted heads a couple times, but usually I didn't pursue arguments long enough to care. I guess she thought I was pinching scripts when I started adding some JavaScript in my projects, despite the fact that I did it right in front of her during class times, not just at home.
[edit] Enter Aboho
Well, after acing the class, I continued my pursuit of knowledge in all things Web development. During which time, I rekindled an old flame - programming. At the age of 13 or so, I used QBASIC on an old Windows 3.1 box my dad had, as well as when we upgraded to a Windows 95 box. After my dad got rid of it, and QBASIC was no longer, I sort of forgot about it. However, I found that I really wanted to start learning Perl for the Web, but I had very little luck with Apache, as I found it quite confusing. At that time, I had XP Home - where Microsoft decided for you that IIS wouldn't be necessary. I then figured that I may as well find a host so I could avoid the hassles of setup and rummaging limited info on setting up *nix dominated software on a windoze machine. So, I looked for any free hosts who didn't require you to have a domain of your own, while offering Perl. I then found aboho, (which has since gone the way of Davy Jones' Locker) where at first, my intentions were rather self-serving, and so I posted the minimum requirement to get an account started (I didn't resort to spam, though). After ticking off the admin with my impatience of not receiving my account quickly, I pretty much developed offline with straight notepad for a while. Since I didn't need a server to make HTML + CSS + JavaScript pages, I was content for a while. However, I thought I'd check things out at aboho again. When I finally got to know some people, I really started to enjoy my stay, so, I made a pretty quick 180 in behavior. Once I got my account, I was pretty astounded by the features. Not surprising, I had quite a lot of questions in my quest to learn Web development better. I also managed to get Apache 1.3.31 up on Windows along with Perl and SSI. I was quite excited the day I finally got it working! lol! Anyway, it was because of aboho that I ventured to learn PHP (thanks, Jeremy!!), as before, I wasn't particularly interested. I noticed that PHP ran a whole lot smoother and faster on Apache than Perl, so I stuck with it!
[edit] What about now? / Aboho's Demise
Currently, I am running Apache 2.0.54 + MySQL 4.1 with the newest PHP 5.1. Perl 5.8.7, mod_perl, (no speed issues with Apache 2), Python 2.4, and (X)SSI. Running on another port, I have IIS running PHP 5.0.2 and Perl 5.8.7, and ASP of course. Lol, still haven't completely got on the LAMP bandwagon, as I'm minus the "L," although I truly wish to delve into *nix, minus the pushy and devoted lifestyle. I just need a spare box to get started (I'd prefer to keep windows and linux on separate computers, or at least separate hardrives). Thanks to my friend Dan, a fellow ex-abohovian friend, I have Slackware installation CDs (and hosting!). I have a lot of cool software thanks to another fellow ex-abohovian friend, Jeremy. He sent me a Knoppix and SuSE live CD, along with some other goodies like MySQL 4.1 Borland C++ compiler, and JDK. When I can, I try and mess around with linux as much as I can. However, Live CDs aren't too good for multitasking, as things will slow to a crawl or freeze. My programming/scripting/markup/whatever repertoire includes accessible (X)HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, MySQL, Apache, and a little python. On the ASP side, I've done very little despite having IIS running. The farthest I got was making a print environment script, which is my version of "Hello World." Apart from the Web, I also enjoy some C/C++ here and there.
Not too long ago, Aboho cosed its doors. Aboho's funding was insufficient and the structure of leadership left a completely unfair and unmanageable amount of pressure on the admin (the other admin, the owner, was rarely around). I don't want to get too into it, for the sake of private affairs, and the fact that aboho shut down is still depressing to me. It was there that I was able to grow into the developer I am today; it was there, where I met friends I'll probably talk to for a long time.
Many former Abohovians are now on Sveit.com, where we are striving to grow into a strong community.
[edit] School
I'm now attending Mt. San Antonio College, and intend to transfer to CalPoly Pomona or UC Riverside. I'm taking all GEs with the exception of Japanese. I'm in advanced Japanese now, and I'm having a lot of fun. Note that Advanced Japanese is just the course title; I am nowhere near fluent, sadly.
Thanks for reading,
Curtis
