Greetings Fellow Coders/Members :)

Hello everyone!

My name is John.

At a very young age I learned that I was meant to work with computers.
20 years ago I had an ancient Mac lying around collecting dust. I decided to hook it up and see if it worked. Within 5 minutes I was sitting at the terminal. Instinctively I typed "Help" and it gave me a list of commands. I soon started trying commands, and learned to type "<command> help" in no-time to better figure out the commands.
Within 30 minutes I had found some games. My mother was very impressed.

About a year later someone gave me an old PC loaded with windows 95, which at the time was worth around $1,500. I started to learn the ins-and-outs of windows very quickly. I was less concerned with games, but rather knowing everything I could do with the PC. And I longed to have internet... but it was years later until I could get dial-up.

When I was 8 my mom worked in a recycling center at the University of Wyoming. I started to learn how to repair all the PC's and laptop's they had stocked. And there were A LOT of them! I managed to build many good PC's and sell them off for extra cash by combining hardware from them.

Around the same time period, my mom had a laptop that went hay-wire. For some reason the graphics card drivers were deleted. And the screen of course looked like crap without the drivers. She took it to the local tech there at the university and he promptly returned it and said it was "garbage." Within 10 minutes, I had new drivers loaded, took it back to him and showed him it was not garbage. Talk about an ego-boost!

I started learning HTML at 10. At 11 I started learning High-Level Assembly. By 13 I was extremely fluent in Assembly. By 15 I knew PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and had built various websites, coded forums, chat rooms, etc. I also took my G.E.D. and passed in the top 5% out of several hundred people. Then at 16 I moved away from home, and abandoned all my tech-related adventures for many years to work meaningless jobs at Subway, Carl's JR, Wendy's etc... Just to survive and get by. Just to be independent. Just to be near the one I loved.

Over the years I've dabbled with PHP & web languages, trying to keep all the old info from getting stale in my mind. Built a few websites here and there. But never was able to pick it up as a profession. Simply because I've had to work too hard, too many hours, just to survive wherever I have been. I also believed because I was not good at picking color schemes or working with Photoshop, that I could not be a good web designer.

However luckily things are looking up for me finally. I've had some time to study, and am currently re-learning PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL and learning to use CMS systems like Wordpress. With all the free-lancing websites available these days, I am very hopeful I will be able to find some jobs quickly that I can do for free to gain a reputation.

I look forward to being a part of these forums. In my spare time I hope to be able to help others with their coding & other issues. I love to help people. This is what I want to do with my life.

I may need your help as I re-learn the web languages and get various work projects. But please know, I will give back to this community.

Thank you for viewing my post!