- Aug 20, 2000
- 20,577
- 432
- 126
Hello there, friends.
Sometimes, fact is stranger than fiction. Who would guess that a simple sojourn onto the Internet to look up reviews of the Thermaltake Golden Orb for my Celeron 466 (Socket 370) would lead to ten thousand posts here over exactly six years? Not I.
A lot of people decry the AnandTech Forums as a particularly useless waste of time. I say instead that it's all in the way you use the forum: While many (most?) of the intelligentsia of AT has left for greener pastures, there's still plenty to be learned here. Don't believe me? Well, here are three stories that will prove that it's possible. One's about learning. One's about living. One's about love.
How AnandTech got me a great job.
Though I haven't made a post on AT in about nine months, I've continued to lurk nearly daily. I've noticed that the average registration date for members has creeped up into the 2003 - 2006 range. That's fine and all, but it probably means that not too many people know about the "history" of the forums.
I wrote the initial version of of the free picture hosting service pics.bbzzdd.com back in 2001. It took about two months to write in my spare time and ran under CGI/Perl. In 2001, when one AT member inquired, "Pics?" the most common response was, "Where can I host it?" Individual members would offer to host, private messages were exchanged, and in a lot of cases the picture(s) never really materialized online. AnandTech needed a solution to this problem - one not dependent on anyone outside the community.
Now, I'm not going to lie - it was a horribly coded affair, but it was damned reliable and boasted an interface that I still think works excellently when you're looking for substance over flash. But it was an instant hit, and even today with the literally hundreds of free hosting services out there, pics.bbzzdd.com boasts 5300+ users and uses 2.4+ GB of bandwidth a day.
I don't really have anything to do with it now - dwell (who's also the original host) and others have long since taken over. I do, however, have pics.bbzzdd.com listed on my resume. That may seem a little crazy at first - putting something you did for AT on your real resume? Hey, for someone looking to start a career in software development it's perfect. I just list my job history as 'Relevant Professional Experience' and throw it in there - I just omit that I didn't got paid to write it. (Take a note, up-and-coming developers: It's very easy for us to merge work and play and be doubly efficient. That's something that most other fields can't boast. We rule!)
Fourteen months ago, I applied to a software developer position that was not actually open to me - a friend ganked the listing from his university job listing service and passed it on to me. The project that had them looking for a new developer was a free blogging/media sharing service. Hey, I have some experience in that field! I shot off a resume, and heard back about an interview a week later. Though I know I nailed that interview like a Mexican on EyeMWing's ex-girlfriend, and I know that that was the primary reason I got a call to negotiate salary a few days later, it was pics.bbzzdd.com that put me over the top.
AnandTech...it led me to making a good-sized hunk of money, getting an apartment and starting a career. Pretty sweet deal.
How AnandTech made me smarter.
When I joined AnandTech, I was a pretty typical young Canadian. Overly idealistic, which in this country lends to being overly socialist. Bill Clinton was still Commander-in-Chief down to my south, and accordingly most of the vitriol on the forum (these were pre-P&N times) was criticism of him. It seemed like the vast majority of AT was very conservative in nature. To someone whose country has been practically ruled by the Liberal party almost entirely for the last century, it was quite the shock to the system.
Slowly, despite the low signal-to-noise ratio, I came to realize a lot of things.
Once very fervently anti-religion, I came to realize that religion isn't evil - though some of its followers are. Actually, it was more of a realization that many athiests subscribe to a form of religion themselves, which often makes them appear even more ridiculous than thiests.
Once rabidly anti-gun, I came to realize that while being idealistic is great, when the chips are down you'd best be able to take care of yourself. Never rely on an outside party when things of critical importance - like your life - are at stake. Let me put it this way: As a software developer, I always work to minimize my reliance on outside modules/programs when writing one of my own. You just never know how something you haven't written yourself will behave - so why would I expect people to rely on an outside party (police officers) to not fail when their lives are on the line? IMO, people are welcome to their guns if they want 'em.
