Utmost disdain

Well, I'm sitting here on a Saturday, coding, with what I think will be the building blocks of my switch case assignment, and I'm waiting as always for correspondence. To whatever avail I have at my finger tips, I'm feeling somewhat saddened by the change of computer systems, and how people interact with them.

You see, I built my first system (ECS). Though it wasn't perfect, I could and would do many types of tweaking and testing of whatever I chose to put that system through. Though I had lacked good fundage to afford a much greater system to bigger complicated tasks with, it wasn't just about tweaking that I became enthralled with. In general terms it was my connection to the world of information. Anything, video, music, and news. I was so excited for the next frontier I was immersing myself in the field of Linux thinking that maybe I could get 'in' on the open source wave. Well, I'm still trying to figure out where it all means for me in the sense of connectedness. I'm no closer to an answer I set out to find back in 2003/2004.

This year marks year 8 from the first build I did on my own. There was so much promise, excitement, I forgot to think about what happens when there isn't anything left to mine. I've spent countless hours going on weird niche information hunting assignments that I've become so accustomed to routine that now I'm feeling somewhat let down. I can't really feel alone here in that there is so much to learn but I've been so stubborn with the way I've honed the craft that I'm not sure where I'll end up next.

The uncanny valley I think has happened for me. The fact the tech foundries aren't utilizing even the 10th percent of the hardware, let alone designing stuff that will last beyond 3 months is atrocious. Gone are the bios chips one could remove flash, and rebuild, whereas companies specifically use built in, heavily controlled systems done by manufacturing. The guesswork is taken out of the loop, and we are expected to just plug in and go. For simplicity sake yes I like this, but at the same time, this leaves me an old man pinning for the old days. I want to tweak and install, and do whatever I can to break systems, but I feel like I'm in the last breathing gasps of the home computer user market.

Its going away from a tethered wall wort, to a transportable, linked via wireless type system. I'm not even sure where I fit into this new idiom. I enjoy doing and learning, but at the pace of turnover of yearly bothers me. There is already to much e-waste out there, so to make more doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Every type of handheld device is tethered to a pay to play construct it makes this stratus almost unreachable for me. The costs of using wireless services is astronomical, considering how much more expensive things are at this stage of the game.

I've spent hours talking to myself about what kind of system I need to build. Everything takes money, and money is often the bain that chars this hide. Alas, I'm realizing maybe the universe is trying to tell me something, I just haven't figured out what that is yet.

B.