(c) 2008 djd
Darren
John
Dwyer,
Wellington,
Australia,
All
Rights
Reserved.
-= On This Site =-
What's On This Website
All about Darren
All about Marijuana, Alcohol, Cigarettes, Milk, etc.
I was Violated
An Old Huge Open Letter
For True Believers
Message To The Blind
About Oceanica
The Earth
The Universe
The Megaverse
- Who Am I?
- What am I on About?
- What is my History?
- My Last Years...
- What are my Skills?
- What have I learned in life?
- How I do things differently...
- What can I really achieve?
ALL ABOUT DARREN
Last Updated: 20th April 2024
Originally Created: year 2007
This page is all about me, the author of this website...
( it is an old photo, 5 years ago )
It has been created so you can read about me, get familiar with my life,
understand me a lot more, understand my history, my thoughts, my principles,
and so on...
:: On This Page ::
Or simply scroll down to read all the information...
WHO AM I?
I am Darren, originally Darren John Schloeffel, but now Darren John Dwyer,
born April 16th, 1968, a mature human being, with unique thoughts and actions...
I am a computer programmer by necessity, since that is the only real talent I profess to having...
I try to sing, but cannot because my vocal chords do not work correctly, i can make music, i can write,
i can do many things...
In my life I have tried many things, and have failed many times...
But each time I have tried again, learnt from my mistakes, and finally, i have been successful...
I know a lot about small to big business, making money, computer programming, website development,
science, religion, politics, etc.
For 25 long years I have learned all about computers, science, business, etc. and
I have now achieved confidence in those quarters and have set myself a real-world goal
of progressing towards my long time goal of making the world a decent place to live.
...
I am a quiet man, thoughtful and considered in my opinion, and i am a realist most of all.
I do not "simply" believe in God, sprituality, the afterlife, Heaven or Hell or anything similar.
For me, psychics, fortune tellers, and some similar, new-age teachings are a load of crap.
I believe in the teachings of humanity, and that when you are dead, you are dead.
There may be nothing after death, you most likely just simply fade away into non-existance.
I prefer reality above fantasy, anyday.
I also like to believe that intelligence exists elsewhere in the vast megaversity,
and I do like to believe that these intelligences actively seek to help humanity evolve
into the future.
Above all, i believe a few certainties:
(1) you cannot predict the future, and you cannot change the past.
(2) you have the right to choose your own destiny.
...
I would describe myself as a visionary, a realist, a scientist, a rationalist, an entrepreneur, and an intellectual.
(not necessarily in that order)
WHAT AM I ON ABOUT?
Why have I done this?
Why have I setup this webpage?
What exactly am I on about?
Well, it's all a matter of priorities.
All my life, it's been a matter of priorities.
I've never really worked for anyone else, because that was a low priority. Thats not how you achieve great things.
I've only ever really worked for myself, learning and experiencing and failing, and starting again...
However, for the first 9+ years, I was primarily focused on developing [www.BCB-Tools.com] before [http://tdxlibrary.org],
my computer software company, all so I can escape poverty, create a whole bunch of new technology,
and use it for my future plans.
After 9+ years of 120 hour weeks devoted to making this first company viable, it is now self-sustaining, and I can now
focus my efforts elsewhere... so i created the new website in my spare time...
just for a start.
Basically, I've achieved nearly all I want to achieve with my first successful company for now,
and I'm putting it on auto-pilot so that I have all the time in the world to build my next company,
something beyond recognition.
MY HISTORY...
I was born in 1968 in rural New South Wales, Australia, a little town called Dubbo.
I lived there with my mother and grandparents till i was about 7 years old.
As I grew up, Dubbo was pretty well the center of my universe, since that is where my family all live.
I was constantly surrounded by my relatives as my entire family revolved around my grandmother,
who had had five children, of which my mother was the oldest.
Because I was so small, and because there was always food on the table, i never realized that these
people were all living in a very poor family overall, trapped in poverty and renting for life...
...
I never knew my real father, as he became an abusive drunk and my mother divorced him very early
on in my life.
...
My first memory was as a 4-year old, smoking cigarettes out the back, under the bushes, and playing
doctors and nurses with the pretty little girls of the neighbourhood.
I remember taking empty glass bottles to the local corner shop, exchanging them for 5 cents each, then watching while
the man in the shop took the bottles out the back, stacking them neatly, in a place where we could quickly run around,
pick up the same bottles from the shopkeepers storage box, and repeatedly take them into the shop for another 5 cents each.
We used to do this until we had 85 cents, enough money for a packet of cigarettes.
These were the days when you could buy a whole bag of lollies for 1 cent.
At 4 years old we knew how to make enough money to buy cigarettes... sure it was dishonest, but
we didn't know about that till we were much older.
