Here is the deal - the person that cant provide detailed information beyond 2nd and 3rd hand accounts to back up claims of being horribly offended and abused but relies on the fact they are a poor poor vulnerable girl and that their target is open and honest and therefore not guarded against these accusations IS A LYING WHORE. YES I CAN CALL HER A WHORE ON MY OWN BLOG.
I AM NOT USING THE TERM WHORE AS A GENERAL CATCH ALL INSULT BECAUSE SHE IS FEMALE. I am a fucking feminist and thats just offensive. I AM USING IT IN THE STRICTLY TECHNICAL SENSE THAT SHE TRADES HER FEMININITY FOR SOCIAL CURRENCY. WHORE. THATS THE DEFINITION.
SO SUE ME. I CAN AFFORD LAYWERS WITH SUFFICIENTLY NICE SUITS.
IT WOULD BE FUN.
Maybe I could then get on something like Jerry Springer
"I CALLED HER A WHORE ON THE INTERNET AND THE SUPREME COURT AGREED!"
Oh yeah, and for the few guys that were not alts of hers (seriously she has like 4 alts that downvote me every day for the last few weeks on every single post or comment I make) and valiantly white knighted her without actually looking into the details. I just want to share something that hasn't been mentioned in my little stories so far, but you should sort of recognise from elsewhere.
I do not forgive. I do not forget. Fucking ever. Atheist remember.
Welcome back. The response to Part I was mixed. The only feedback received about it was however positive except for my beloved internet super nemesis using an alt account. There was a lot more views than votes or feedback, so assume that quite a few saw the wall of text and baulked or found quickly it was not heading in a direction they were interested. So let us start with a little disclaimer.
Greetings intelligent entity on the internet! You are reading a story about the internet entity now known as edeity. It covers the whole of a life, with some degree of focus on the differences and challenges of life with the condition known as aspergers. This is not a medical story, nor a science story. It is not here to tell you facts or figures that are verifiable. It also is not a quick short story of hope and inspiration despite what I may otherwise say elsewhere to be ironic. This is a real story of a real boy becoming a real man.He doesnt just get hurt by an unfair world, he hurts back and he hurts back hard. Often to people who trust and depend on him. You are going to read of some of the very worst of human behaviour, not just done by others but by the central character of this story. The fact that he still finds pride in some of this should further give you a view that not all is good here. But it is real, and as much as possible has attempted to not be written in a way to make you like the central character, even though he does have likeable qualities. He is callous and damages lives. To be clear, if you are after something nice and uplifting you are in the wrong end of town.
Part IIa
"Arise Lord eDeity"
A Recap on the So Far
A young boy, from a farm in a distant part of the galaxy has changed his name after a Jedi Knight. He is taken in by the mysterious robed monks who train him in the ways of the force. He has found he has a high midiclorian count, but only at certain things. His mother has known all along he is special from birth, but has not told him.
His monastic beliefs, Jedi Masters to whom he was a padawan are slain in his mind by the dark lord - logic, using it's own form of mastery of the force. He is adrift. Looks for a new master, and one finds him called IBM. At first he finds opportunity for growth and development Here. His Jedi skills are growing in power again. Sensing a great evil coming, it is beyond his powers to see what it is. Deeply afraid he has turned to IBM to see if he can become powerful enough to survive. He will soon learn of former Jedi that gain true power. But to learn such power he realises he must reject all he holds to be true and of worth. He must betray the Jedi.
And so we begin.
Loyalty
I love dogs. At present I own 4. The earliest photos of me out of nappies I am holding and hugging dogs. Always an animal person, where others would not be able to connect or get the trust of a dog, I would. I do not attribute this to any special psychic ability or some rubbish, it is rather patience and willingness to project first co-operation and respect by displaying vulnerability, and then sharing love.
I had a dog when I was growing up on our farm. He was majestic, not just in how he looked, but if I believed in souls this dog had a noble soul. He saved my life at least once, when a MASSIVE im talking 4+ metre (thats ~12 feet America) red belly snake charged at me. For the two people on the internet that don't know about Australia, our wildlife is ridiculously lethal and the red belly black snake is amongst the most aggressive and dangerous of snakes in Australia.
This dog, Michael (name after the Archangel St. Michael) charged the snake with of course no sense of self preservation, and held it at bay until the rest of the herd of dogs showed up and the snake calculated its odds and rapidly writhed away. I was helplessly stunned throughout the whole thing.
He was the largest of our dogs, and we treated him with love. He had a great life, running the farm (3,500 arces... it was a decent size) and it would be rare for a dog to have as much freedom and love.
Our dogs had however been causing problems for the neighbours. Running down sheep and calves. Baits had been put out. One by one they were dying. Michael was tied to a car, to stop him running around, so he could be protected.
My parents, and really my mother, ran the prototype of her future global cult on this farm. We had lots of drug addicts and alcoholics living here, and by the power of prayer my mother was making them better... sometimes...sort of...
This in itself made for an interesting time - I learnt to shoot from a former British SAS soldier, he was once an assassin of IRA leaders in Belfast and told stories that the easiest way to kill IRA was to buy them drinks and follow them into the bathroom. (My Great Uncle, former mayor of Cork, Terence McSweeney was a big supporter of the IRA, or at least the old IRA that wore uniforms). After murdering a taxi driver in France from a night of drinking and a desire to avoid a taxi fare he was offered a place in the Foreign Legion (life in prison/death was the other choice on offer) and given the job of exterminating half of Algeria. He is an intentionally destructive alcoholic, and when he was first asked why he is trying to kill himself from drinking "I can still hear them crying, under the dirt from the bulldozer". Anyway, he taught me how to shoot, and I became a good shot.
My best friend from this time was Justine. She was a former child prostitute and six months older than me. When I started at high school, she looked out for me and no bully would risk it when she was around. This was a tough country school with HARD poor white kids and some seriously pissed off Aborigines. But she was at a different level. Seriously she could knife you and nobody would be willing to testify (this never happened but there are people you meet that you know how it would pan out if it did). She died when I was 16. She had run away, gone back to prostitution and drugs. She called up my mother one day asking to come back. I overheard the call from the hallway and remember it clearly. My mother said no, we have three other children to think of, you have made your choice. 4 weeks later she was dead from a drug overdose. Foul play was at first thought but never proven.
So anyway, Michael is tied to the car. A priest who is staying with us at the community, has to go get something from the shop 40km away. You can see where this goes. He is pulled over by a crying policeman. They bring the still alive Michael back to the farm. Dads rifle is pulled out of his study. I remember that rifle shot, where I don't think I can remember any other rifle shot from that time despite that we used to do a lot of hunting.
He lived and was loved for being a real dog. And he was horribly hurt and then we had to kill him because he was being a real dog.
My girlfriend at age 25 had been with me since I was 22 in university. She was a true believer in the Labor party, loved social justice, feminism and a good argument. She was very independant and strong willed. By now she had left the bank and was a Union Officer/Official or something anyway she was paid a full time salary, for the Financial Services Union.
