My grandpa bought me a NES when I was 6 and I played with Apple IIgs and C64 hardware (neighbor or school computes).
In 1990 at the age of 10 my Dad finally purchased our first home computer (a 286 8/12mhz), when the Super Nintendo came out I'd pretty much stopped playing games on consoles and had switched to computers for all gaming.
During my time with the 286 (and the prior computers) I was pretty much limited to the software and couldn't really play with the hardware since it wasn't mine to mess with but in 1995/1996 we purchased a 486DX4/100 and that's when I got into messing around with computer hardware both at home and at school. I purchased Mechwarrior 2 the day before we got the computer and it didn't work with the POS Trident video card so I purchased a Cirrus Logic video card from a friend. Imagine going from a 286 to a 486 and Mechwarrior 2 at that!
Joined the USAF in Dec 1998 as a 3C0X1 (Computers) and did a little bit of everything System Administrator wise.
Left Active Duty in Dec 2004 mostly due to noticing the military being waaay behind tech wise but also being fed up with military BS (although I did join the AF Guard) and got a civilian job making 20k+ more than I was making in the miilitary..
Worked at this civilian job for the past 7 years doing Sys Admin, not high stress at all and able to work on a bunch of different things but no funding at all for IT and no raises, was getting the feeling it was time to move on just like when I left my miitary job.
Volunteered to go to Afghanistan and left in Nov 2012 and got back at the end of June 2013. (Complete waste of my time career wise but hey retirement points!) Halfway through the deployment I was informed by my boss that my civilian job had eliminated all of their IT so now I was jobless. Hooray!
I've been networking with some friends since I got back so looks like I may have another Sys Admin job lined up which I'll hopefully hear more about next week. Aiming for at least 10k more than my last job.
I really don't feel liking working at all for a year or so. There's alot of things I'd like to research\study and since I work so hard at whatever job I do I really can't bring myself to find any energy for personal development in my off time.
Everyone seems to want to push you towards management as you get older but all I've ever seen out of management is something I do not see as enjoyable. It's very difficult for me to even take care of myself and I really don't like being around other people (I'm single and I love it!! and I fucking hate kids). Way I see it is if I get too old where I cannot find a permanent job then I'll just do contract work, there's always going to be some old computers out there that need to be fixed. 😀
The only way that VOGONS relates to my job is customer support part (Answering questions, researching issues, etc).