Then we would take them out the back and smoke them in the bushes, away from our parents,
all so we could be like the rich, handsome and pretty blonde people on the Alpine cigarettes TV commercial.
We were living with my grandmother at the time, with my mother having moved to Sydney to get a job...
The other experience I remember was drinking beer for the first time, at a christmas party my family held
in the backyard. I was so drunk at 4 years old that I kept trying to get more beer all night by lying down on
the ground with my mouth under the tap of the keg of beer.
...
My next memory was when I was about 7-8 years old, when we were living in Sydney with my mum again,
Bondi Beach to be exact, when I learnt all about sex and having babies, all about music (thanks to Queen
and their Bohemian Rhapsody... i vividly remember hearing and seeing this music for the very first time,
and ever since have taken an active interest in music and tv), and all about living in a big city -
Bondi Beach, Kings Cross, and the Sydney CBD to be exact.
Nothing really eventful happened at this time, other than the following things...
The first was when my sister decided to "wag" school for 2-3 weeks, and for one of these weeks i joined her,
until the school called my mother and asked where we were and why we hadn't been to school for a few weeks...
didn't we cop it when my mum got home... this is when my sexual immaturity was taken away by my sisters friend...
The second thing that happened was that my sister and i walked to the big new "supermarket" in Bondi Junction,
miles and miles from home, where we filled a grocery trolley with all sorts of toys, sneaked it out of the shop,
up onto the roof, where a store manager caught us and said "what are you doing"? to which we replied "we don't know"
and they took the loaded shopping trolley filled with toys off us and let us go...
The third thing that sticks in my head is when i was in 2nd class, and i used to store my lunch in the drawer
under my desk, and I remember that after "wagging" for a week, i came back to find my food rotting and smelling,
and my teacher was not impressed. So I was suspended from class, not allowed to attend any other classes, even though
i remember begging through tears for them to let me back in, and all week i just attended school and stood in the hallway,
and they eventually let me back into the class a couple of weeks later.
The fourth thing i remember is that I used to hang around the local pinball arcade, and one day i was on my way
home from school and i was standing under the edge of the walkway, where the birds hung over the edge, and i looked
up just in time to see a big bird poop fall on my head.
Finally, I had a pretty significant life-changing experience when i was this young. Here i was, 7 or 8 years old,
lost in the middle of downtown Sydney, in amongst all the sky-scrapers in the middle of rush-hour, crying, looking
for my mum, tired and exhausted, when i saw a pregnant woman fall down.
She cried for help, but no-one stopped to help.
Lost, I cried for help, but no-one stopped to help.
Thousands of people walking past, all rich, all wearing grey suits, all ignoring a crying child and
woman on the street. Nobody helped us.
Eventually I was found, the pregnant women got up and walked away, and we were both ok.
But it was still a pretty vivid awakening to reality for someone so young.
I realized for the first time how insignificant i was.
...
When I was 10, we moved to Boorowa, a very small country township in southern New South Wales,
out the middle of nowhere, and a long way from anywhere.
There was a river, a railway station, some old disused rolling carriages, a football field,
some pubs, some shops, and everything was within riding or walking distance.
Not much happened here, but it was still a life-changing experience which allowed me to reconnect
to the country way of living after 3 years of living in the big city.
I remember being able to ride my first ever bicycle, a dragster, around the town of about 1000 people,
going down the river, throwing things in the river and watching them float down it, swimming in the river,
jumping off ropes into the river, learning about frogs and tadpoles, and so on.
We had chickens in a roost, and a dog got in and killed them, and i spent a week-long vigil
trying desperately to help one chicken live... but it died anyway, and i got a very quick introduction
to life and death and the reality of this world we live in.
This was exactly the time in my life whereby I decided that Death Was Wrong! and to not die.
I decided when this chicken died that I did not want to die - ever.
I was 10 years old.
A good time, but a pretty solitary life still, with no real friends as such...
...
When I was 11, my mother met my stepfather, and we moved back to Dubbo, and we settled down.
We moved around a lot, in rented accomodation, i became a boy-scout, and I started to make some friends.
At this stage, i still didn't know how to read, or what a book was.
Unfortunately, my grandparents and parents did not know the true meaning of books, and there were literally
no books or magazines or comics or anything remotely resembling reading material in the house.
About this time, i got head lice, and was off school for two weeks or so, and while i was off school my mother
and i went shopping, and she bought me my first ever book, Jules Verne's 20,000 leagues under the sea...
... and i finally learnt to read... properly...
So, I started reading lots of comics, including Commando & Battle comics, both filled with heroic stories of World-War II,
then I read a lot more comics, including pretty well everything available at the time, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost,
Superman, Batman, Scooby Doo (all of which i didn't like much - superheros and other wierd ideas just didn't do it for me)
then finally, Richie Rich, Uncle Scrooge and Jughead, which i liked alot, because they were incredibly rich and well off...