The first night I stayed at her house (she lived with her parents before moving to Sydney) they had put out a mattress for me in the lounge room. In front of her parents, she dragged the mattress past them sitting at the dining table and into her room. We had been dating less than a week. I was the first boy she had every brought home. Balls. I will give her that. I didn't sleep on the mattress.
Because of my shyness / inability to small talk / communicate at first the parents were very wary of me. Like a girlfriend I had when I was 15, I had decided to go visit her without telling anyone... including her.... and travel the 30 km and made a phone call from the bus station at 7.30am
"Hi, im here. Can I come over? I'm at the bus station."
I had met this girl on a catholic youth camp. A lot of the guys there were musicians / rock star type dudes. I couldn't even clap hands together in rhythm. "Do you like the Choirboys?" I worked out from the way they were asking the question it did not mean the guys at the altar at mass, one of whom I often was. Then began a crash course in modern rock, a culture I could never really participate in or integrate into. But anyway, despite all the uber alpha hot guys, this blonde haired girl with sometimes on glasses liked me. She was absolutely an attention whore however, and did sit on the lap and hug and touch all the rock gods non stop, so I was always very confused around her. But she asked me out, and we were theoretically dating.
Her dad drives her to the bus station at around 8am to pick me up. He is making all sorts of snide comments about boys sniffing around his daughter and being good for nothing losers. I do not understand any of this, it completely goes over my head, keep smiling at him and ask lots of questions about this town they lived in, what was it like, ooh look whats that over there. After about 10 minutes, he just felt bad for me and stopped seeing me as a threat and as rather a bird with a broken wing or something. When he brought me into the house to meet her mother I noticed him nodding and shaking his head in a weird combination as I was introduced, and she went from hostile to polite, and then very welcoming.
Being completely autistic can be useful to overcome parents reservations about someone new dating their daughter.
So my girlfriend at 25, when I first met her parents and was forcibly taken to her room - they went through this same adaption process. Her dad grew to really love me. He was a dyed in the wool old school nerd. If world of warcraft had existed 30 years earlier, he would have been raiding. An electrician, he worked in R&D to do with cutting edge microwave technology. We gradually got on really well, even though we barely talked to each other. Later when we broke up, I was told that he cried. I miss him too. But he would never know it.
It was from her family I first understood family love. They accepted me, not just as a boyfriend. I was family. They would literally do anything for me. Still terribly ill, they adapted to and worked with my need to sleep several times a day, my fevers, the fact that regularly my brain functions would degrade for days and I could barely remember things or string thoughts together. It was all ok.
This woman got me to go through university. I was bored, disinterested besides the back room side of politics and drinking. She got me studying, motivated to attend classes. Pushed me outside what was comfortable, even when it made me angry at her. Made me talk to people.
We were now living together in Sydney. Corruscant of commerce in Australia, and therefore centre of the world for technology jobs. Having put together a successful share house in my home town, I took the same approach and got a lease for a new house in reasonably good suburb in Sydney. I would have trouble affording that same house now, even though my salary has multiplied 5x since then.
I convince one of my nerd friends from uni to move down, based on how easy it is to get a technology job if your just nerdy enough. He does. Flatmate #1. We advertise for the other room. A doctor applies and we accept him. Genuinely nice guy, but very different to us. Flatmate #2.
My father visits one day. The house he used to live in, in this suburb is 3 blocks away. The maids quarters, stables etc. distinctly visible. He makes a comment to my brother that I overhear "young peoples housing has notably degraded over the years I see". I was so proud of my house, with its holes in the floor, old door i found underneath used as a table on some milk crates, kitchen that was so rough you didnt need to worry about stains, they would not be noticeable. It had taken a lot of industry and thought to make it happen. Rent in Sydney is a killer, and despite having a job I knew I couldnt plan on keeping one with my combination of health condition and sheer inability to communicate or be regarded as someone trustworthy for any serious business. So had pulled together and structured a great spacious house in a good suburb at a cost I could afford if I had to go back on the pension. But now I felt like a failure again. My girlfriend wanted a car. She was always very moody, and it would often become my fault. It has been pointed out since then, that this same pattern occurs with all my girlfriends. If everyone else has the problem, maybe the cause is a bit closer to you than you thought... So I researched. The way I best knew how to research was the way I researched buying computers. You ignore brands, look for what are the recent advancements, determine a cost price for the advanced features, then if you buy commodity items (i.e. any standard car) identify the low cost providers (for computer this means dodgy chinese computer shops that look you up and down when you walk in to see if you actually have $20 to spend before they will talk to you even though no one else is in the shop).
She had a different research approach. She was a very diligent and fastidious student and stern follower of rule systems. Reputable, reliable sources was always to be held as more valuable. She came up with this crappy looking Carolla as the car to get. I went no way is my girlfriend driving something boring. She doesnt realise it, but she actually needs and wants some fun. So I researched all the features and how it was increasingly trendy and popular to have a toy RV, show the fuel benefits, and the fact that it could visit her parents farm easily no matter the weather conditions. Since she liked the Carolla - RAV4. She took one for a drive and loved it. Our car until there was no us. It was in this car, after we had one day had a massive fight she yelled at me to get in the car. It was raining. She drove the car down the road, parked. She was crying a bit. "You should marry me. Your going to be alone. Your going to drive me and then everyone in your life away from you. I cant stop you if thats what you want but you should marry me." Through this conversation I am not even looking at her. I am not angry. When I do get angry or frustrated, it does effect my behaviour for a time, but I also retain the ability to be logical. So I'm listening to what she is saying. But just because she is talking, thats not the only thing going on my head. Im plotting out trajectory curves of my career, trajectory curves of my emotional and sexual development, intersection points of when she would want children, identification of key life experience milestones, financial risk assessment and fallback strategies. I dont have the graphs in front of me like a HUD, its not like that, but its like I have two visual realities, one of which is conceptual and contains the graphs and I flick between them and the eyesight visual reality constantly in little micro peeps. It doesn't match for me to get married right now. Its the maths. I know she wants to, she wants babies, she has loved caring for me, but i have this need to be more. There was much more depth to her feelings and compassion, but I was blind and brutal. I simply could not and did not see life from her perspective. I would at times go through a logical process of deduction of what she must feel and experience, but it was seriously tiring to do this, and not always accurate. A young, quite pretty, financially stable, sexually accommodating and most important exceptionally tolerant of my ridiculously high number of quirks, eccentricities and down right impossible to live with issues - is begging me to marry her. I have nothing going for me but a junior job at IBM and an increasing talent at Quake 2 multiplayer. AS THESE BRAVE SOLDIERS TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE STROGGS HOME PLANET.