Reading things like this on AT proved important in my first year of university. I took a bird course called Sociology: Popular Culture. It happened to be taught by a young male professor, freshly graduated from Berkeley. Man oh man, was my class ever in for an indoctrination. We got the works: Capitalism, unfair and evil. Religion, evil. War, a tool of the paymasters and elite. Hell, we were even beaten over the head with the idea that men were evil - poor women, oppressed by us and the devious system of capitalism that we devised!
I sat open-mouthed for most of these lectures before I started skipping them. We watched a hell of a lot of propoganda (how Bush Sr. misled America into attacking Iraq in '91, tons of Chomsky, etc.) and a lot of my colleagues ate it up. They didn't know any better, and I'll always despise that professor for preying on them. I emerged untouched, except for the C+ final grade I received for not writing my essay to his biases.
AnandTech...it helped me avoid being programmed as a pro-Che Guevara, anti-capitalism hippie.
Too bad in a way. Hippie chicks can be pretty hot. But having money works wonders too.
How AnandTech had me lose my virginity.
The first woman I ever slept with was someone I first started talking to on an offshoot of AnandTech. I still don't really consider it online dating, because we hadn't done much more than say hi and have idle chit-chat online a few times before going on our first date a few days later. Also, she was hot, older, intelligent, and had a fantastic pair of...eyes on her, and an amazing ass. Online dating nothing!
I'm tempted to describe what happened in our third week of dating, alone in her parents' house, on her bed, playing a CD she burned for the occasion, in pornographic detail. What I will say is that I managed not to embarass myself by lasting something like ten minutes. Not that I especially knew what I was doing. The second time was a significant improvement.
AnandTech...it helped me, well, get laid. Not to degrade it by saying that's all it was, because it definitely wasn't - I'm just being facetious. But I bet you never thought that AT could lead to getting lucky...
Thanks for reading! I'll probably start posting again here and there, in the positive yes-I-can-help fashion. Too little of that lately. And I'll really try to do another Toronto meet soon. Will be in contact with our resident Torontonians soon.
Cliff Notes: If you've asked for cliff notes, don't expect any unless someone else writes them up - the whole point of this post is that AT is about content, not just brevity.
Sometimes, fact is stranger than fiction. Who would guess that a simple sojourn onto the Internet to look up reviews of the Thermaltake Golden Orb for my Celeron 466 (Socket 370) would lead to ten thousand posts here over exactly six years? Not I.
A lot of people decry the AnandTech Forums as a particularly useless waste of time. I say instead that it's all in the way you use the forum: While many (most?) of the intelligentsia of AT has left for greener pastures, there's still plenty to be learned here. Don't believe me? Well, here are three stories that will prove that it's possible. One's about learning. One's about living. One's about love.
How AnandTech got me a great job.
Though I haven't made a post on AT in about nine months, I've continued to lurk nearly daily. I've noticed that the average registration date for members has creeped up into the 2003 - 2006 range. That's fine and all, but it probably means that not too many people know about the "history" of the forums.
I wrote the initial version of of the free picture hosting service pics.bbzzdd.com back in 2001. It took about two months to write in my spare time and ran under CGI/Perl. In 2001, when one AT member inquired, "Pics?" the most common response was, "Where can I host it?" Individual members would offer to host, private messages were exchanged, and in a lot of cases the picture(s) never really materialized online. AnandTech needed a solution to this problem - one not dependent on anyone outside the community.
Now, I'm not going to lie - it was a horribly coded affair, but it was damned reliable and boasted an interface that I still think works excellently when you're looking for substance over flash. But it was an instant hit, and even today with the literally hundreds of free hosting services out there, pics.bbzzdd.com boasts 5300+ users and uses 2.4+ GB of bandwidth a day.
I don't really have anything to do with it now - dwell (who's also the original host) and others have long since taken over. I do, however, have pics.bbzzdd.com listed on my resume. That may seem a little crazy at first - putting something you did for AT on your real resume? Hey, for someone looking to start a career in software development it's perfect. I just list my job history as 'Relevant Professional Experience' and throw it in there - I just omit that I didn't got paid to write it. (Take a note, up-and-coming developers: It's very easy for us to merge work and play and be doubly efficient. That's something that most other fields can't boast. We rule!)