The only other thing of note was that I got the cane across the tips of my fingers in school, either because
i was involved in an all-in brawl (once), or it could have been the time i took all my uncles girlie magazines
to school, showing them around the all the 6th-class guys... and girls... i can't remember exactly... all i remember
is that i got it either 5 or 10 times on each hand, once or twice, and it hurt like nothing else...
After moving house a couple of times, I'd met this guy, who's father owned his own home, had the latest of
everything, including a huge projection tv and a betamax video recorder (it was the 1970's), a pool table,
a big swimming pool, nice cars, trucks, his own business, and so on... he even owned the house next door
which my friends grandmother lived in.
Looking at this, and comparing it to my parents critically poor situation, working for money all the time
but never getting ahead, renting, driving a bombed-out-car, living poor all the time, i very quickly realized
that working for a living in jobs like my parents was not the way of doing it.
I quickly figured out that owning a business of some sort was the way to becoming rich...
Even though I didn't know much more, and even though i was hopelessly sick of mowing the lawn,
i very quickly thought up the idea of hiring myself and my young friends out to mow other peoples
lawns, but we couldn't afford the lawnmower, so that idea quickly went out the window...
That was my first ever entrepreneurial idea.
Meantime, i just kept occasionally getting work for a little money here and there, which i spent
just as quickly at the early video games arcade - playing space invaders, asteroids, and so on.
I got very good at video games during this time.
...
When I was 12 or so, i had a friend, my first real friend, an we decided to start a baseball team...
We started from nothing and quickly figured out we needed - uniforms, and gear for practicing...
So we designed some uniforms, figured out how much it would cost to produce them for an entire team,
figured out how much the bats, balls and mitts would cost, and then we went door-knocking down the
main street of the town, approaching the local businesses and asking them to sponsor us.
After a lot of knockbacks, and entirely disillusioned, we finally found a sponsor, who were happy to
pay the price for free advertising, so we got our uniforms and gear and then signed up with the local
competition, advertised for teammates at the local school, and finally we had our own baseball team.
Unfortunately, the team never did any well. I was pretty good at batting, pitching and first base,
but the team overall sucked, with us coming last in the competition... ah well...
...
When I was 13, my parents and sister moved away to Lightning Ridge, leaving me all alone, living in a
run-down cheap boarding house, half-way across town from school.
It was my choice... i remember my mother asking me if i wanted to move with them, where schooling was
pretty well non-existant, or stay, to continue schooling at a decent school.
A lot of responsibility, but i made the right choice... i chose to educate myself... Good life choice #1.
This time was pretty rough, living with a convicted rapist in the next room, getting punched in the face
by this man occasionally, watching him have epileptic fits regularly due to his mixing his medication with
incredible amounts of alcohol, watching as they skinned sheep carcasses in the backyard, and so on.
I used to escape this day-to-day horrible reality by going to school, then each afternoon i would go to
the local "Tandy" electronic shop and use their display computers, laboriously typing in line by line
programming examples i saw in magazines.
There was an old, kind man in the shop, who let me use the very first computers that nobody was
much interested in, a TRS-80, and from that first computing experience to today, i still remember his kind gift.
Without his kindness of letting me use his computer, I would not know anything about computers today.
At about the same time, my aunty Cheryl became my mentor as such, helping me out every weekend by visiting
me, talking to me, taking me to their house for the weekends, going to movies at the drive-in, and so on.
Unfortunately, this friendship was short-lived and then I moved in with my grandparents to finish school.
...
When I was 14, the school bought it's first computer, an Apple ][.
After 6 months, the computer teacher allowed me to look at it.
After 12 months, the school bought another computer and i could finally book 1 hour a week on it,
to use it however i pleased.
Most people played games.
I did too, but I also continued to learn how to program computers, firstly starting with Apple Basic,
then eventually after a couple of years, learning assembler language.
That was funny. And very hard. For those who are computer nerds, the 6502 processor had two registers,
a X register, and a Y register... and it had one more register, the Accumulator, for numerical operations...
not much compared to todays computer hardware capabilites...
About this time, I found a computer game called "Rails West!" which simulated the crazy era of
massive railroad building that occurred during the 1800's, including building tracks, buying and selling
on stock and bond markets, buying and selling of corporations, etc.
I found this game to be incredibly exciting and spent literally years playing it again and again,
figuring out how to win, how to play the markets correctly, how to make a lot of money from nothing,
and so on. But it was just a game.
Eventually, I noticed in the local newspaper that there was a thing called a stockmarket,
and companies and stocks and everything were real, and so i called the stockbroker, visited him with
my friend, who had some money, and we decided we were going to invest in some stocks.