Crying, tears streaming down her face she asks. "I'm asking you to marry me.". I think she knows I am not capable of saying yes. I also genuinely in hind sight think she loved me so much she was trying to save me from myself. I am weak. I should have said either yes or no. I wish I was a stronger man. Instead I chose the easy out and was non-committal. I have since learnt how selfish it is to not be clear. It comes back on you as well (not always), and it is always hard to do the right thing. Ultimately its about the kind of person you want to be, and for someone that prided themself on moral fortitude, I was lacking. This lack would grow in time into a gaping abyss. Unaware of it, due to my lack of both psychic powers and time travel - out in the world, beyond my horizon of knowledge and experience, at this time my daughter was born and soon my son soon would be too. Life happens whether you are aware of it or not. This right here is my proof point of the rejection of the statement "perception is reality". Reality doesn't care what you think or don't think, nor even what others think. It is unforgiving and beautiful at the same time. Humans get so wrapped up in themselves they lose sight of this. Not from a Jedi Career wise I had now gone from lowly rollout tech, to desktop support and was now a mainframe programmer for IBM for a large financial services company in North Sydney. My weirdo combination of Aspergers and Bipolar did things to me as far as ambition. I wanted to run games on a mainframe. And by games I of course meant Quake. MAINFRAME QUAKE BEST QUAKE. This was my career goal. I could never do that myself due to cost and infrastructure reasons, but my thinking was that if I completely abused my job I could maybe do it. I researched a lot of about loading a TCP/IP stack on the Mainframe (Token ring! Token ring is all we need! Was the normal mainframe programmer response). Creating an LPAR for loading one of the very recent to exist Linux to S/390 series mainframe ports. Creating layered security architecture to meet strict security requirements for financial services systems of record holding customer data AND financial transactions. This was at that time serious cutting edge shit. The senior IBM guys I took the proposal to use Linux to for lower cost of processing for our clients, looked at me like I was mad but just maybe a genius so they could't rule out the idea. It didn't get me Linux to load a Quake server onto but it did get me assigned to an ambitious new project. "We are going to link Lotus Notes to the mainframe.Your in charge of technical design of the interfaces.". Middleware wasnt even really a word then. The idea was that clients could use this newfangled thing called the internet. Yes we are aware no one is using this besides some nerds. But according to Gartner and Wired magazine which they read over latte it was gonna be big and they should get ready for it. Consultants. No, not the individual contractors that called themselves consultants. But a tight knit team that were organised, had ways of talking, thinking, presenting, hell running a meeting and writing on a whiteboard I had never seen before. This was interesting. Start logically analysing the way they do things. Can see underlying systems at work. Talk to them about my observations. They are taken aback and start to treat me much more seriously than just the client interface SME. This is fun. They are not technical like I am though. Yes they are using cool technology, unix systems and shell scripting, grabbing data from Lotus Notes, packaging it up and then running it through my interfaces into the mainframe. They want it batch, every 30 minutes for updating back and forth. Easy. I code up the mainframe JCL and then MS-DOS scripts on the Notes servers in literally 10 mins, spend 20 more testing and fine tuning. I have put together an interface using SFTP that uses change/delta based polling, checksums, authentication and authorisation and version tracking for each transfer for both non-repudiation and transaction reversal if needed on the mainframe side. The consultants are all like holy shit. I have never actually done this before on either the mainframe or a windows server, but I read a passing reference in an IBM online book, had found out the TCP/IP stack had been loaded onto our mainframe a few weeks earlier and that FTP/SFTP came standard with that. I knew how to /? on windows and taught myself Windows NT DOS scripts, not the simple ones but with unix like pipes etc. and also worked out that just getting the data back and forth wasn't enough, they needed to manage it in a real time operations environment. Taught myself all this literally as I programmed. "Dude we are definitely calling you next time we need some ftp scripting". They are Americans flown over for this project. Never of course heard from them again. But I got a self esteem boost, and saw that I had value to the type of consultants that I had just learnt existed in IT. I had also learnt that hardcore programmers were not top of the IT food chain. Hmmmm. Mostly what I realised was the consultants didn't get it and the people I worked with at IBM would never get it. In fact almost no one did. I wasn't good at DOS scripts, or even a good mainframe programmer. I was good at seeing how to pull things together to solve a problem no one knew how to in a very short period of time and then building a what I would later learn as a term from agile development, a "barely adequate" skill set to get it done. The people who are good at things simply cannot do what I did. Don't get me wrong, they can now. Its now standard commodity knowledge. But knowledge is static or at most linearly progressing. I am waging an asymmetric ground war of blitzkrieg movements sidestepping problems and adapting rapidly to situations as they evolve. Realise that I don't need to know things to be successful. My new career model is that I must increase in value at a faster rate than what is possible by the most skilled most brilliant people in my technical profession. Because I am not brilliant (I'm not, while quite smart - an overheard discussion between a friend and someone new to our social group "you get he's not just smart don't you? He's SMART" - I do not have an off the charts IQ, there is people smarter than me... its not common but I do work with them regularly. I also sure as shit never try to look smart and find people who talk about their high IQ as the first flag they are stupid.) the only way to make happen this increase in value in my career year after year, is asymmetric value. Working hard and being smart is failure in this career model. I need something else. This was a fun challenge to set myself, but created a need for a break from the employer who had been very good to me. Work here was stable and linear in growth. The opposite to the trajectory I needed.