Fourteen months ago, I applied to a software developer position that was not actually open to me - a friend ganked the listing from his university job listing service and passed it on to me. The project that had them looking for a new developer was a free blogging/media sharing service. Hey, I have some experience in that field! I shot off a resume, and heard back about an interview a week later. Though I know I nailed that interview like a Mexican on EyeMWing's ex-girlfriend, and I know that that was the primary reason I got a call to negotiate salary a few days later, it was pics.bbzzdd.com that put me over the top.
AnandTech...it led me to making a good-sized hunk of money, getting an apartment and starting a career. Pretty sweet deal.
How AnandTech made me smarter.
When I joined AnandTech, I was a pretty typical young Canadian. Overly idealistic, which in this country lends to being overly socialist. Bill Clinton was still Commander-in-Chief down to my south, and accordingly most of the vitriol on the forum (these were pre-P&N times) was criticism of him. It seemed like the vast majority of AT was very conservative in nature. To someone whose country has been practically ruled by the Liberal party almost entirely for the last century, it was quite the shock to the system.
Slowly, despite the low signal-to-noise ratio, I came to realize a lot of things.
Once very fervently anti-religion, I came to realize that religion isn't evil - though some of its followers are. Actually, it was more of a realization that many athiests subscribe to a form of religion themselves, which often makes them appear even more ridiculous than thiests.
Once rabidly anti-gun, I came to realize that while being idealistic is great, when the chips are down you'd best be able to take care of yourself. Never rely on an outside party when things of critical importance - like your life - are at stake. Let me put it this way: As a software developer, I always work to minimize my reliance on outside modules/programs when writing one of my own. You just never know how something you haven't written yourself will behave - so why would I expect people to rely on an outside party (police officers) to not fail when their lives are on the line? IMO, people are welcome to their guns if they want 'em.
Reading things like this on AT proved important in my first year of university. I took a bird course called Sociology: Popular Culture. It happened to be taught by a young male professor, freshly graduated from Berkeley. Man oh man, was my class ever in for an indoctrination. We got the works: Capitalism, unfair and evil. Religion, evil. War, a tool of the paymasters and elite. Hell, we were even beaten over the head with the idea that men were evil - poor women, oppressed by us and the devious system of capitalism that we devised!
I sat open-mouthed for most of these lectures before I started skipping them. We watched a hell of a lot of propoganda (how Bush Sr. misled America into attacking Iraq in '91, tons of Chomsky, etc.) and a lot of my colleagues ate it up. They didn't know any better, and I'll always despise that professor for preying on them. I emerged untouched, except for the C+ final grade I received for not writing my essay to his biases.
AnandTech...it helped me avoid being programmed as a pro-Che Guevara, anti-capitalism hippie.
Too bad in a way. Hippie chicks can be pretty hot. But having money works wonders too.How AnandTech had me lose my virginity.
The first woman I ever slept with was someone I first started talking to on an offshoot of AnandTech. I still don't really consider it online dating, because we hadn't done much more than say hi and have idle chit-chat online a few times before going on our first date a few days later. Also, she was hot, older, intelligent, and had a fantastic pair of...eyes on her, and an amazing ass. Online dating nothing!
I'm tempted to describe what happened in our third week of dating, alone in her parents' house, on her bed, playing a CD she burned for the occasion, in pornographic detail. What I will say is that I managed not to embarass myself by lasting something like ten minutes. Not that I especially knew what I was doing. The second time was a significant improvement.
AnandTech...it helped me, well, get laid. Not to degrade it by saying that's all it was, because it definitely wasn't - I'm just being facetious. But I bet you never thought that AT could lead to getting lucky...
Thanks for reading! I'll probably start posting again here and there, in the positive yes-I-can-help fashion. Too little of that lately. And I'll really try to do another Toronto meet soon. Will be in contact with our resident Torontonians soon.
Cliff Notes: If you've asked for cliff notes, don't expect any unless someone else writes them up - the whole point of this post is that AT is about content, not just brevity.
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