Teenage me was seriously worried he’d not play video games some day.

I wish I could pat him on the back and say: Dude, it’s not just going to be fine, it’s going to be absolutely fucking ridiculous. Just because other adults didn’t play video games in the 90s doesn’t mean you can’t in the future. In retrospect, it’s cute how important this was to me.

Can I learn something from my childhood worries and dreams?

✔️ Dark rooms lit by the glow of fast-scrolling terminals

Remember watching Neo wake up in front of his computer for the first time? Perfection. While I’m not a “hacker” like Neo, I have nights freely hacking away at code with only the screen lighting my face and the finest techno blasting on my ears. It’s ridiculous, but I wanted to become this person.

I did and I love it 😬

✔️ Making things hard for myself because I enjoyed it

Can you imagine a bunch of mid-30s locking themselves up in someone’s apartment for a weekend to play video games together?

I used to bring a massive server ATX tower running NetBSD to 3-day LAN parties. I spent 1 ½ days recompiling my kernel, linux compatibility and wine to play Counter-Strike. At some point, I gave up and fell asleep on the spot. After waking up from my keyboard (ouch), I dual-booted into Windows and joined the games. It was absolutely worth it: I was motivated as hell and learned half of everything sys ops I know now.

Here’s to LANs in my 40s.

✔️ PRINTLN “Ach leck mich doch am Bürzel”

I will never stop coding.

I have no illusions I can solve the world’s problem with a piece of code. But I know that people are creating new ones. Slowly, I’ll move into a position where I can do something about shit like that.

I wish my dad could see what teaching that 1 line of QBasic set into motion.