We went to the stockbroker, thinking we could buy as many stocks as we could afford, but were quickly
sent home with the advice that we needed to think more about the companies we wanted to buy, and that we
needed a lot more money than $50, at least $1000... or more...
That was a wake-up call, considering it had taken me most of the year to save the $50.
So I bought a couple of financial newspapers and started learning about business and the stockmarket for real.
...
Nothing much happened for the rest of school.
I started smoking cigarettes regularly, hanging out behind the wall of the school tennis courts,
trying to look cool in front of the pretty girls, i wagged school alot, i went to school most of the time...
It was noticeable in the fact that I was always good in exams, but totally hopeless in class.
Each year, i would start at the top of the class, in the best class, doing the best work.
But lack of attention to classwork, never handing in or doing assignments, meant that i was progressively
lowered to the other classes throughout the year so that i'd end up the year in the bottom class.
This was great, and allowed me to make friends with practically everyone in my year at school, periodically
changing peer groups and making new friends, from the most intelligent people in my year, who were usually snobs
to those who were of lower academic intelligence, who were usually pretty cool.
In year 10, i was totally sick of studying, so i used to sit in class and read magazines about
aero-modelling, railways, money, naked women... anything to avoid classwork...
In years 11 and 12, i did more work, but mostly just played around with the computers at school,
playing lots of games, especially Rails West! and other business strategy simulators, like "Millionaire",
a complex stock market simulator, and i continued to learn how to program...
The only real thing of note during years 11 and 12 is that I finally succeeded in "cracking" Rails West!
getting access to the basic operating system RDOS and source code, which i studied intensively,
just to try and understand how they created it... it was hugely complex and i studied it for many months, repeatedly,
until I finally understood most of it... it was up to that point the most complex source code I had ever seen.
I learnt a lot about cashflow and stockmarkets, resource management, investing, etc. playing these games.
...
Towards the end of year 12, I sat for an exam held by the Australian government, an exam that was
actually a highly complex computer programming aptitude test...
Totally unprepared, I still came 4th out of 5000 people, and various software companies showed interest and
sponsored me to travel to job interviews in Sydney, where it was explained that I was so good I could become
very rich, earning $40,000 a year for my first year, $50,000 a year my second year, plus i would own some 10% of the company,
and so on.
But, I was unimpressed. I had a rough plan to go to University, get a degree, and become a computer professional
earning $100,000 a year in my first year out of uni... a lot of money in the 1980's...
It was a dream really, because when I got to uni, things became clearer, and i belatedly realized that in my
first year out of uni, i would be lucky to earn $25,000 a year, and only if i was very highly qualified...
I should have taken the job offers, where they said they hated university graduates, because the company had
to spend so much time and money "de-training" them when they left university, converting them from a university
mentality to a real-world corporate mentality...
...
After school, i didn't know what todo.
The only things i was interested in were computers and getting rich.
Uni seemed like the only good idea.
So, off i went to the University Of Newcastle, where I studied for 3 years for a Bachelor of Computer Science degree,
with the plan of graduating quickly and earning $100,000 or more a year in just a few years - a lot of money in other words.
Unfortunately, i never actually finished this degree.
Even though i was getting distinctions and high distinctions (90-95% or better) for my assignments and tests,
there was a problem.
I was also a hacker.
And i got kicked out of uni for it, after 3 years, and an almost-completed degree.
It was all because I hacked the uni VAX computer, found 6000+ usernames and passwords and then gave them
out to all my friends, who used them for whatever purpose they felt like.
In the days when time-quotas were all the rage, having more than one account meant that you could spend
much more time on the computer - hence why all these usernames and passwords were so important to us.
Unfortunately, the uni found out about my hacking exploits and cancelled all my computer accounts, meaning
that i could not complete any of my assignments or coursework, meaning i eventually failed my degree.
It didn't help that for the final 6 months of my university study, i was working full-time in a job,
to pay my way through uni, and also working full-time at uni... double the workload easily...
...
About this time, I was drinking alcohol occasionally, and was stressed out alot, and my flatmate
decided to have a party.
At some time during the night, when i was quite pissed, i walked in on my flatmate doing something i didn't know
about and i asked him what he was doing and he replied "Smoking a cone"... of course my curiousity got the better
of me, and i asked him all about it, and he patiently explained that he was smoking Marijuana, that it was illegal,
and that it was a mind altering substance like alcohol and cigarettes.
This correlated with my experiences as a 14-year old, when my relatives all smoked it.
Enough said, and being very intellectually curious, I tried some and found i liked it.
And so they say, the habit was formed. Good Life Choice #2
The last thing of note that happened during university was that i went home for the holidays,
borrowed a computer off a friend (a MicroBee, an old Australian computer) and wrote a complete
space strategy computer game in 2 weeks, from start to finish, on a totally foreign computer system (CP/M)
in a totally unfamiliar programming language... with almost no documentation...
