To recap your previous post - the one that got "Lost in Space"; let me put a few things in perspective:
....................
....................
....................
NS
I'm originally from Hanford, CA but I moved to Hot Springs, AR when I was 3 or 4. Even at that young of an age I was the family go-to for technology because I just got it. When I was 4 I had to show my Dad how to hook up the NES (my first game console) to the TV and VCR as well as program them all. Ever since then, and to this day, my Dad still doesn't like me & technology because, I suppose, it makes him feel inferior that a 4yo could instinctively do something he couldn't and that I've only got better and better with it since.
My families first PC, when I was about 9 or 10, consisted of a PII, between 300-400mhz, Windows 98, 32-64mb of ram, and onboard graphics. Back then, that was a $1200 PC that we only had because my Mom got lucky down in Tunica. I didn't have another PC till I was 18 and got lucky in Tunica (seriously, all my families PC's purchase funds have come from gambling, sans a PoS Compaq they bought when I was at boot camp) and I used it up until last year -- It was a 64bit dual core AMD @2.4ghz, 2GB ram, and a 500mb hard drive. My current PC was found in a garbage can outside of work, seriously, though I've since upgraded the motherboard, ram and graphics.
My toys, they consisted of Star Wars action figures, Legos, and video games. Between me and my buddy Chris we had almost every Star Wars character & ship to do some awesome playing. The one thing I remember that always makes me laugh was using Slave Leia (when she was in Jabba's palace chained up) as the town whore. One of his little sisters Barbies became Teen Whore Barbie and joined Leia as her gigantic, underage whore friend....
Now, I did have a bike, but I left it on the front porch for 15 minutes while I ate dinner and it was stolen. I "found" it a few days later, but, me being an 8yo white kid, I didn't want to confront the 8yo black kid about it anymore than I did because his two older brothers showed up threatening to beat my ass. They had painted over the awesome paint job it had, removed the front hand brake, and pretty much ruined it so I just left it at that. He got his when I "misplaced" a joint in his backpack during a school wide search -- The moral of the story, you screw me over and I'll get mine. You won't know when and it will be YEARS after you've forgotten screwing me over and it will be bad. Normally I'm a pacifistic hippie, but not when crossed in a bad way. I mean, I'm the kind of person that helps old ladies at random, holds the door open if someone needs it, helps random people online I've never met with phone issues, helps any friend that calls and needs it, and has spent money I couldn't afford to let go to feed kids that need it.
Luckily for me, my Dad liked playing video games as much as I did so we had a ton of different consoles growing up -- we had 2 of the following -- NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, PSX, N64, PS2, Xbox...then I had my Game Boy and Game Gear. Never did get a GBA, but I did get a DS which does just fine for those games -- I should look into modding it now that I think about it (I haven't touched it in years). Nowadays, if I wanted a handheld, I'd just buy a Moga and clip my phone to it -- A full size controller that also holds a phone it a win in my book.
While I had some cool stuff, most of it was all hand-me-downs when the parents updated the living room or their room, and I had to work or do chores or whatever my Dad considered enough for me to have earned it. He can be cool, but back then he was a stone cold assh*le and liked to drink, which is why I don't drink that much as an adult -- I've seen what drinking can do first hand and don't ever want my family, when I have one, to be subjected to crap like that.
Now, not all my friends had cool stuff, some did, but not all. Because of those friends I gained an appreciation for my parents and the things they'd get me, even if they weren't the latest and greatest, or even new. We weren't rich or anything like that, just my Mom waited tables at a good restaurant (during the race season she could easily pull in 200+ in a 4 hour period) and my Dad would get lucky and get a good commission (that's before he started his own business). Nowadays the family business is pretty much nonexistent (explained below).
I remember the Berlin Wall coming down as the earliest political thing I can think of, though I didn't realize the significance till I was 12 or so. I grew up during the Clinton era, remember the BJ incident, and always thought, well, Hillary doesn't look that good either, gotta do what ya gotta do I suppose. I can ignore a president getting some strange if the country isn't doing crappy. 9/11 happened during 10th grade American History (have some funny stories about that teacher) and that drastically changed how things were done and how everyone lived their lives. IMHO, the country has gone downhill ever since because of a combination of fear, derp in the government, fear and uncertainty of Obama (my job used to be welding up iron fences, which relies on rich people spending money who don't want to because of Obama -- I've had that as an excuse plenty of times when a bid is rejected).