Start asking people I work with "how do you become a consultant?". Disappointing news - they only take people with absolutely the top marks in IT or Business degrees. But I get told "you would do well at Andersen Consulting. You like wearing nice suits." I think it was a bit of the opposite of a back handed compliment. I worked with hard working Operations support and development programmers. They worked hard, and career progression was after 10 years you may be good enough to lead a team. I do up a resume. Highlight my recent experience linking up mainframes to web servers and Unix. Somehow it makes it past HR screening - I am told later a thorough investigation took place to check how someone without a degree could get an interview at Andersen Consulting for a full blown consultant position. The investigation was quashed at a partner level with my high billings and client trust. Credentials are important for perception, but reality wins even in the most perception sensitive organisations. Interview one. Meet an Accenture manager. Foyer, reception guy with a headset fielding calls and visitors directs me to wait in a chair for the manager to collect me. Manager arrives. Heads straight over to me. Shakes my hand. He is dressed WELL good hair. Confident. When I watch the TV Show "Suits" my brain is just going - yeah whatever this was a few years of my life (and ironically with a job offer for a Director role at KPMG at present on the table, will probably be my life again in a few weeks). He looked very different from the tired salt of the earth programmers I worked with. Ask him how he identified me so quick. "Reception said to look for the banker". Suit and tie choice. Quiet aspergers aloofness and complete lack of social awareness misinterpreted as professionalism and cultural sophistication. Good. I look conservative and reliable to him. I am actually fairly insane, no idea what I'm doing, know nothing about Andersen Consulting and still trying to work out how to get Quake 2 onto a mainframe as my primary goal in life. He takes me up to the main level. There is a massive coffee machine there. At this time, this was exceptionally new and rare. Offers me a coffee. The kitchen has been designed for the coffee machine. This is just awesome. Long black, throw in some sugar. ERRMAGHERD HEAVEN. I have not had real long black from an espresso machine before except when I was drunk in Newtown at a lesbian cafe ("the old fish shop") and drank a giant bowl of espresso and couldn't sleep for 2 days. Anyway, this was, as I said, awesome and it set me off with making me be all talkative and enthusiastic. This is much better in an interview than being all quiet, reflective and aspergers when you are going for management consulting jobs. Methodology. "I take the joke about us, about having the Andersen Chip implanted as a point of pride. The fact that you can replace one manager with another and have complete confidence in the outcome is very important to our clients." This is sort of what I experienced with those other consultants. But now I am seeing the inner workings of it. They are completely indoctrinated into a way of thinking. Mum's religious indoctrination of large numbers of people over the years. Timein the monastery, and deep understanding of both Catholic traditions and modern evangelical christianity gave me a very thorough grounding on brain washing. Home. He was impressed by how readily I affirmed and built on the concept of methodology right there off the top of my head in the meeting. "Look, I'm not supposed to tell you this straight away, but you should get ready for another interview. Your skills but more importantly your attitude are what we need." Another interview. Blitz it. Spend most of the interview joking with the guy. Senior Manager. By half way through it's all "yeah I'm bumping you up to meet the partner. You will join our Financial Services practice. We could do with you on our client AMP which is where I am. I will probably be your career manager. Your still quite junior, but we can probably bring you in as a Senior Consultant." Partner Interview. This partner is actually well know and I still get people asking if I ever worked with him. I'm at this point burnt out with the mental effort of trying to be normal and impress socially. Deep aspie mode. I know this won't go well. The partner is very quiet and reserved. He is judging me. My aspieness makes me not even fidget or be nervous (I do have forms of stimming, but they are reasonably socially acceptable/innocuous - until I live with someone, and then they are all OMG WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DO THAT IT IS MAKING ME INSANE). I am oblivious to social norms. While deeply anxious, it is internal and I am a poker face - not because I am trying, thats just how I am. He asks what I like about Andersen Consulting. I talk, genuinely, this is not in any way contrived, about how cool the whole concept of methodology is. My experience with it before and how I was so hungry for this knowledge. In passing I mention at the end of this "and to be honest, I am mostly in love with the coffee. It is just so much better than everywhere else." He was the partner in charge of and lead sponsor for the project to install the coffee machine, with a business case based around positive impact to clients and future recruits. He thinks I have researched this and shown complete masterful end to end execution of research of him, the firm, and then leveraged this information to make a direct positive impact to his decision making process delivered in a sufficiently gentle way that is not overplayed. This right here is real consulting shit. But none of this is true. Is it dumb luck? Yes and no. I was being true to my natural instincts and my natural instincts that are so easy to me led to the same outcome that someone else has to invest immense resources into. I can and have done similar in different situations by following my instincts. Sign On Bonus. What the f??? They are going to pay me money to sign the form to join them. They will literally deposit a few thousand dollars into my bank account before I even work for them. Why did no one tell me this is even possible? Why did I never get jobs at companies like this before??? I tell people at work "Andersen Consulting offered me a job and a sign on bonus". Immediately distance forms. A few of the older friends congratulate me. But I am now an alien. No longer one of the tribe that I had spent so long getting accepted by despite all my "quirks". All Your Base Are Belong To Us Life changed here. I wore nice suits all the time. The people I worked with also did. Absolutely all of my colleagues were within a reasonably tight IQ band of me. I didnt have to feel bad for being smart around people that had higher social positioning. My career started to take off. New types of interaction emerged however. The archetype of the behaviour can be traced back to high school and the social positioning games to be popular or cool. I had not had to even be aware of this for over a decade. My career lead on the engagement at a large financial services company was this young Indian guy, lets call him J. Now this is before India and IT was a thing. In fact he was the first person to mention to me Infosys and that I should buy shares in them. The one nice bit of advice he offered. J worked out quickly I was not going to advance his social position. I was not worth time. I also rapidly formed the view J did not have a job in technology for technology. He was just here for the money. This means he was actually a failure. He wasn't able to become a stockbroker (although he mentioned it a lot) so he was in his fallback to pay the bills. I had run into this before, but he was an extreme example of it. I did not have the skills to protect myself from someone like J especially when he was in an authority position over me to report back on my career development. Ultimately my reputation suffered with a few people as a result. I do recall being in one meeting with my manager, Mr Smithers yelling at me "give us your opinion, we are paying you to give us your opinion". I had always thought it rude to voice my opinion, especially if it very much disagreed with the dominant alpha in the room. This was helpful for me. They wanted me to talk even if a loud dominant person was convinced my opinion isnt needed. Melbourne. Sent to work on a large IT transformation. Suddenly I had some seniority. Despite knowing nothing. Fly back and forth every 1 or 2 weeks between Sydney and Melbourne. Plane flights are very angst ridden torture devices for me. Close eyes, grip seat, lately I have started a routine of telling myself its just like a fish swimming through water whenever we hit turbulence. Remind myself of the very low statistical occurance of major faults on jet planes. Constantly fear being hit by another plane or seaguls in the engine. Set up shop in Prahran. This was a hipster suburb before there was such things as hipsters, that's how hipster it was. My days are a suit wearing management consultant, operating as a project manager and then a technology architect. My managers and I find out that I have this near unique ability to conceptualise a pragmatic solution to previously impossible problems. This leads to a rapid growth in responsibility. I am 120% billable AFTER deducting holidays / sick leave etc. To a partner on an account this says promotion material. I have no idea about any of this. Just loving the freedom to think. My computer gaming is my real passion however at this time. There is a place in the melbourne CBD that is essentially a floor full of computers on cheap desks on concrete. It is packed wall to wall with teenage and university aged asian males. I am one of the very few white boys with the balls to go there. I wanted to see what they did. That many nerds in one room had to be amazing. Counter Strike. It is so goddam hard. If you die, your dead. You can be sneaky and creep around, but that won't save you in the end. GEEKBOY starts abysmally. Dead. Dead. Dead. Eventually a growth in knowledge and talent. His powers grow. A first kill using an MP5 against a bunnyhopping asian nerd. Life achievement unlocked. Eat Consult Game Repeat. This is my life. I actually really like it. A different side of me also starts to emerge at this time. I have learnt to lie. I cheat on my girlfriend. In time I will do this more than most realise. I become practiced. A pattern. The thing is, I don't even do it for the sex. The utter overwhelming anxiety makes it horrific. If you have aspergers, seriously masturbating to an old Kmart catalogue offers you more joy than an affair. I actually hate it. No this is not guilt. Real guilt comes later, and not over this. Instead I regret not being honest and for causing hurt. I regret what I am becoming. But I am weak and hide hide hide. I have never once enjoyed the sex from an affair or pretty much a one night stand. This is actually very sad, not moral. I feel chained, shackled to a construct of morals still that denies me finding joy in this most basic of human acts of intimacy. I have found that women, who I had held in such a high regard, are just as base as men who I pretty much hate. Vile men who judge me, push me around, bully me, treat women badly so they assume that I am like those men until I prove myself otherwise. But women too will lie, cheat, throw everything away without thought to morality like I now hypocritically prided myself on. They will flirt with a man already in a relationship. I realise I cannot use a womans judgement to protect me from myself. I am now wading into very dangerous territory. Where I am going, there is no guide. My faith has abandoned me, or more correctly - I, it. Those who I love and who love me I am lying to and abandoning at the least and for the one who stood by me more than all others, stabbing in the back. There is a shift inside me. I am no longer Geekboy. I have become something else. There is no cute, no naive - or at least what is still left is slowly dissipating. What am I? What will I become? My sense of self has profoundly transformed. I am still quiet, shy, "How do you know if a millionaire is from Silicon Valley? He still can't get a date" is a joke used to reference me at a party. Fundamentally cannot understand or even know that I don't know much of human relationship fundamentals. I am bitter, but growing strong in my career. My word carries weight, the pretty boy social engineers have to take the nerd seriously or their projects get canned by the partner. I take joy in making departments redundant or downsizing as a result of my architectures. Arrogant. Drinking the cool aid of elitism of a "top tier" consulting firm. I think the world hates me, but I hate it back harder and keep thinking one day I will be strong enough to put it in it's place.