Unfortunately, a few weeks after I completed the game, a couple of months after I started writing it,
it was ready to sell, but the MicroBee company went bankrupt...
So, a failed business venture, nothing much, just a couple of weeks out of my life...
During my time at Uni I initially lived in a hotel, then on campus (where i could read the Australian Financial Review,
The Sydney Morning Herald, The Austrlian, Business Review Weekly, every day) then in share-houses with friends, where
prospective flatmates were aplenty. I continued later with computer games and programming magazines, loads of books,
and more of the same, and bucketloads of New Scientists and God-related stuffs.
And bucketloads of computers, life, tv and radio.
...
After failing university, i didn't know what to do any more.
It seemed that all my plans of getting a degree and getting a really well paid job were out the door.
I stopped reading lots, and started programming and playing games lots.
I tried getting jobs, including getting a full-time cleaning job for $79 a week (compared to $220 for the dole).
Eventually, i just got sick of working and retired full-time looking for another better paying job,
relying on the unemployment benefit to live, and enjoying life mostly.
At some stage, my flatmates and i were approached by a small local charity to write an anti-drugs computer
program, which they wanted to use to highlight the "say no to drugs" policy.
Together with my two friends, we formed a partnership and started work.
After a few months, having been paid quite a lot of money, we were going nowhere, just arguments over what
direction to take, who should do the work, who should own how much percentage, simple little things really,
one of my partners decided to pull out, leaving just two of us to complete all the development work.
After 6 months more, me doing all the work, my remaining partner doing literally nothing to help, all while
we were getting paid good money (which i had to share), my partner pulled out, leaving me with a non-existant
project, and no money left in the coffers with which to complete it.
I worked my butt off for 6 months, hired a graphic artist, paid him, didn't pay myself, and continued working
until the graphic artist suddenly half-way through the job pulled out, leaving me with only half the graphics...
This finished me off. I had no more money, no more artwork, and the charity was calling me each week asking
for the finished product, of which i had not yet completed the programming work.
Then my old computer crashed, and I lost everything. All the development work, all the graphics, sound effects,
everything.
Then I had to tell the charity I could not deliver on my promise, and they were not happy, but understanding.
This was an important lesson i didn't learn from at the time: never form partnerships with people who are not
willing to fullfill their obligations...
...
For a time after this, i was simply running away from everything... i felt like a complete disaster.
All i did was live on the dole, wake up each day, smoke my head off, and played computer games and
read science fiction books.
Most of this time i spent in the underground illicit drug-related culture, learning all about illicit drugs,
including pretty well everything available in Australia at the time - cocaine, herion, LSD, speed... marijuana of course...
Please note that I never actually tried these substances... I was not that stupid... I researched before i tried...
and realized very quickly that I didn't want anything todo with the really hard drugs.
I tried a couple of LSD trips, and continued to use Marijuana, and cigarettes, and drank a little alcohol.
...
Sometime during this phase, a guy I barely knew at uni phoned me out of the blue and said he had an amazing
business concept he wanted to show me if i could spare a few minutes...
I was curious, so i went with him and quickly got interested in this amazing new business he was offering...
Amway...
For the unitiated, or those lucky enough never to have come across Amway, it's a good, solid Multi-Level Marketing Company,
selling reasonable products to end-users for reasonable prices.
It allows you for very little money to start creating a huge business, if you are willing to put in the time and effort,
and if you are happy selling products that have little use to people who usually cannot afford such products.
Overall, Amway gave me an insight to the lives of the rich and famous... that's how they get you to join...
by showing you lots of high-powered marketing about how to get rich and live big... big expensive houses, cars,
boats, luxury goods, and so on.
My experience with Amway was very amazing to say the least... I was almost a QuickSilver member, meaning
i almost signed up 15 people in my first month... i signed up 13 members... it was very easy...
And I learnt a lot about managing a small business, including inventories, sales, commissions, budgeting and so on...
Unfortunately, i suffered from the experience of growing so fast with too many unemployed people, and very quickly
all these new members stopped participating, stopped ordering products, and the business ultimately failed due to lack of cashflow.
...
So, I was back on the dole, doing the same old things... smoking lots, drinking lots...
Eventually, after having moved house a few times, i met my first real girlfriend, who i dated for 6 months.
While we were together, it was constant parties, lots of drinking alcohol, lots of cigarettes, lots of marijuana.
It was about this time i first tried another illicit substance, Ecstasy.
When we broke up, i was filled with self-loathing, and i just continued to drink huge amounts of alcohol and smoke
huge amounts of marijuana and cigarettes.
Eventually, after sometime i cannot remember how long, i woke up one day to realize just how lonely and pathetic
my life had become... and how much it looked like the life my father was leading, as a drunk...
