First Post Ever (happy blogday)

Dear World (Web),
Welcome to the first post on my very first attempt at a blog!
Another new year is upon us, and that means its time for me to try things that I was reserved to do last year (I am a professional procrastinator). One of the things topping my list was to start a weblog. I had a few reasons for starting a blog, I might even have a reason for waiting this long.
First, however I would like to take this post to introduce myself for readers who may not know me, or friends who might be bored and never knew my history with the internet....
I was born in the early 80's and have currently lived my whole life in or around the in Houston Texas Metropolitan area, mostly on the south-east Galveston side.
My main interests revolve around the politics of technology & science when related and compared with spirituality & humanity. Er, Sorta.
I have grown up with a sense of justice and pity. I am pro-life, yet I must admit choice comes first. I am sarcastic yet serious. I am humble. I try my best to respect all life, and many things considered not. I hope and pray for truth, choice, knowledge, and freedom (speech, press, information, health, shelter, food, water and anything else I missed) everywhere for anything. Stop the Hate. Stop the War. God Bless the World (Web). No Exceptions! Anyways, enough of that.
My life has seen (and basically revolved around) the rise of the digital age. One of the main reasons 'digital' is now a household name is the rise of certain microprocessors (namely x86) and personal computers (PC's) over the last 25 years or so.
In the early 80's, the first computer I got to play with was the Commodore 64 my father bought for the family. Simple commands would RUN programs on 5.25in. floppies and there was even a modem and printer attached. Did I mention the computer was mostly built into a heavy keyboard? Not bad for the time (it preceded the Apple II) however, it pails in comparison to the Open Standards, Software choices and Performance advantages of more modern less console-like computers. Not to mention it was anything but graphical (16 colors). It did 8-bit processing pretty fast on a processor with approximately a 1MHz clock cycle and had a whopping 64KB of RAM. Modern computers in comparison currently work with 64 bit processors running around 3000MHz with about 1,000,000KB of RAM. My point, it was the first computer I played with and it was a first step in the 'Personal Computer' age soon to follow.
Growing up I forgot about computers for many years until middle school. I had a friend, and his dad built computers as a home buisness. My friend loved MS-DOS and was starting to use MS-Windows (3.1?) on computers he would help his dad build. He had his own computer we could play with. So I was back around a command line, and I would watch him type some commands to run a game or install and remove software. I had not played with DOS yet, I guess I was waiting for my own computer at this point yet, even then, I noticed the technology was moving quite fast.
Instead, I began reading books and reading up on the subject to try to persuade my mom into buying me one. I played with computers at friends houses and even at the local library and public school. Around five years of reading and begging went by before my mom and I started shopping for a computer. By this time I had already learned enough by reading (and playing with the computers at the library & friends houses) that I knew even more about computer hardware at this point than most of my friends who already had their own computers.
My mother and I drove out to a Compaq wholesale warehouse on the north side of Houston to try and buy a late model refurbished computer. We even had one picked out but when we found out how much they were the selling the refurbished 17" CRT monitors for (I think it was about $300 high priced for a new, even back then), we backed out at the last second.
Several months went by and the holiday season of 1998 was upon us. On the last day of that year we went to circuit city and paid too much for a Sony Vaio. I think it was a PCV-E302DS model. I do know it came with a 350MHz slot Pentium II, 64MB of PC133 RAM, a 10GB HDD and a DVD-ROM drive (we could not afford the one with a burner back then). Im sorry to admit, even in early 1999, me and several friends were using AOL dial-up. I honestly kept it for about 2 months before I gave up and switched to another dial-up service called PDQ (gone the way of the Dodo) for $9.95 a month instead of $24.95 for AOL and it was somehow slightly faster and better quality service overall.
I moved out of my moms house for the first time(s) over the next couple of years and had my first tastes of broadband internet (cable in my case). I could now download 1MB files in seconds and play new online video games such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike with low-latency lag-free bullets flying. It was truly a great time. I was truly hooked. I could surf around a dozen sites in the time it used to take me to load just one. (am i sounding like a commercial for DSL or is it just me)
Moving back in my mom's house (with a girlfriend) meant paying rent. However, with rent came the right to beg for more 'goodies' around the house. This time however, I didn't want cable TV, I wanted cable internet! My brother on the other hand still wanted cable TV, so we soon hammered out a deal and had both.
More time went by and I was ready for a new computer. I wanted a nice motherboard with DDR RAM support and an AGP slot. I got a Barebones System with a SOYO KT333 Dragon Ultra Platinum Edition. I started it with a Athlon XP 1700+ however it currently runs with a Athlon XP 2600+ upgraded from 256 to 512MB of PC2700 and a 100GB HDD. My old Sony Vaio was upgraded to 128MB of ram (later upgrade included 256MB and a 500Mhz Pentium) and dontated to my brother as a gift. (mostly so he could start enjoying the internet I already loved)
Shortly after building this new computer and installing Windows XP on it (about 6 months worth of XP) I decided I had enough of (stealing) Microsoft and Windows for good.
A new friend helped convince me to install Debian Sid GNU/Linux and my newest SOYO Box and my computing life have never been the same. I learned about UNIX and other things pre-windows such as Macintosh. I also learned about End User License Agreements (EULAs) at this point and quickly learned to applicate both the usefulness and politics of open source (free) software. Best of all I suddenly have back my good old friend the command line in my life. Besides learning some new bash commands, I started learning some basic HTML tags (still working on that) when helping a friend or two on a website (or 2). With Debian, I had found new power, knowledge, and potential like never before, not to mention much improved security and stability over windows XP, and all Free Software. The only thing is I had to leave all the crappy M$ programs like Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player behind (ill try not to cry).
Well that brings us up to quite recent. About 6 months ago I got my 3rd computer. It was a used Compaq Presario 5000 series with a Duron 1.3GHz but I upgraded it from 128 (i think) to 448MB of PC133 RAM, 20GB HDD, and it also has a Geforce 4 MX440 (upgraded also to an ATI 9550SE) for some video games I still play on Windows XP. Then another friend gave me a Compaq Deskpro 2000 with a 200MHz Pentium and I upgraded it to 128MB of RAM and put Windows 98 SE on it. One if not both of these computers will soon get GNU/Linux instead of Microsoft Windows.
I felt the need at this time to let the world know more about myself and my experience working on computers, switching to open source, opening minds and letting the penguin(s) out of the bag.
Welcome to a new year, a new blog, and lets open a free future!