I remember my IBM performance review, before I quit. There was a question "Outline your career aspirations 5+ years". My answer was scoffed at politely by my manager. "I will become an ecommerce deity". This was the time when IBM was pushing the concept of "ecommerce" and everything had an "e" in front of it (kind of like apple does with "i" now). A guy I worked with used to take "I do eBusiness" stickers and put them on his shirt to go out clubbing. Apparently it was good for breaking the ice at raves to talk to cute girls.
I change my Counterstrike name to eDeity. This was now a very different young man to the one whos hopes and dreams centred on finding acceptance and some friends.
This post is to tell a little tale. I have told variations of this story many times. Introducing myself to another boring group activity "introduce yourself" or trying to get lucky on a date. Here I feel that I can tell it in a way I have never done before. Honestly. I don't need to fit in here and try to logically work out which parts will offend your sensibilities of normalcy. If your on this subreddit your probably not normal. In fact your probably one of those rare people like me. This has been written at the behest of one of the admins. I think he has a slight man crush on me, although he implied he is gay so maybe an actual crush. But I will take it. I mean the positive affirmation of interest. The story will be broken down into three parts. Part I - 0 to 25. Part II 25 to 40. Part III The Future. Right now, I am sitting here writing Part I, in a hotel room. I am a management consultant and am flown around my country and the world for work. I am developing a technology strategy this week for an Australian federal government department. Next week I am presenting to our largest telecommunications carrier with a strategy to transform the customer experience of their business operations by using their customer data in a new way. My career has taken me to some of the Tech centres around the world, I have shaped the thinking about technology for some of the largest companies in my home country Australia, and even changed the global thinking for a few big american companies. No I didnt rock the world, not a super success story, but I've done stuff and have made a difference, and not in the bullshit NT emotional "I made a difference", as in the software works differently now, the finances are difference, there is less or more people working in different departments different. I made a real difference. An Aspie difference. I am a father of two teenagers, one of whom is also diagnosed as Aspergers. I am also someone that was not expected to ever be able to hold a full time job, regarded as incapable of ever doing something that required working with other people and was diagnosed with aspergers at age 15 but never told until in my late 30's. Homeopathy and meditation was supposed to have fixed me before then, so why did I need to know? The interest expressed was for me to talk about my life before children and then raising aspergers children as a parent with aspergers themself. What may make this a little interesting to you, poor reader suffering a massive wall of text is that I tend to not be shy of voicing opinions that while considered are almost always controversial. Get your popcorn ready. Shits about to get real. I am the first son of a married doctor with 8 children before I was born and an escort or prostitute (I still dont understand the difference). My father made and lost fortunes multiple times, had a total off 11 children and as a doctor was terrible relating to patients but had such exacting focus, breadth of knowledge and ability to try new risky techniques many people to this day visit him in his end stage dimentia to still thank him for saving their life 40 years ago by doing high risk surgery he had only previously read about in a medical journal. "If I'm not dying, no offense but your dad is the last doctor I would want. If I am dying tell the other doctors to shutup and let your dad work". My mother runs a global christian cult preaching against evil and sin and receives a lot of donations from America. I'm sure she would thank you if she was reading this thread. I have been diagnosed with 2 mental conditions, aspergers and bipolar. My bipolar is the real bipolar. I often describe it as "the Charlie Sheen Tigers Blood kind of bipolar". Having two conditions is quite rare. But as far as rare goes, this combination is common so Im not super special unique, just have complex issues to deal with. I am now medicated and quite stable, but I worked for nearly 20 years in corporate life as an unmedicated bipolar. You need to have insane mental discipline and a practiced ability at hiding bodies to do that. But more on that later. I have been told by a friend who is a movie director that the perfect story arc to tell any tale is Star Wars. So we can start with Luke Skywalker. In business we learn to talk about ourselves, our products, resumes, services, problems, projects also in stories. For me this is fortunate. I was born under one name, but at the age of seven decided I was now named after Luke Skywalker. Teachers, parents, priests all at first thought I could be disciplined out of it and then waited out of it. Eventually in a parent teacher interview the strictist disciplinarian nun in the school (this was back when they could belt kids with canes and rulers) said to my parents that normally they would not even consider this, but he is so intent on being called this name that we may need to accept it. Beyond being a quiet boy who did his own thing, had trouble with basics of interpersonal communication but still somehow also ended up leading groups of children to do things... but leading in a really odd way... this was the first sign he was a little more than just odd... I used to think I was like Luke Skywalker. But it was not until later I realised I was actually to become the tragic short lived hero Darth Maul. I had spent my life pursuing an internal code of discipline and training. I could do things with my mind both as a result of my differences and enhanced by this training that those around me could not. Things came easy to me, but some basic things the damned Jedi free to walk around and be praised by people could just cut me down over. I learnt I was not a Jedi but a Sith in training, not because I wanted to be badass... quite the opposite in fact, but because I was a victim to a society on a progressive progrom of extermination, and the only way to survive would be to take control of the galaxy by any means necessary. Again, more on this later. Social development followed the usual pattern for an aspergers. Looking in hindsight now that I know what that is. Life was anxiety. Solitude was heaven. An interesting dynamic for me, which most aspergers wont get is the effect of the bipolar. They operate as counterweights. Aspergers makes me retreat and reflect. People cannot connect to me. Bipolar makes me "hold a knife in my teeth and leap across the gap between ships yelling arrgggh!! me matey's!!!". The dynamic is weird, and it does not at all balance out to be "normal". I found that in Christian youth groups I could achieve the right balance between reflective and silent for acceptance by the pastors, and seriously but subtly deranged bad boy for the christian girls to swoon and drag me off for a "walk" when on camps. By 14 I had come down with a severe autoimmune disease. I remember the night like it was yesterday. Had gone to bed feeling like I had the flu. By early hours of the morning was burning with a fever lying on bathroom tiles for the coolness and feeling like I was going to die like I have never had since. People I have tried to describe it to just go yeah, you were really sick. It happens. Either way, it scarred me. Teachers and at first parents thought I "needed a kick up the bum" when it stretched on for weeks. I was unable to do any sustained physical activity for the next eight years. I spent my adolescence in a near coma, with bursts of energy to have part of a life. This became normal to me however. I got to spend a lot of time on my own. Because school was not working out for me, I wanted to do something. I found an ad in the paper for a job for a computer graphic artist. I patched together a portfolio and a ridiculously thin resume, but included such things as my school report on computer science (I was notoriously lazy but... brilliant.. at school) which had a very pointed comment on my making top of the year in exam results "he has achieved a fine result with a minimum of effort". To date my proudest performance review, with the feedback from my art teacher "your proposition that the macintosh computer will one day be regarded as a work of art shows you have failed to understand the concept of functional art this year" being a close second. Yes Miss no design artist ever looks to the Macintosh as a form of functional art. I totally missed that one. In the end, I talked my way with no qualification no experience into being one of the very first computer graphic designers. I used Photoshop 1.0 and Adobe Illustrator 88. No not because I was a retro hipster, because this was the newest