...and so i stopped drinking alcohol... Good Life Choice #3
...
I moved a few times more... and eventually moved in with my eventual BCB-Tools.com business partner...
This was the first time in my life i lived anywhere for more than 6 months, and it was a period of relative stability...
I had a computer, a compiler, programming skills, and lots of computer game playing experience.
So I sat on the dole, applying for good jobs (if i landed one, no problems, i would start work), smoking pot (marijuana),
smoking cigarettes (my addiction), playing computer games, and programming computers... practicing my skills as such...
After a few months of this, I was sick of it, so i started a computer sales business, Quorum Marketing, aiming to
sell computer software and hardware through a combination of mail-order and multi-level-marketing...
Unfortunately, another business venture that failed because of lack of cashflow.
Eventually, I decided "stuff it... i'm gonna write a game... for real..."
So I started envisioning writing "Rails West 2", an upgrade the old 1980 game "Rails West"...
This was about 1994... 1995... the days of the DOS operating system...
So I learnt about protected mode programming, very complicated to say the least, and started writing
all the DOS device drivers, memory managers, resource managers, file managers, event driven graphics user interface,
advanced graphics controls, etc., and also wrote lots of test applications and a prototype game...
Basically everything required to create a complete operating system, except for the actual hardware drivers...
At this stage, Microsoft had not yet invented Windows 3.0, and I was months ahead of them... and i could compete
pretty well with Windows in the open market...
So I kept working on it, only to be driven crazy by the constant hard-core programming without any kind of
real-world money... living on the dole...
...
So, about this time, I met Melissa, my lover and best friend for the next 14 years of my life.
Then my friend and university colleague said "You know... Microsoft Windows is here now... it's the future...
you are wasting your time programming your DOS game..." and so I changed to using Windows instead of DOS.
Note: I couldn't actually program for Windows because it was so bloody complex and I didn't have the money
to even afford a compiler... so i stopped programming... for an entire year...
...
Then we travelled to India and Nepal, stopping at Thailand along the way...
What an eye-opening experience, something I will never forget...
The "real" world... dirty, poverty, death, disease, misery, 24 hour days, lots of people...
Compared to Australia, clean, rich, healthy, no-one anywhere, nicely formatted lifestyles, etc.
Along the way, we decided we could make good money if we purchased local Indian goods,
and sold them back in Australia, we could eventually setup an import business in Australia importing
stuff from India... and wholesale it, or take it to markets directly... Good Life Choice #4
This was an interesting experience, because when we got back from India, we had a whole inventory
of interesting nick-nacks that we could sell rapidly in Australia at the local markets...
This produced reasonable cashflow and allowed us to purchase a VW Kombi Van and continue our business...
Eventually, we decided to sell all our stock and move to Sydney...
Where I decided to change tack and start selling posters, greeting cards and bookmarks.
I borrowed $5000 off my parents, built a complete market stall, built display racks, etc.
bought thousands of dollars of stock at wholesale prices, and setup business.
Only to find that week by week I could not earn enough from sales to cover expenses, and for
the following 6 months I went backwards financially, vainly travelling from market to market
searching for enough customers, but slowly running out of stock.
Eventually, I was forced to stop trading and again began looking for work... again...
...
Eventually, after doing various job-seeking activities, my friend came to my rescue...
He was in a decent job, earning good money, and he had mentioned me to his boss, and his boss wanted
me to come in for an interview.
I got the job, at a pathetic rate of pay, but enough to live relatively comfortably, working
as a all-purpose computer technician.
After catching the train for 3 hours each day, plus working 60 hours a week, after a few months I had
simply had enough stress and could not work such hours any more... and I had just started programming
under contract to the boss, so i asked my boss if I could work 30 hours a week for more money per hour...
and he said yes... obviously he valued my services...
After a few minor jobs, I started programming for CitiCorp Australia's Life Insurance division, helping
another guy code a major upgrade from DOS to Windows of the Group Life insurance and Salary Continuance insurance
divisions...
This was a HUGE leap of faith, whereby I felt totally out of my depth at first, programming using Delphi,
a totally foreign next-generation programming language and tools.
But, over time, I became quite proficient...
I learnt much from this experience, the least being how to deal with very large amounts of money.
Instead of working with just hundreds and thousands of dollars, I was dealing with millions and billions of dollars.
And it all had to be accurate, down to the last cent, because the results from our program were being submitted to
the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia...
During this time, I purchased a lot of reading material (because i sat on the train for 3 hours each day) and
started reading "New Scientist" each week, and Readers Digest as well... and newspapers every day...
...
The entire time, I just kept reading about programming computer games and getting rich, dreaming of the day when
I could actually write my computer game... the one I have been designing since I was 14... and hence get rich...
