Building stuff

When I was 12, a relative lend me a set of PC, I vaguely remember it was a Pentium 133, has a turbo button in its case, and a fairly large, 400MB hard drive. He lend it to me so I can take it apart and put it back, see if everything is still working.

 

I always like taking thing apart and put it back together, sometimes the latter part wasn't smooth, but it is pure fun. For that Pentium 133, after I put it back and POST-ed, I called and ask some questions - it involved using mscdex to load CD-ROM device driver, so I could access it and install Windows.

22 years passed, I have become something that I couldn't imagine at 12. Working in the heart of Technology - Silicon Valley - as a software engineer, and recently, engineering manager. But the fundamentals have not changed for the past two decades. Building stuff. The difference is the target audience. When I build a PC, it is tailored for my preferences. when I build a new module on Yahoo News, it was used by tens of millions of people around the world. However, to my surprise, the joy of building something is just as pure, in both cases.

Whether it's re-compiling ffmpeg for the 1001st time, for it to use NVENC, or to devise yet another IE hack, or assembling the pipe with awk, tee, and find, or build another PC for yourself because yours is getting too old to do any HEVC codec - It is still the same pure joy.