Here's my story, I've never told it before but I feel I'm ready to spill my beans to a bunch of strangers, just to get it off my chest.
About 6 years ago I worked for a Cable TV company in the UK, which I wont name for personal and possibly legal reasons.
I'd never really been on a PC since my school days and I think the machines they had were Acorn and BBC IBM compatible. I never really learned anything from that as it was only a one hour lesson a week for around the last 3 years of school life.
The company I worked for began to offer Internet via Cable Modems and in the beginning we, as installers & engineers where required to configure customers PC's. Windows XP had just hit the scene and due to many of the engineers not having much experience on a computer, we were issued with a photo copied step by step guide on how to set up a PC on Windows 95 through to Windows XP (Typical of the company not to offer proper training).
It was something I took to straight away and picked up the very basics in no time. This then prompted my to buy a PC and after only a day or Two, I realised something was seriously missing from my PC, The Internet!!! While the PC was great for storing my music and various other unimportant things, I was limited to what I could do, so I took the plunge and subscribed to an ISP.
Now in the meantime the Cable Companies Hardware had been compromised, Cable Set Top Boxes (STB's) & Cable Modems (CM's) had been hacked and it was possible to gain free services from them.
Yes you guessed it, having access to the hardware I decided to try and learn how to acquire these services for free, my intention was to pay for the lowest package whilst receiving the most expensive package (if not better a better package) they offered.
In the process of learning to gain these services on the web, I began to use forums, reading and reading the many, many posts made on various sites. After a year or so I had learned so much I was one of the most informed people in the UK (At least on the forums). I had been seduced by the feel of the community and how I good I felt about helping people out and just getting to chat people I would normally not get speak to (I've got friends, I'm not a complete geek but as individuals not everybody is interested in the same things, certainly at the time none of my friends were interested in the web and computer technology) .
I wasn't in the scene to make any money, I actively discouraged people in trying to sell on modified hardware to make quick profits, in my eyes this want to make money from, it was a hobby. Anyway my efforts became recognised on several forums and I was made a moderator to help answer questions and police the various sites I had been appointed on.
I then started to feel the attitude and policies of the sites I helped on were not what I was all about and decided to set up my own forum.
I had no idea what this entailed other than I would need to pay a web host to host the site on. An acquittance at the time, (Now a very good friend) knew how to set up a forum and obliged in setting up an IPB (Invision Power Board) forum for me and set me up with a good host.
In the coming months I learned to administrate the board and use the various features and functions to my advantage, but like with my PC so early on in this tale, something was missing, vBulletin (VB)!!! I was used to using VB back when I was a moderator on several other sites and the general feel along with addons that were available superseded IPB. As my friend knew a bit more than me (But not that much by the time I had learned how to use IPB) I contacted him and asked him to help me convert my IPB forum to VB. We managed to do this successfully and the community I had set up was great.
Now lets go back to my employment.
In 2004, I turned up to work as usual and had been told late the day before there would be a meeting, with one of the managers. What they never told me or anybody else was the police would be there to arrest me and 16 of my colleagues. Due to hardware that had gone missing (Or stolen as we should really say) the Company had tracked back all the hardware that was issued out to installers and engineers and decided to prosecute. Whilst I was in the police station, my house was being raided for evidence (Not something you ever want to experience).
At this point I will say I don't excuse my actions but at the time I really didn't see what harm it was doing. The only victim as I saw it was the Cable Company, which was a large organisation and could easily handle the loss of the few hundred pounds that the hardware I had stolen, cost them (At this time I had no idea 16 of my colleagues had also been stealing equipment, some to sell for a profit, others like me, just to get free or discounted services).
After a year of various court appearances, I was finally sentenced to an Eight month sentence, for which I only served Two months in prison, Two months on curfew with an electronic tag and Four months on probation. In all honesty I feel lucky for that, because prison is a living hell, but I am also glad it's something I've experienced as it's made me the person I am today.
I will also say you might laugh if you've ever spent time in prison especially on a longer sentence, you may laugh even more if you've never been to prison and think Two months without any liberties wasn't enough for me or that you could easily spend Two months in a prison without it affecting you. To those people who have never been there, just watch Big Brother for a week and think those people don't loose that many privileges but look how they react.
Right lets fast forward to today. I got out of prison, closed my forum which had managed to stay open through my time away and swore never to go back to jail again.
After losing my job and very nearly my wife and kids, I went back to college and advanced my skills in the telecoms industry, I'm now a self employed telecoms engineer and looking back the way things turned out may have been the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm now a self employed telecoms engineer by day.
By night I run quite a successful forum as a hobby which I will not name, simply because I don't need to and I'm not here to spam or promote my site. I love the challenge of learning the various codes that make a website and learning how to manipulate them codes to achieve your goal. I also still love the community feel, helping and being helped.
I've no idea why I decided get verbal diarrhoea but after my years on the web and how I came to be hear, I thought I would detail my own story (And maybe just get it off my chest). I know it's a bit of an epic of a tale, but I'd be interested to hear how everybody else became a weboholic.