Eventually, after 12 months or so, I had had enough of life in a corporate job, and I just upped and quit my job,
pleading ill health to the boss, feeling like a bastard, but mostly I wanted to pursue my dream of writing a computer game.
I partnered with my current business associate, and he invested $5000... so we were off and running.
I purchased Windows, Borland C++ Builder and started programming...
I stayed up all day, every day, working and working and working and working... 120 hours a week...
You can read all about the programming history of that venture here...
And thats where we are today... all these years later...
What have I learnt from this experience? Never go into business with people who do not pull their weight..
...
Now, some interesting stuff thats happened over the past few years...
Things that should sit you up... and you'll notice...
...
Read about my LIFE VIOLATION here...
MY LAST YEARS...
The last couple of years of my life have to be the best years and the worst years of my life.
I now measure my life based on "With Melissa" and "After Melissa"...
You gotta realize, she was the love of my life and my best and only friend for over 14 years...
When she left, I was lost. Totally devoid of worldly comprehension.
Before, when I was living with Melissa, life was good. We had regular money coming in,
she didn't have problems with cashflow, paying the rent, paying the bills, repaying loans,
and so on... she handled all the money... etc.
I always had problems with lack of cash, but thats another story...
Since she left me in the lurch, I have stuggled from day to day just to pay the rent and
pay the bills and buy food, living in almost suicidal depression at times, just living from day to day,
no real plans, no real goals, no real anything, just lying down on my bed listening to talkback radio all
hours of the day, reading occasionally, trying vainly to think constructive thoughts - i miss my best
friend and lover so much it hurts when i think about it...
When she left me, I had nothing left because she took everything that was hers with her,
leaving me with nothing in the bank, no flatmates, an empty house, an old car, and so much
garbage stuff that I couldn't move house... no money remember?
I was literally a month out of hospital, i was just starting to recover from my 2 years of insanity,
and my IQ would have probably been about 70, with my entire mental effort going towards remembering
everything that happened to me over the past few years...
So, I signed a lease (I was still a "moron" at this stage... i simply didn't know what I was doing)
and attempted to get some flatmates in... to find a Korean guy who stayed for only a month.
Luckily, he found another Korean guy (who didn't speak any english) who stayed on for 9 months,
paying rent occasionally (up to 6 weeks behind) and not paying any bills.
I had a young family move in, 2 adults, 2 very young children, and they absolutely trashed the
place, then moved out after a month.
By this stage I had earned and saved up enough money to last a couple more months.
Then I had a guy move in, an ex-heroin junkie, but he proved to be completely unreliable, costing me $400
in the first month, then refusing to pay me back the money he owed me, and he moved out on 1 days notice,
only to come back 2 days later asking to move back in... without paying... i said "no". This was the first time
in my life i have ever been completely assertive.
So, then I had my friend move in, and he's been here ever since.
Just after he moved in, his cousin and a couple of friends asked if they could stay over for a couple
of days, which ended up being 4 months, the entire time they paid very little, using all the amenities,
and it ended up costing me $2400 in lost rent and food and bills. Ouch.
More of this happened... I got more flatmates in, who constantly used the telephone and racked up huge bills,
which i could barely afford to pay, going without food and cigarettes just to pay the bills, and they
ended up costing me another $2000.
More of this happened... I got more flatmates in, and this time they just didn't work, and couldn't pay
their rent on time, and they didn't pay for all the bills, they ate my food, and so on...
All this time, I just kept working on my company, working around the clock, thinking about it, thinking
about how to cure death, working very hard on restoring my mental capabilities once again, and so on...
I have been consistently worried about how to keep working on my company while not being mentally ok,
with all sorts of personal cashflow problems stressing me out at all times.
I finally got another friend to move in, and now my home life became relatively
stable once again - if only people had paid their fair share of rent and bills, it would have been good.
When he moved in, I concentrated less on my personal cashflow and more
on restoring my mental capabilities which i lost due to the medication and my (supposed) psychosis.
Eventually, after most of a year, I was back to reasonable mental health, my IQ was once again around 165,
and I continued to progress daily with my ideas and efforts towards my goals.
I still smoked pot, i still smoked cigarettes.
I hadn't had a drop of alcohol since just after Melissa left me, when i was horribly upset.
Same for ecstasy and speed.
Other than that, haven't had a drop of alcohol, or ecstasy, or LSD, or speed for many years, literally.
To tell you the truth, hard drugs are fun to experiment with a couple of times, but that's it... no more...
Alcohol makes me sick, so i avoid it like the plague...
Ecstasy gives me a really nice buzz, like strong pot...
My last LSD trip (my third or fourth or whatever in my life) was really horrible...
Speed does nothing for anybody, it just makes you stay awake, something i have no problem with anyways.
I am now very comfortable with my software development business, but everything else is horrible.
