My older brother had a brief interest in computers, but watching him got me plenty interested. Bought a second-hand TRS-80 with my paper route money at age 11 and learned BASIC. Learned Logo on Apple IIs at the local community center.
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Bought an original IBM PC (5150) with more paper route money at the start of high school. Was one of the first kids in my school to turn in typed papers done on a word-processor (WordStar). I kept modding and upgrading that machine for a decade, keeping the original 5150 chassis.
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Went to a small liberal arts college with a CS program so tiny that the students got to run the network. Learned Unix on BSD SunOS and TCP/IP from Comer’s book and making lots of mistakes. Installed so many games in my homedir that they made me admin so other people could share.
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Ruined my college GPA but learned a lot. Recruiter called our CS lab during my senior year looking for Sun Admins to work at Bell Labs. Got destroyed on the interview because I thought I was hot shit. They hired me anyway and I learned just how much I had to learn.
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My boss at the Labs was Barbara Lee, who was a big deal in the internal Labs InfoSec community. She mentored me, introduced me to folks like @SteveBellovin and @wcheswick, and the rest is history.
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One of my most formative memories was seeing Ches talk at USENIX. He was up there wearing an aloha shirt, shorts, and sandals. All I could think was, “When I grow up, I want to be him!”
Apr 30, 2021 · 3:11 AM UTC
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