Good morning dc!!
I know I'm a month late, but perhaps I haven't completely missed the party (fashionably late...right?). What a great thread to read. Thanks mouser for harassing me until I got in here (you get the bounty it seems), and congratulations on such an amazing achievement (no we cannot pretend we walked through the wrong door)!! Unfortunately I cannot claim to be a lurker like many others, I must live with the shame of having abandoned DC. Who could possibly believe it's been almost eight years since I first came to DC, and it's been two since I was last here
. I can't really say quite what happened, I guess things just kind of got in the way and much like with f0dder a nagging sense of guilt kind of crept up on me. I've received several emails about this thread, but I knew it was going to take forever to get through the existing posts (how could I possibly post without reading through them all?), and that I'd end up writing half a book in response, so it had to wait until things calmed down a bit IRL (my apologies mouser). In the end it looks like it's taken about three hours haha.
As a quick asside, I'm afraid I must concur with db90h Mouse Man, we should have SSL by default up in here. Paging Gothic Man! Also the server costs do seem incredibly high. It's high time I did DC some favors, so hit me up in PM if you're in need of any help there.
--boring stuff starts here (or perhaps two paragraphs ago)--
So I guess the biggest change has been my moving to the USA (away from the "insane crazy creatures" [yes I saw that mouser, and the other one like four posts ago, you just watch yourself]) in November last year (and who knew we had so many Australians? This is basically one big Aussie thread). It's been great so far (except for living in Miami, yuk). Big change number two is that I'm now married (the reason for moving to the US) which is awesome (to a guy in case of any of the third-person pronouns I use later on confuse anyone). It's been a long time coming (been doing the long-distance thing for as long as I've been on DC), but had to wait for DOMA repeal etc etc. He's graduating next week with a PhD in forensic psychology (have you graduated yet mouser or are still getting crap from Josh on a daily basis?), and the day after we'll be moving up to Virginia (yaaaaay!) to accommodate his working for the FBI in a one-year post-doc doing deception detection research.
In other news that will surprise everyone, I'm no longer an avid news reader. That too went by the wayside as real life got in the way. The main reason for that was probably the reduction (or elimination) of my daily commute when I started working remotely. In general I've fallen away from most of the online communities I used to be a part of in favor of devoting more time to real life. I miss it a lot actually. I tend to peek at the front page of Reddit during those standing-in-line type moments, though I've probably been spending more time on /r/thebutton recently than I'd care to admit. I'm a little less cagey these days about putting personal information online, but you'll still never catch me on Instagram or Facebook or any of that crap - I can't stand LinkedIn as it is. I still can't handle coffee, but caffeine (usually in the form of black tea, which until I left home was drunk from one of the DC mugs which mum insisted on keeping so now I'm using some target crap) has become a dietary staple. Some days I wonder if it keeps some kind of undiagnosed ADHD at bay. I'm still not keeping myself in shape like I should, but the old ball-and-chain has me eating fairly well (mostly - the easter candy...well...). Some random memories that came back as I was reading this thread include meeting App, my lovely mugs (and mouser being far too generous with the swag, especially mailing it to .au), the fun times in IRC, TNT (of course), and that one time Josh learned how use a webcam (*shudder*).
On the work front, I'm now a filthy Mac user (like seemingly everyone else on this thread). I hate Apple just as much as always, but it was a necessary change to continue into the work I wanted to do (and, honestly, Microsoft are far too retarded/clueless these days to be trusted with an operating system). I do appreciate how much more it resembles Linux than Windows does, and there's a pretty decent community around making it even more-so (homebrew mainly). I'm still a hardcore android user, currently on a 1+1 running CM11 (see, I don't even have time to update my handset these days! :_(). I'm still an open source nut, and have long since moved away from the desktop-support side of IT, and am now working mostly with high-scale Linux infrastructure and software development, primarily for early start-ups (keeping my distance from the suits and 9-5ers as much as possible). It's a lot of fun, and who could turn the opportunity to be constantly learning new stuff on the job? I'm currently working one full-time job and one part-time job (the full time since I got US employment authorization, and the part-time is winding down the Australian job I kept while waiting for authorization) which is burning me out pretty effectively, but the part-time should be over soon.
--boring stuff probably ends here--
Alright, that's enough bla bla bla from me I think. I'll sick my head into the (new, as I understand it?) IRC channel in the next couple of weeks (probably after the move) and see if I can't troll Joshua a little. Thanks again mouser, it's been so great reading this thing, and congratulations again on a job very well done.
Ehtyar.
