This is all because of Him

Last winter, an old friend of mine showed me the first episode of the TV show Mr Robot. I thought it was good, certainly better than most other shows I was trying out around that time, but somehow I never watched any more episodes. Due to an introduction, by that same friend, to the show Westworld, my thoughts on the edgy hacking adventure had since been pushed away. Until recently.

I'm a student in my third year of college, far from home. Far enough from home that it wouldn't exactly make sense to fly me back for a long weekend, Thanksgiving or not, so while every other student I keep contact with absconded to their families, I was left for four days on my own. I was completely fine with that, even before I stumbled upon Mr Robot on Prime Video, which I had recently remembered I pay for. After that discovery, I was pretty much set for the rest of the weekend.

I had been fascinated by hacking, at least in the abstract, as much as anyone else with some semblance of an idea of computer science, but this was really the first time I'd seen something on-screen that looked this real. Line after line of code, along with all the intelligibility and mystery the word implies, rendered in real-world detail. Totally plausible. This is what got me, the simple statement that this was real, this could be done, and this is pretty much what it looks like. In my mind, hacking was one of those things that only looked cool in movies, and on TV. Something that was probably much more boring in real life, and requiring much more work. But Mr Robot, despite all its realism, made hacking look just as cool as the weird bullshit the enterainment industry has tried to pass off on us in the past.

Immediately, I had to know how to do it. At the very least, I had to learn how to at least look like I'm doing something complicated with code, just in case anyone sees me in public. So I went straight to codeacademy.com and took a short lesson in HTML. It was a good introduction, but I was left wanting more. My interest had been piqued.

You may recognize the source of that video, Cracked.com, an online publication of which I have been a faithful reader for years. If you frequent the site as much as I do, you have noticed promotions from their associated marketplace shop.cracked.com. Among these promotions was an advertisement for a software tutorial bundle for a wide range of programming languages. I was sold without question, and, suddenly willing to spend money, added it to my cart and browsed some other deals on the site. Another course sparked my interest: Cryptocurrency Mining for Beginners. As with the software tutorials, I added this course to my cart, paid, and continued my day.

It was a while before I actually opened the course, but when I did, I was greeted with an explanation and walkthrough of the steemit platform by @jerrybanfield. At first, this smooth taking stranger had me seeing red flags everywhere, and already having spent ten dollars on this venture was skeptical as to what he had to gain from my participation. As the course progressed, my opinion was turned by his appearance of total passion and confidence in this platform, and his desire to see it grow and succeed. I was inspired. I applied for an account the same day.

So here's my first post, an introduction, and a story of what brought me here. I have a keen interest in renting a server with which to witness, and look forward to seeing how I can benefit this community. If anyone has recommendations for a good server rental service for someone living in the Greater Toronto Area, please let me know.