My life has been pretty crappy since the summer of '08 and the "Obama fear". Only jobs I can find are part time, minimum wage, suckfests that don't pay a wage worth working for. I'd rather risk selling weed than have a job like that -- I don't anymore, but when the only options for work are crappy day labor or 4 hours a week at McD's (seriously, that was a job offer I received), slangin becomes a better and better option everyday. If the government was serious about the drug war they'd up the minimum wage to at least $10/hr, legalize pot, send drug offenders to jail over rehab, and quit putting people on probation for meth. I knew a meth dealer on probation for 4 years who was tested weekly, smoked meth almost everyday, and passed every piss test given to him. Why? They only tested him on Wednesday. Because of that, he could party from Wednesday night to Sunday around midnight, stay clean on Monday & Tuesday, pee clean on Wednesday. Being in law enforcement, I'm sure you've seen all the BS in the system disguised as being better for the community because it all sounds good on paper. That same guy has been to jail multiple times and, when released, he comes out with a new list of contacts to do more criminal activity with. It's sad because he's a good guy at heart and really does want to do right, the only problem is he was on probation for 4 years (for dumpster diving, btw...) for theft of property and no one wants to hire him, not even fast food. He lost his kids a few months ago -- I acted like I was upset with the situation like he was, but in reality, I'm happy that he lost them and hope that it gives him an incentive to get his sh!t together. Damn, that went on longer than I had planned....
My Dad had one of those StarTac's, but my first one was the RAZR flip, followed by some more RAZRs....Before I had my iPhone, my phone was two razrs chopped together. One was dropped and had a screwed up display, the other I threw into a tree driving at 20mph and snapped in half. Took the halves that were still good and hooked them together. That worked for a year till that was dropped and the display went out....Couldn't fix it (for free), but it did still work because I had the phones GUI memorized and knew what button did what, still had callerID and time because the external screen still worked -- I even used it over the iPhone during theat week, because, well, the 3GS was a crapfest and didn't have a good signal where I lived whereas my broke ass Moto did.
I've learned all my Android knowledge in the past 3 years, my only experience being me using Linux for 7 years (10 now) and some bash scripting that comes from that. My first Android was the Moto Bravo. By the time I had got it, most of its first adopter devs had moved on and there weren't many around that could rom. We then got lucky in that Moto Defy roms would work just fine for us except for the camera. Even luckier, Quarx, a really, really good Defy developer, managed to get our camera working and we had CM7. Because the Defy kangers weren't making Bravo roms, someone had to figure it out so we could have things like PA, AOKP, etc, so I decided to start learning Android rom compiling. I've been doing that ever since.
I don't watch much cable either, but I do watch Netflix quite a bit. It's nice being able to watch a show like "24", not have commercial breaks, watch it all in order, and do so in a legal manner. There's nothing I haven't been able to find on the internet, but even with that skill, it feels morally wrong to pirate some things. These days, the only things I get in those ways are things I already own or things that were stolen from me, maybe an occasional game to test it on my system before spending $50 -- it really sucks buying a game to have it not work and demos aren't necessarily the final product.
While kids of this generation are lucky with all the disposable tech these days, I find it sad that they're even less computer literate than my generation. I suppose that's because we still had to work for it (not work work, put we did have to put effort into getting a simple game to run) and everything these days is plug-n-play. I remember having to reboot to swap game controllers on a PC; that's something kids of this generation just wouldn't comprehend....Heck, these days a HDD can be plugged into a running PC, which would have destroyed a hard drive just 10 years ago.
I flashed the latest PAC a few hours ago, but dumbass me forgot to turn it back on after my Titanium restoration so I don't have a good indication of the battery life, but everything is working well and my only FC was during the initial setup and related to some gapps wanting updates, since updated, no FCs. I'll post more on PAC later in its thread.
