I'm one of the lucky ones - my hobby is my work! I first started using computers many years ago (around the 286 days) and was simply a user. When I lost my job in 1976 I bought my first PC and after 3 months wanted my first upgrade. When I saw what they did and what they charged, I said to myself "I can do that"! Since then I've been on my own. I have a very small computer company here in Germany and have had to learn everything myself - no courses, but hundreds of hours reading and trying out what I learned.
WISE is one of my favorite programming tools. You're only supposed to use it to program installation routines, but I found out quickly you can do a lot more with it! We had one instance where over 500 notebooks were infected with a virus that first deactivated Norton, and then prevented the PC from booting (WinNT). With WISE and NTFSPRO and Norton, I was able to write a routine that cleaned everything up!.
And I love DOS! So many people have forgotten the good old days of FAST, STABLE DOS and don't realize it can still help in a lot of situations today.
I am glad I found Experts Exchange! It is now one of my primary hobbies because it lets me try to help people all over the world with what I have learned through experience. It is my standard START site. I only want to help. I have even included my ranking (which changes all the time) in my resume for reference purposes! I've seen a lot of FORUMS, but Experts Exchange is the best for me.
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My favorite Experts:
LucF
CrazyOne
nobus
Cyber-Dude