I was always dismantling things as a child. Remote control cars, clocks, lawn mowers, etc. I had a strong desire to just learn how things "worked." I picked

I was always dismantling things as a child. Remote control cars, clocks, lawn mowers, etc. I had a strong desire to just learn how things "worked." I picked up a Tandy 1000HX second hand when I was probably 9 or 10 years old. I mowed a ton of lawns to get a hard drive for that machine. Shortly thereafter, I received a 486 and a handful of Walnut Creek CDs of various (dated) Linux/BSD distributions. I'm still not sure how those CDs came into my possession, I believe they were passed on to me from a friend. I spent some time BBSing and learning to write shell scripts. On a couple of BBSes, I read hacking and phreaking text files and started to learn C/Assembly. It was free knowledge as our library was lacking in tech books and I rarely got to go to a bookstore. I also developed a fascination with radio, telephony, and basic electronics. Three to four years later, the family decided it was time we had a computer (that we could all use). They picked up a 90Mhz box from HP that I promptly installed Linux on and used it to play games, program, and read any sort of documentation I could get my hands on. I also branched out into Perl and started writing small applications with it. We got Internet access about this time and I spent hours saving/absorbing documentation and tutorials from gopher/www/ftp sites. In my late teens, I took on a job at the local Radio Shack repairing busted electronics. I learned quite a bit there, but electronics these days are disposable, so I had to find other work. I was doing penetration testing on the side for quick cash and ended up getting a contract for the City I lived in. After I finished the job, I got hired on as an intern in the IT department while going through college. In university, I carried a double major in Computer Science and Pure Mathematics while also attending the local community college for Network Administration. I never finished either degree as I was offered a full time job as Network Administrator at the City. I took the job, quit school, and got married. During the year or two before I dropped out of school, I learned Ruby with some friends from the ACM at the university and began doing freelance development. So here I am today, Network Administrator for a small municipality and part time freelance Ruby developer. I'd really like to ditch the ties of my day job and get a full time development job or break out into my own business, but I'm trying to save up some buffer before I decide to take the leap.