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I had a great and supportive family. My father was a genius, master engineer (metal kind), master carpenter and inventor. My mother was a first class cook/chef, opera singer, history and geography expert and all round genius. They didn't push me at all but encouraged me in whatever I wanted to do. I had a great childhood, went to university to study Law, decided I didn't like lawyers and switched to a combined sciences degree, stuck with Computer Science through to a PhD and then became a professor of same. Quit after three years to get a real job programming for fighter jet development, invented an expert system (a version of which was still partly used 25 years later) and just generally had fun. 
I used to lie about my qualifications on my CV, leaving out the PhD and the professorship after I found out it had actually cost me a job! 
Since then, nearly all interviews have been exclusively about what projects I have done, not which pieces of paper I held. The PhD I did, the thesis was on computer game development back when min-computers were the smallest machines available and before the internet effectively existed, is basically useless as far as paper is concern and most of the tech I learned for it is obsolete. 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Sounds like you lucked out in the parental department.
And good for you for making the most of it. 
Real programmers use butterflies
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I don't think you give yourself enough credit - the great equaliser is your strength, not what you do.
I live in a country where you would have been encouraged to depend on the state so people's strength is eroded from their government.
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I still needed someone to give me a shot, without credentials. You just don't find that everywhere. I've found it a lot in software. If you can demonstrate technical proficiency they don't mind the lack of degree. I won't say it's exclusive to development, but I think it's more common in development than many other professions.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I've been trying to debug intermittent problems with one of my video drivers. It would plot just a couple of random pixels sometimes while doing line drawing for example.
The problem is, I didn't notice for two days because the screen is so small.
So I've been using my bench's magnifying lamp as my primary debugging tool.
This would not even be a thing except I'm getting old and I can't see anymore. 
Turns out I was trying to run the display at too fast a clock speed. Once I dropped it from 26MHz to 10 everything worked fine.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: This would not even be a thing except I'm getting old
Don't feel ashamed, there's a lot of that going around.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I suppose it beats the alternative. 
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: bench's magnifying lamp
Welcome to my new life as a monocular person. After a fall last autumn I lost my right eye. I now use the "extra large" mouse pointer set on my PC's, because it's so easy for my surviving eye to lose the normal size pointer. My desktop magnifier is now one of my favorite things in the world. This is especially useful given that my wife has an amazing ability to find very small objects that I must repair  .honey the codewitch wrote: I was trying to run the display at too fast a clock speed
I ran into that once on an embedded project that used a monochrome LCD display. When my program was idle, it displayed just fine. As soon as it did its thing, it went blank. To give you an idea of how bad it got, at one point a logic analyzer and an oscilloscope were involved  . Come to find out I was both updating two often and clearing the entire display prior to the update. The end result, a blank screen. Reworking the updates to be more selective and only clearing the screen when absolutely necessary fixed things.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote: After a fall last autumn I lost my right eye.
Ow! That must have been some fall. I'm glad you survived it, but wow! I'm sorry to hear you lost your eye.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Thank you. The fall wasn't bad, but I had my glasses on and I fell on the right side of my face, pushing the frames into the eye socket and rupturing the eye. Not a lot of pain, but a whole lot of drama for a few days. In an unbelievable case of happenstance, my daughter was coming to visit the next morning. She wrangled me to the hospital and doctor visits for a week. Pro tip: When you are recovering from fasting and then general anesthesia, a large vanilla shake from Ritter's Frozen Custard[^] is the perfect answer. I developed a deep emotional bond with that shake, and entered mourning when the cup was empty.
Needless to say I've had to make a number of adaptations. Like I mentioned I now use the x-large mouse pointers plus I've bumped text size up a notch. I use prescription reading glasses when working on the computer. Left-to-right lane changes when driving are exciting  .
It's not been something I'd wish on anyone else, but there are worse things. I'm manfully resisting the middle-aged urge to recount examples [honey/witch sighs in relief].
Software Zen: delete this;
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Do you have a patch? Those are rather dashing.
I've actually thought about all the aesthetic advantages of missing an eye, of which there are several, not all involving parrots.
It's supervillain-esque as well. I'd rock the heck out of that like I do my silver streak/witch mark.
Just sayin'
I hope I'm not being too forward, or putting you on the spot. You can tell me to get lost and I won't mind.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I wore a patch when I went out until I was fitted for my prosthesis, and the patch was kind of attention-getting. FWIW, wearing an eye patch and a face mask leaves you feeling like you're looking at the world through a periscope. It does get a little old after a while.
I enjoyed it when little kids noticed. One little girl popped up and asked me point-blank what happened to my eye. I explained to her that I had hurt my eye, and the patch protected it. Her mom was embarassed, but I told her curiousity was a good thing.honey the codewitch wrote: I hope I'm not being too forward, or putting you on the spot.
Not at all. One of my favorite things about [well-advanced] middle age is that so few things embarass me.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I'm early middle age and yet I know what you mean. Life's too short to be embarrassed.
Little kids are the best. They're one of the reasons I get tri-color dye jobs.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I figured someone must have posted the pirate joke before, and sure enough[^].
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As a dad, I absolutely ran the pirate jokes into the ground. I think it was the third time I said "I've become a man of singular vision" that my daughter slugged me in the shoulder hard enough to actually hurt.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Curious about the silver streak/witch mark. Picture?
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I was asked about my witch mark[^]
In case anyone is still mistaken about me being a woman, that should cover it too. 
You don't get a recent photo because my hair is atrocious. I had to dig that one off my google account.
Real programmers use butterflies
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If you ever run into problems with a program that's using custom mouse cursors instead of the windows standard ones, give YoloMouse a try. It's core use is replacing cursors in games, but it should work anywhere since game devs tend to be at the top of the list for doing screwy stuff with the core OS platform.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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Dan, thank you very much. Yolomouse works a treat!
Software Zen: delete this;
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Glad I could help. ![Rose | [Rose]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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Does this mean an anal mask in out future?
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They're called pants 
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AKA a diaper. 
(And yes, it might be in many of our futures.  )
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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