never before seen technology that just starting to change the publishing world. It was the weird combination of aspergers showing I had more than enough tech focus and nerdiness, and the sheer balls of being on an unmedicated bipolar upswing. F-yeah I can be a graphic artist, I will buy the book right now and be a legend tomorrow. But the thing is with aspergers you can. I taught myself 6502 assembler programming this way. Bought the book. Studied it religiously. When I ran into something I couldnt understand keep reading to find where that knowledge was used to get more insight, then go back and read the book front to back AGAIN and then AGAIN. This is what it actually takes to be a nerd. Not be particularly brilliant but be able to sustain the hard slog of gaining knowledge when there is no feedback positive or negative at all. Friends started to become important to me. By 15 had started suffering depression. I was alone. I knew I was weird, but that didnt concern me. People just treated me differently, and hell I sure had very different interests than they did, so maybe it was fair. But loneliness and constant dissapproval burrows into you. Suicide started to become a thought. I found being around friends that appreciated me helped. I didnt need friends because I was lonely or they were fun. I needed them to survive. And like a starving wolf, I hunted friendships down. My aspergers made it hard to sustain friendships. I was damn boring and depression didnt exactly make me a blast a lot of the time. But finding other aspies... rare as they are recognised a friend in me and I in them. A group of aspies, a network suddenly becomes something that is interesting and attractive. I orchestrated a network of friends that ended up attracting a very broad range of people from many schools or groups. I was the centre. They only knew each other through me. They become loyal and this friendship group became our culture. To this day we all still talk and treasure this time that had a lasting impact on who we are, how we define ourselves. It became far bigger than me. Marriages happened from it. Children. But when it started I did it out of sheer desperation to stay alive. By age 18 I had grown tired of the same patterns of spiritual and social interaction. I was not growing. I had learnt all I was going to here. I wanted more. The christian pastors were just not... smart. Their IQ was obviously less than mine by a margin that age and experience did not compensate. The diocesesan catholic canon lawyer was smart. I wanted to talk to him more, but never did. The cool priest I chatted to, and while not super smart was very encouraging. He had to leave a few months later after coming out as gay. My mother sent me to stay with a monk who was a hermit. I was there 4 weeks. We did not speak, but we chanted the psalms in latin 7 times a day and practiced contemplatio (meditation). Mind blown. This was awesome. He took me to a Benedictine Monastery - for nuns. There was young nuns here. Nuns you would consider interesting cool, dare I say hot chicks if you met them anywhere else. These women had such sense of purpose and identity. I wanted to be this.
In hindsight the strict rules systems and structure with physical, emotional and spiritual actualisation all linked to them was absolutely electric for my dear little aspy brain. I would become the most monky monk that had been seen for some time. I began a journey of both spiritual and intellectual development. Joined a Benedictine Monastery that was founded by Spanish Monks. We practiced full monastic discipline. Silence. Obedience. Chastity. Chanting in latin 7 times a day. I can still chant the Salve Regina and of course Ave Maria but lots of people can do that one, not very special. Even now my brain is going.. Pater Noster.. qui es in caelis... but you have to learn to chant to really get it right and experience the beauty of it. Chanting later helped appreciate what could be done with Enterprise level Services Oriented Architecture. Small simple elegant processes intertwining makes something far grander and whole than a centrally designed system. I left the monastery and religious life after 2 years. Ultimately I respected logic and by extension science as the supreme authority. The life of a monk in the benedictine tradition also respects logic and science. It is a very bookish and academic order, and predates the modern church so its culture is quite different to this modern faddish christianity that has only been codified for a thousand years. I still felt spiritual. I had now developed intense ability to control my feelings. Hunger, cold, sex, pain (could kneel for hours and hours, fast for a week with ease and not look sexually at a naked woman in front of me... and yes this happened) even down to control of my most minute thoughts I could steer my brain. I was honest. Pure. Genuine. Naive. I knew I could not stay a monk because I wanted more to know more than that life could give. To this day I reflect on my monastic years as the happiest in my life. I miss them, I would be a crippled person (but with meditation super powers probably) if I stayed. University. Used the learnings from getting a job by talking my way into it, "mum I want to go to Uni. How do I get in without any qualification and never having finished high school?". Special consideration. Explain my medical conditions. Write an application letter outlining how much going to university would mean. The woman processing the papers remembers me as that good christian role model of a boy. Im in. Back to ground zero with aspergers at uni. Young women wont look at me twice. I am the pinnacle of aspie nerdom. Whitest white boy, no style, no social skills, no interests in life, cant explain what ive been doing for the last few years. I'm lonely. Studying computers and its dead boring. I taught myself all this when i was 8 and in year three you learn what I taught myself at 14. Student Politics. I started using my friendship survival strategy to build a new network of nerds. Find the other aspergers students. Talk about computer games. Warhammer. Sci fi. Two became three. Three became five. Five became 8. Eight young men, tightly managed, trustworthy and fiercly loyal we found out when the secretary of the young labor party for our campus bought us pints of guiness was a faction. And a faction means you can have power. Power means you can take control of finances. And all this means you dont need to go looking for a date, they will come looking for you. Wha? I became an executive director of the student representative council. Communications Director. I was probably the worst ever interpersonal communicator for that organisation, but I held the power and loyalty of a voting block. And then we made friends with the footballers who hated the hippies that were our political opponents. The world was ours. The IT systems got an upgrade. Horse trading between the hippies and my block to fund different projects. They got some shitty protest and buses funded. "Why are you guys so obsessed with computers anyway? Don't you get no one is ever going to use this internet web you keep talking about?" Sexual relationships were weird for me. I had had sex. When I was 15-17. In hindsight quite a lot. But I was always awkward and anxious. To this day I still cant believe someone wants to have sex with me. Again normal aspy stuff. There was a girl. She invited me to her place. She had seen me being the centre of attention of all the student politics stuff and was in my computer class before I transfered over to law. I was wearing a brand new sweater made of Llama hair or something. It was really nice. We made out. A lot. For like 4 hours. I flat out did not know how to read signals. Eventually she stood and looked at me incredulously "aren't you bored of just kissing?". I was confused. That didnt help. I lent her my sweater and left. I saw her crying at university a few days later. She hadn't contacted me. She was wearing my sweater. She saw me, but it was like a thousand mile stare. The person I was walking with said that they heard she had been raped by her flat mate and was leaving. I didnt know how to deal with that. I of course did not try to get the sweater back. I was too anxious to go and talk to her. I think she wanted me to. I wanted to not live at home so I could have sex a lot. Living out of home is expensive. With my new found ability to control people using things other than heartfelt appeal (i.e. using votes, finances and propoganda campaigns run by an unstoppable political machine of loyalist nerds) I realised I could get the money together to rent a big house for next to nothing by structuring a lease agreement for a share house. This sounds like a small thing. But for me it was massive. So many people were involved. Real Estate Agent, house owner, my other tenants. Then I had to maintain control. Who controls the money, what are the conditions for entering or leaving the house, what about food, bills, etc. etc. For an aspy this is not easy, and mostly because each part involves people having confidence in you and worse you having to explain to them how its going to work and why they need to follow the rules.
