I have always been into computers. Some of my earliest interactions where 
with the local library's Unix systems. They had a directory that worked 
similar to Gopherspace, then later a browser similar to Lynx; it might 
have even been Lynx and Gopher.

Soon we had dialup at home that ssh'd into the local library and similarly 
to SDF provided a server from which to access the world!

I have tried many times over the years to install linux and unsucsessfly 
found myself stymied by the command line and how obtuse it seemed when 
things like Windows 3.1 or '95 existed.

I eventually moved to Macintosh OS around 2007 after using a friends Mac 
Book Pro (or whatever they were called then), and loved the real Unix-like 
access to the command line in addition to the GUI... but found myself for 
the next decade or so purely interacting with that fabulously easy OSX 
desktop environment that just got out of the way and let you do things.

Then in 2024, I began to notice my ever growing frustation with what I 
felt was the enshitification of the personal computer. This probably would 
have come soon had I stayed on Windows, but being insular to the walled 
garden that was Apple, I didn't notice until recently. 

I fought back by deleting social media accounts, getting a dumb phone, and 
installing Arch linux on my Mac Book Air. A friend noticed I was getting 
[back] into nerdy tech space and offered me an old thinkpad she had lying 
around from a contract with a tech behemoth. I maxed out the ram, 
installed a new 2TB M2.0 and installed linux there and tried using it as a 
daily driver... unregulated heat issues soon fried the lower portion of 
the screen and I almost sold it until I got the idea to use it as a home 
server!

I am a part of a local emergency responce team that works in conjunction 
with the local Fire Department and we have a mesh network intranet across 
the city. The home server idea soon expanded into providing offline 
communications services to that group should access to the internet fail, 
and soon I found myself hacking away at the command line.

I figured out how to ssh into my own home server, set up a database, a web 
server, forums... this was so fun! Every error was pasted into DuckDuckGo 
search engine and soon I kind-of-sort-of understood what I was doing.

I set up some NAT port forwarding and created a non-root account for a 
friend to try and he was able to log into my home server and access the 
tools from across the city! 

WOW! SUCCESS! This was pretty cool!

And that's where I find myself.

I am in the process of setting up my server to provide any number of 
offline tools for my community and and thoroughly enjoying making mistakes 
and fixing them (you'd be surprised how many times I have used CHMOD to 
fix an oopsie). It's all a journey, and it's all fun. 

Having a 'purpose' that drives my exporation of my home server via 
command-line is giving me great joy and I can't wait to continue my 
learning.

-Wizzy