My 72 Seasons and How Can I Pay Them Forward

This year Metallica released “72 Seasons”. The main loose concept of the record is that our first 72 seasons (18 years) define who we will be for the rest of our lives. If this viewpoint stands or not, is a discussion for a different time, however it got me thinking: “What are my 72 Seasons that led me professionaly to the point where I am now?”.

There is no way to really answer this without a certain degree of self-reflection and bringing forward some key moments my life, before entering adulthood. Some of them are: seeing a computer for the first time in my life at the age of eight (it’s a cool story – back then Greece, while aligned with the West and a full NATO member. it was under a socialist goverment, trying to boost up agriculture. So, near my house there was an agricultural exhibition. In addition to the usual stuff you expect to see there (tractors, a lot of tractors) there was a small stand from a local computer dealer, having an IBM XT clone on display – I can infer given that it only had two colors, it had a Hercules card) and deciding on the spot that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Seeing “Wargames” on VHS (for those of you that do not remember what VHS was, click on the handy link) refined this even further – not only I wanted to do the computer thingie but the antics carried by Matthew Broderick sure hand an impact (a view at the DVD/Blu-Ray extras reveals that it had an impact to a ton of people around my ages that chose security as their trade). Eventually, I got a Commodore Amiga 500 – the iconic home computer of the time. One of the problems that Amiga had was widespread piracy – this was exasperated in Greece (most of the people I knew had no legal copies of software whatsoever) of that time. A way to support the Amiga hobby was to sell/trade pirated games. Most of these games had cracktros – I decided to learn how to make them and how to replace them, in order to spread my marketing message. Acquiring a (legal!) copy of AMOS Basic introduced me to programming. I still remember that with a friend of mine, we used to save up money and buy Amiga Format (the excellent UK Amiga magazine) in turns each month. In one of my turns, it was the coverdisk with AMOS, another key point was getting introduced to tracking software – I am still using trackers to this day for my music endeavors (for a cool, modern tracker, check out Renoise). Unfortunately, all good things have an end – the Amiga500 was sold against my will and got replaced by an IBM clone after a few years. While I did learn some good stuff on the IBM clone, eventually I lost interest in computers and turned elsewhere for after-school activities (namely teaching myself electric guitar and playing in a hardcore band, as well as being a roadie for a way more famous band from my area). Shortly before turning 18, I went to Athens to attend a death metal concert – my slightly older friend who was offering me a couch to sleep on has just gotten a book about a thingie called “Red Hat Linux Unleashed”. Asking him about this, reading the book and seeing the environment in action, somehow re-kindled my interest in computers. The rest of the story happens past my 72 seasons, so I will stop here.

From the above you can easily infer the not so cool stuff.Greece under socialism, especially in rural areas was definitely not a hotbed of technological adoption and innovation. Even with a computer at hand, there were few resources and people at the time in my area (urban centers like Athens or University cities like Patras were a different story). You can also easily infer that the environment was not the most welcome and not every family was considering a career in computing a noble and viable one – especially if this computer is not a big, bad, beige professional box. Connectivity and telephone costs at the time was another story. The nearest city that had an X25 gateway and a few BBSes was strictly long – I did manage to get hold of a 1200 baud modem but, trust me, you really, really do not want to know what happened when we got the phone bill for this month. Let’s not even get me started when dial-up reached the area – not to mention DSL. So, yeah, it was quite a disadvantaged environment to a large extent.

From all the cool and not-so-cool stories above, the one principle I keep is “Paying it forward“. In this context, “paying it forward” means that along the way, I received help and advice from some outstanding individuals. This helped me to propel myself forward. In addition, what literally blows my mind is that there is a certain industry, specific to my domain, that charges THOUSANDS of Euros to people, promising them coaching leading shortly to a well paid position in security engineering. So, below is my offering:

If you come from a disadvantaged background and you need some hands-on mentoring, I have two slots open for the next year. I do not care about the topic – it can be something I know, it can be something we can discover together. I will not charge a dime – if the need for something arises, potentially I can cover it. What I expect is to have done your homework before contacting me with your proposal and be committed and consistent.

Details on how to contact me are abundant. What you submit and how you submit it also counts.

Finally, my pet peeve is that I detest virtue signalling. I will not publicize this post on my social media – if you, the reader, likes the message and the offering to others, you can share it.