Thanks for reading,
all the best
Dave
About 6 years ago I worked for a Cable TV company in the UK, which I wont name for personal and possibly legal reasons.
I'd never really been on a PC since my school days and I think the machines they had were Acorn and BBC IBM compatible. I never really learned anything from that as it was only a one hour lesson a week for around the last 3 years of school life.
The company I worked for began to offer Internet via Cable Modems and in the beginning we, as installers & engineers where required to configure customers PC's. Windows XP had just hit the scene and due to many of the engineers not having much experience on a computer, we were issued with a photo copied step by step guide on how to set up a PC on Windows 95 through to Windows XP (Typical of the company not to offer proper training).
It was something I took to straight away and picked up the very basics in no time. This then prompted my to buy a PC and after only a day or Two, I realised something was seriously missing from my PC, The Internet!!! While the PC was great for storing my music and various other unimportant things, I was limited to what I could do, so I took the plunge and subscribed to an ISP.
Now in the meantime the Cable Companies Hardware had been compromised, Cable Set Top Boxes (STB's) & Cable Modems (CM's) had been hacked and it was possible to gain free services from them.
Yes you guessed it, having access to the hardware I decided to try and learn how to acquire these services for free, my intention was to pay for the lowest package whilst receiving the most expensive package (if not better a better package) they offered.
In the process of learning to gain these services on the web, I began to use forums, reading and reading the many, many posts made on various sites. After a year or so I had learned so much I was one of the most informed people in the UK (At least on the forums). I had been seduced by the feel of the community and how I good I felt about helping people out and just getting to chat people I would normally not get speak to (I've got friends, I'm not a complete geek but as individuals not everybody is interested in the same things, certainly at the time none of my friends were interested in the web and computer technology) .
I wasn't in the scene to make any money, I actively discouraged people in trying to sell on modified hardware to make quick profits, in my eyes this want to make money from, it was a hobby. Anyway my efforts became recognised on several forums and I was made a moderator to help answer questions and police the various sites I had been appointed on.
I then started to feel the attitude and policies of the sites I helped on were not what I was all about and decided to set up my own forum.
I had no idea what this entailed other than I would need to pay a web host to host the site on. An acquittance at the time, (Now a very good friend) knew how to set up a forum and obliged in setting up an IPB (Invision Power Board) forum for me and set me up with a good host.
In the coming months I learned to administrate the board and use the various features and functions to my advantage, but like with my PC so early on in this tale, something was missing, vBulletin (VB)!!! I was used to using VB back when I was a moderator on several other sites and the general feel along with addons that were available superseded IPB. As my friend knew a bit more than me (But not that much by the time I had learned how to use IPB) I contacted him and asked him to help me convert my IPB forum to VB. We managed to do this successfully and the community I had set up was great.
Now lets go back to my employment.
In 2004, I turned up to work as usual and had been told late the day before there would be a meeting, with one of the managers. What they never told me or anybody else was the police would be there to arrest me and 16 of my colleagues. Due to hardware that had gone missing (Or stolen as we should really say) the Company had tracked back all the hardware that was issued out to installers and engineers and decided to prosecute. Whilst I was in the police station, my house was being raided for evidence (Not something you ever want to experience).
At this point I will say I don't excuse my actions but at the time I really didn't see what harm it was doing. The only victim as I saw it was the Cable Company, which was a large organisation and could easily handle the loss of the few hundred pounds that the hardware I had stolen, cost them (At this time I had no idea 16 of my colleagues had also been stealing equipment, some to sell for a profit, others like me, just to get free or discounted services).
After a year of various court appearances, I was finally sentenced to an Eight month sentence, for which I only served Two months in prison, Two months on curfew with an electronic tag and Four months on probation. In all honesty I feel lucky for that, because prison is a living hell, but I am also glad it's something I've experienced as it's made me the person I am today.
I will also say you might laugh if you've ever spent time in prison especially on a longer sentence, you may laugh even more if you've never been to prison and think Two months without any liberties wasn't enough for me or that you could easily spend Two months in a prison without it affecting you. To those people who have never been there, just watch Big Brother for a week and think those people don't loose that many privileges but look how they react.
Right lets fast forward to today. I got out of prison, closed my forum which had managed to stay open through my time away and swore never to go back to jail again.
After losing my job and very nearly my wife and kids, I went back to college and advanced my skills in the telecoms industry, I'm now a self employed telecoms engineer and looking back the way things turned out may have been the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm now a self employed telecoms engineer by day.
By night I run quite a successful forum as a hobby which I will not name, simply because I don't need to and I'm not here to spam or promote my site. I love the challenge of learning the various codes that make a website and learning how to manipulate them codes to achieve your goal. I also still love the community feel, helping and being helped.
I've no idea why I decided get verbal diarrhoea but after my years on the web and how I came to be hear, I thought I would detail my own story (And maybe just get it off my chest). I know it's a bit of an epic of a tale, but I'd be interested to hear how everybody else became a weboholic.
Thanks for reading,
all the best
Dave