For me I found if I created 3D models of all the concepts and relationships in my head I could always see how one change could effect the others. The other important thing I learnt was how important trust is. One person can tear apart an awesome machine if they get inside. Eventully I became harsh immediately if someone displayed disloyalty to the house. It always fell down to me to get people to move out, and they would hate me - even though it was always at the rest of the houses request. One day I woke up. 3rd year of university. I walked through the house and backyard as I did early every morning, about the time we used to do first prayers in the monastery. Saw the bench of computers, resting from a hard day and night of tie fighter, doom and command and conquer. The kitchen. Reasonably clean but full of impoverished student food. Noodles and the cheapest cuts of rancid meat. The futons on the floor. Bean bag. It was time to move on. I packed then and there. I carried my clothes AND MY COMPUTER in one of those homeless people bags, heavier than I could lift or even carry five kilometres to the train station. I bought a ticket to Sydney and sat for about 3 hours on my bag waiting for the train. This was serious aspy bipolar shit right here. Extreme sudden motivation followed through with structured planning and inhuman patience with zero communication to anyone because I had no concept that may be necessary. My (younger) brothers house. Hi. I thought I could stay on your floor. Im moving to Sydney. "Do you have money?" "No" "Do you have a job?" "No. But I brought my computer I can fax my resume straight from it" (this was before email was used to send resumes around, even though people like me had email... serious business people didnt use email). "Ok..." Then get on a bus and travel to where my girlfriend that we never broke up even though she moved to Sydney to start her career was working in a bank brach. We hadn't spoken in some time. Walk into bank branch. See her. She totally freezes up. No she hasnt been screwing anyone or anything like that. It was just that the least expected thing to happen to her that year just happened.
"Come back later". The Sydney years commence. Getting a job was interesting. If you recall my little tale about being ill and calculate when I left the monastery you will know I am not well yet. I cannot conceive I can actually hold a job by being awake for 8 hours. But I need one to survive. I also have no qualifications. My experience is limited to studying computing and law for 3 years, playing A LOT of computer games, programming, and being a devious bastard at student politics and turning that into money through an outsourcing of IT to my own company. I apply for paralegal jobs. Law is a prestigious career and even though I am not qualified I know enough to be of use in this area. The head paralegal at one of the most prestigious firms in Sydney decides she hates my reserved quiet personality, and despite all those hourse of playing DOOM i cant type 80wpm. Despair. WINDOWS NT ADMINS NEEDED WE WILL TAKE ANYONE IF YOU HAVE DONE AN ADMIN COURSE. 80K. Hmm.... 30K to work for a bunch of stuck up lawyers or 80K if I do a 2 week course. "Dad I need 2 grand to do a course" "Do you really need it?" "Yes." "Ok." That was all the conversation I ever needed to get anything from him. He knew I always told the truth and always thought about it. He was also the same. I got a $14k Mac IIfx this way. I needed it to learn Renderman programming. I had no concept of money, but it was the best platform to learn Renderman or a Sun workstation which didnt play the games I liked. I miss Dad, but mostly in the I hope I will have been as helpful to be missed as much kind of way. He told me what his father said to him when he had that exact conversation with Grandpa "Don't thank me. Make sure you do the same for someone else.". I never met Grandpa (my father is 50 years older than me) but I feel close. So..... freshly minted windows NT admin fax out the resume. First job Interview. CSIRO. This is like Australias top science research agency thing. Its as close as we get to working at NASA. Work here I thought should equal career PRESTIGE!. Its also a bitch to commute to, second only to IBMs campus in Sydney. Walking around, being shown the place, being told why they think I would be a good fit I keep noticing the computers. They are old. My gaming rig I bought on my disability pension is better. And the network cables. They didnt have the money for proper Ethernet cards. They used converters for their serial ports. Thats some povo stuff right there. I was dirt poor. I mean one meal a day that wasnt 2 minute noodles living on my medical student brothers floor poor. But I had ethernet cards. I get a call back the next day. For context - I'm running out of friends at the sharehouse my brother is in. "When is your weird freaky quiet brother leaving?". I have little money. No job prospects. But the call back from the CSIRO comes in. We would love for you to start immediately. I say no. Aspy me goes through a routine of logical analysis. Opportunity cost of taking this job eliminates possibility of a better job being accepted. Additionally game theory of adverse selection, the job that most wants you is the job you should reject. So no. "OH MY FUCKING GAWWWWDDDDD" from... well... everyone. I try to explain the economics theory and game theory. They particularly hate game theory (every one does even now). Next day phone call. Recruitment agency. "Hello, we have your resume from when you sent it a few weeks ago. Our client IBM has looked at it. Are you available for an interview tomorrow?" "Hell yeah" "Ok, well if it goes well, you will start immediately so please be prepared." The interview went like this - Sit in foyer, with receptionst smiling to me. Security door thing opens guy in suit steps out. He looks me up and down "alright, lets go". That was the interview. I was now working for IBM. My first job since age 15. Asking later why on earth did I get the job, "oh the project manager he came from construction before he was in technology. He had a stack of thirty resumes. He saw you used to be in politics. He pointed at it and asked if you could do the job and we said any of them could.". Lesson learnt: getting involved in highly controversial things and disregarding advice to leave them out of your resume can pay off. Lowest of the Low in IT. Lower than desktop support. I was doing software rollouts. This was at a time when centrally rolling out software was not common or really possible. 