I am not the sort of person who can live alone in a share house... i have no-one to talk to about my real life,
my flatmates are musicians who i don't have much in common with, and it's always noisy... so i sleep when they
are awake, and work when they are asleep.
Overall, I was incredibly lonely, and have no goals in life other than to not die.
The entire time, i was mopeing around the house, lying on my bed, listening to the radio,
ignoring pretty well everything else, just rebuilding my brain... waiting vainly for some kind of contact
with Melissa...
I will always miss my best friend and lover, who hasn't even bothered to read my emails... let alone contact me...
She's probably got herself a new life by now, so maybe it's time to move on and restart my life from literally nothing...
Must admit though, i'd prefer my old life back, in a nice, warm, secure and stable relationship,
with money in the bank, a reliable car, trying to buy a house and about to get married and have kids...
Maybe you know someone who is young, pretty, very smart, sexually inexperienced like me, and who doesn't want to die too.
Maybe I can teach them all about life, sex, money, business, science, alternate sciences, politics, religions, etc.
Maybe thats what i need todo to start again.
Find someone new, even though i don't like that idea much.
...
Late Note:
In December 2006, I finally moved house, with much help from my mum - she paid for it all.
I am now living by myself, renting my mum's cheap house, and I am much happier.
I am now able to work around the clock, or take it easy... it's my life entirely.
My so-called "friends" have all deserted me, they don't even bother to spend 20 seconds to write me an email...
MY SKILLS...
My skills are not all that special or unique, but possibly the combination of these skills
together with my unique insight gained from learned knowledge give me some valuable abilities
not available to the general population.
I also have to admit that my skills are pretty specialised overall, being that most people do
not understand how to program computers, or create a viable business, or make money...
I understand all that and more.
I have spent the past 25 years learning a hell of a lot about the things i need to know to achieve
my goals, reading a lot of science fiction and general reality, then learning about real-world business,
both in theory and in practice, then learning how to think about things using the "big-picture" view of the world,
then learning how to think in trillions of dollars, etc.
I have played a lot of computer games, mostly financial or resource-management simulations, 10+ years full-time,
and have "broken" the financial performance limits of every computer game i have ever really played.
Overall, I think I have the requisite skills to achieve my life goals, but only time will tell.
WHAT HAVE I LEARNED IN LIFE?
I have learnt many things in my life, and these are some of the most important...
(1) You are what you read...
(2) Just because you understand something doesn't mean other people will ever understand it.
(3) Don't ever go into business with people who don't help you, and instead hinder you.
(4) If things don't appear as they seem, don't ask questions, just get on with the job at hand...
(5) The biggest single risk in life is to not have a go...
(6) Do not start something you cannot finish
(7) There is a solution to every problem
HOW I DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY...
I am not suited for working in a "job", not in the normal sense at least.
I am quiet, i work from home, i work by myself at the moment, doing what i can do for now, with the goal of
doing many more things in future, as soon as i have enough money to do them.
For the vast majority of my life i have been strongly independant, thinking for myself, doing things for myself,
relying on no-one else mostly... except occasionally, a little helping hand has been there...
Most of my day is taken up literally thinking.
I pace around the house, chain-smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee or tea, smoking cones of marijuana,
thinking, thinking, thinking. always thinking.
I think too much.
I think about everything todo with my life, every little aspect.
I also work.
When I feel like it, i work, i work, i work, i work.
When I don't feel like working (the rest of the time) i think, i think, i think.
I do most of my thinking under the influence of marijuana, and chain-smoking cigarettes.
Remember: Smoking cigarettes increases your IQ by 30%...
Remember: Smoking marijuana increases my mental stamina by unknown amounts...
I spend most of my time thinking for a few minutes, then i read a bit, or listen to the radio, or watch tv,
or just rest, lying on my bed, then after a few minutes, i continue my thoughts.
This works well for me.
It has always worked well for me.
I have a lot of time to think, i have a lot of time to work, i have a lot of time to achieve.
I have an excellent memory, so when i think, i don't usually need to write it down, i remember it later and
it becomes real as soon as i type it into the computer... saves a lot of time and effort.
Thats my work ethic and work plan...
Think Smart.
Work Smart.
Think Harder.
Work Harder.
For example, instead of programming my advanced software tools manually, taking years and years
of concerted effort, I instead wrote a "smart" computer program that does the actual programming of
my advanced software tools, letting me do the work of hundreds of people...
WHAT CAN I REALLY ACHIEVE?
I can achieve what ever I set out to achieve.
Assuming I don't die in the meantime, hopefully I will eventually achieve the creation of many things...
Simple as that.
I have never "really" failed.
Just minor setbacks sofar.
Really, everything is going pretty rosy and according to plan.
What will the future hold for us all?
5, 10, 20, 50 years down the track?
Honestly, imagine a new world... where things don't die... thats the goal...