Wow, it sure made me smile when I saw Mouser's email in my inbox.

Hi everyone. My life changed quite drastically in 2009, as in January of that year I lost my job due to the economic problems and mismanagement by the owner. I was the last employee remaining and the business closed down less than a month later.

That year I decided to do something I always wanted to do, but never had the confidence to do: go to college. Initially, I was pursuing a degree in computer science, but less than two semesters in I decided that if I were going to do this thing, I was going to do what I always wanted, not what was easiest. So, I switched to electrical engineering. It was quite difficult for a number of reasons, but a major issue was I quit school at 15 and never went to high school. I started college at 37, so I had a LOT of background to make up. I had horrible study habits in school before which is part of what lead to me quitting. I've been struggling with those bad habits since I started this time too. My grades are ok, not stellar, but certainly not what I am capable of, unfortunately. :)  It's funny, I spent my entire life thinking I was bad at math, only to find out that I'm actually pretty good at it, just lazy. haha

It has been a long road and college has consumed most of my existence for the last 6 years. Pretty much everything else in my life has dropped off to the periphery. I got divorced a few years ago, though that wasn't due to college. We both agree that we should have never been married, and we are good friends to this day.

I am about 3 semesters from graduating with a BSEE and am now trying to decide whether to pursue a master's or not. It's a hard decision, as I'd really like to get a real job again and stop being so poor! haha

Other things of note, I lost 100lbs a few years ago and was very active for a long time, but had some medical problems that prevented me from being nearly as active for quite a while and my lazy nature to take over again and I've gained most of it back. It's especially painful as the weather changes and the outdoors call so strongly. So many things I want to do, but I'm too fat and out of shape to do them haha. Oh well, I'll lose it again!

Well, I guess that's "other thing", not much else going on. Other than being the poorest I've ever been in my life, and being about 80lbs over weight, I'm the happiest I've ever been. I also don't really do much programming any more. I've taken a required C language class for EE, and recently decided to minor in comp sci so I took a few more classes for that such as a java class, and a data structures class I'm taking this semester, and helping fellow EE students with their C problems. I did enjoy some C in my microcontrollers class, and I'm working with a professor on a microcontroller based power controller on which I designed and wrote the firmware, and designed the board in Eagle CAD.  I still enjoy writing code, I just hate doing UI stuff. I like doing the back end coding, its all that interfacing with people stuff I don't care for. haha.

I'm glad DC is still here, I'll try to come around once in a while going forward. :) Well, back to studying. Have an Electromagnetic Fields test tomorrow.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this is the only online community that I ever felt a sense of belonging with, back in the day. I really enjoyed my time here back then. :)

This new fangled multi-monitor thing is the bees knees!! :)  Been using dual monitors since right after Windows 98SE came out. Back then they were these huge 19in CRTs. I had no desktop left.

These days I have two 22in LCD monitors (well there's also a third 17in, but that is strictly for machines I am working on), the main monitor is in landscape, and the secondary is in portrait. I could add more, but I really don't have a need, these serve all the multi-monitor needs I have. The 22in portrait rocks for viewing websites and documents, I can get the entire page on screen (plus a bit of the next page).

I've done exactly the same thing, moved from Win7 32bit to Win7 64bit for one reason only - MS' arbitrary decision to not allow full use of the installed 4GB under 32bit.

-4wd (April 04, 2010, 08:11 AM)

Nothing arbitrary about it, and it wasn't Microsoft's decision. 4GB is the maximum address space possible with a 32bit system. Your memory takes up that address space starting from the bottom, and all the devices that have memory mapped ROM or RAM takes it up starting from the top. For instance, the memory on your video card, the ROM on your motherboard, hard drives, etc. At some point they overlap, and that varies from system to system, depending upon the hardware. Once they overlap that ends the top of your accessible RAM.

Personally, I have been running 64bit since the beta of Windows 7 with little problem. The only programs I have run into that wouldn't work for me are ones that lack signed kernel mode drivers. Its not that common, but it happens. You can bypass that requirement at every boot, but you can't turn it off. Which doesn't make me happy, but I deal. Microsoft should have left those of us that wish a way to turn off the requirement. It stinks of big brotherism, and damn it I want to run my PC the way I want to run it, not the way they want me to.