1mbs ethernet was blindingly fast! Who could use that? I mean ever? This kind of work actually required direct human interaction with a lot of people, often for periods of time. This was my first experience ever of a corporate culture. I was horrifically bad at this part of the job. A secretary for an up and coming exec, who would later lead the company I was doing rollouts in VOWED to have me fired. All because she felt frustrated at the way I had explained how to use the new technology called Office 95. She was used to Windows 3.11 and had her life working well with it. Oh and it was her that explained "execs dont use email. I print the emails for them and give it them in this leather bound folder and then type up their comments that they write down"). This shit is just hilarious looking back at how retarded humans are. I firmly do not believe this is an age gap thing. My father at age 70 was riding the dot com boom while his friends told him he was a damn fool. This gap is far deeper than age or how you are educated. Anyway, there was a yawning chasm between this woman and I. Drinks. I had read that staff who went drinking with colleagues were promoted faster and had more career opportunities. I had learnt to drink at university. Thank you again student politics, where everything is settled over beer (or complex things over stronger stuff and no I dont mean scotch). I found I could be acceptable as a friend to a range of people at work if I could drink. So I drank. And drank. ANd I became known throughout the office. I was the oddball, strange guy, but hes smart. Some of the girls flirted a bit with me. First moral questions I had ever had to face. Im living with a girl, these other girls know this, and they are flirting anyway. I met a really tall guy at one of these work drinking sessions. I was controlling the pool cue. He says hi. I am drunk so have enough confidence to say hi back, what do you do. He explains he runs a team of mainframe programmers. I am drunk remember. "OH MY GAWD MAINFRAME! I HAVE NEVER PROGRAMMED A MAINFRAME! YOU MUST GIVE ME A JOB". He laughed at the drunk guy. He challenged me to pool. I was pretty good from uni and normally better the drunker I got (muscle memory) so had a level of confidence. SO I layed down the bet. Free drink if you win, if I win I get to interview for your team. I won.
Interview, MFND Funds Management System development team. Pre-requisites Adabas/Natural, JCL, Cobol, DB2. I had none of these skills. I knew some COBOL but only because that was the only unit at university I ever failed. Our Lecturer was called John Roach. I founded the John Roach Meditation Society. Only at one of his lectures could the brain release itself so freely of all physical connection that the soul could wander truly unfettered. A lot of people fell asleep in his class. But the truth is, I was disinterested and when that happens I am terrible at doing things. Conversly I got a high distinction in Computer Security, lecturers opening statement first lecture: "You get the mark it says on the computer at the end of the semester". Motivation and some flexibility in how to get the result. These I have found are essential for my own success. Anyway, interview.
Like all interviews, I have trouble connecting. I walk in, in a suit. I look good, look the part. After a few minutes they get serious doubts. I cant do small talk. I weirdly try to overcompensate for not looking them in the eye. I make innapropriate comments when trying to be engaging and funny. "So you work in desktop support. What makes you think you can be a programmer?" "I taught myself to program when I was 8" "What have you programmed on?" "Well I learnt first on an Apple II Europlus, I had 2 5 1/4 drives, I programed in Applesoft Basic, Pascal and 6502 assembler" "Ok so tell me how to write something in Apple Basic" "Well when I downloaded a bunch of ascii art porn from a bulletin bored I had to write my own printer driver to make the second hand dot matrix printer I had bought work after I wired the cables to the serial port." ramble ramble ramble "and then to get the ascii art to print rather than displaying it to the screen I just had to change it to PR#6 to route the character output to the printer" He smiled.
Thanks we will call you back.
Aspergers wins again over people skills. I heard the discussion afterwards was along the lines of "damn hes weird" "yes but hes smart. I think he can do it"
I had now jumped from desktop support to the world of technology development. I had yet to learn that the word methodology existed, but I was about to. Spiritually I was a monk living in sin, but I was still religious at this point. My brother as part of his medical science studies had been having lengthy discussions with me about the Homonculus Fallacy, how there is actually no such thing as a soul. My own research into AI and neural networks gave me a viewed that supported this. Most of the arguments FOR a soul were just scientifically retarded and based on a complete absence of understanding the way the brain worked. But I had not let go of the faith or belief, but I had stopped going to Mass and had stopped praying. I start gaming big time. I take up the moniker GEEKBOY. This would be my online identity for the next 4 years. I research this internet thing. I start to connect with others through it. The way in which people like me can use it is very different to what most people can do. They seem limited in their imagination and how they can use it. And this is mostly with still text driven tools. Yes there are web pages, hell I used Netscape 1.0 and before that green screen terminals for internet. But for the humans it was about how it looked and felt. They just didnt have this ability to see and manipulate the world beyond that using tech. I noticed a divide emerging from people in technology. The career was becoming popular - it was highly paid and relatively easy to get into. Increasingly people in technology were not nerds at all. The problem with this, is that yes the politics of funding something doesnt require nerds, but the actual technology part of technology does. I worked out if you ask someone if they play computer games, you know instantly which side of this devide they are on. This becomes important to me. I feel my career, my world is being taken over and colonised by aliens. My survival is at stake. I start to respond like I always have - network with like minded people, build into a group, start taking power. But I'm finding in the grown up world, its not that easy. You see the other side has people sort of like me too. Not the aspergers, but the other bits. But they also have more of them. At this point I am 25 years old. I have done and experienced more than anyone thought the emotionally, socially and physicall crippled boy would, but this is just the start. The world has had its cruelties but they have been managed. With help, gained by creating non traditional friendships out of nothing but a recognition that we are aspies in this together and bonding over computer games, we built a new world together that helped each of us. All my aspie friends from this time now have six figure jobs and are married some even happily. We built a world for us at this the start of our careers and it lasted. But I also am starting to think there is a war going on. One that no one told me I was in. I have recurring nightmares of soldiers machine gunning down everyone I know. I keep screaming at them "Its easy. Dodge the bullets like I do. Sneak by walking on your feet like this". They cant. I know they don't think like I do and my advice they cant understand. My girlfriend is trying to run to safety behind me when she is machine gunned down. I dream maybe once a year. So it sticks. None of my friends understand my concern about a war. The biggest battles are behind them now. None of them come with me on the next steps. For that I would need new friends. Very different friends. This is Part I. No its not the seriously hard hitting part yet. This is called context. Or a sucker punch. Depends on which school of boxing your from. I will look at writing Part II in the next day or two, depending on how bad the downvoting is. Anyway, shuttup and post your crappy opinions to try and farm a few karma already.
