Hey look, its me wearing my GF's clothes goofing around on my new tablet! Such sadness to follow....
So, I've been in the tech scene as a power user / light weight programmer since the mid 90's, born in 1980. I got my start in web development in the late 90's, probably one winter when Magic : The Gathering tournament season was slow, then continued on with that.. i was the hobby developer... never wanted to make money on the tech, i was in it for the passion and experience.. the knowledge.. I'd dig into any new tech that came out.. play with it for a few days.. and move on.. i could blame it on ADHD or a variety of other things.. most of them being they just weren't long term interesting.. and some that were,... fell off.. such as WASTE... I did mine bitcoin for a few weeks back in 2009,... but then i felt that server was better off being used for other things, so wiped the miner.. It wouldn't be til about 2015 when i started looking at bitcoin again, as an observer, trying to wrap my head around the vastness of that which is blockchain.. and all things related... See.. as a old Magic : The Gathering and Chess player... I wanted to look at the entire board before moving a piece... So, as such.. I started reading every post i could find online about the various Cryptos... a few times i'd come across a project and bookmark it as interesting and check later, ethereum was one of those.. I remember seeing ETH at 0.88 on my birthday, Nov 24th, and saying I should buy some... I didn't... got distracted and went on to other projects... shortly after starting my current job (Robotics Engineer I) April 2016, a coworker was heavy into penny stocks and other cheap stocks, I remember also telling him about ETH and looking up the current prices then, $8!!! During that conversation I remember telling him 'man, this is happening, I should finally dump some cash into this', i had the $500 in my account and ready to invest, hit a snag with registration on the exchange i was going to use, and didnt go back to finish it later, then another distraction popped up, and I missed that boat...
Moving right along.. Lets Jump to April this year, the 7th... It was a pay day, another day of reading news and idly online.. come across ETH again... Notice the price was at $42 a coin! Do some digging for a few hours, and made my first investment.. $75/. Now this isn't much for most people, but mind you, I'm part of the 99%... and my family chose california to live in.. so,.. yea.. anyways.. getting distracted again.. Over the rest of April and early may, I invested $650/ total... Mostly into ETH, using coinbase. Sometime in may I started using Poloniex (Although recently I've been using Bittrex more), and started keeping a majority of my coins in ETH, but investing in some (about 20% of my 'portfolio) other coins.. Early June comes around, and my portfolio has jumped to around $2300/... I decided then that I would 'cash out' a little, and get myself a new Samsung Tab S3, $650/ once all was said and done, with the intent of using it as a dedicated crypto related device, aside from some exchange trading which is just easier on a laptop... So I set out to look into online vendors that accept Crypto, found a few Steem posts that list merchants and noticed TigerDirect and NewEgg both accept..., this was beautiful to me, because at that point, i have my Investment into crypto and just purchased an item for that exact amount,.. a few days later, and right before a beautiful trip to Monterey, CA the tablet arrives! I couldn't have been happier!!! Everything is going right, My Home life is stable for the first time in many years, My Work life hasn't been better for as long as I am able to look back into the memory banks, and Crypto is on FIRE!!! Right off the Monterey trip I stayed out of town (shorter commute to work, more time with my Girlfriend, etc) for a few days, well,... the last day, on the way home, the girlfriend and I have a wedding to goto.
Shortly after the beautiful wedding ceremony, we go in for the reception, and the smoker in me notices an opportunity to goto the car for a smoke.
Well,.. right after turning the corner to my car around a huge utility truck that was blocking sight of my Jeep from the ceremony venue,... I noticed both my passenger side windows shattered.. I've always been paranoid about theft, I always covered my things before getting out of the car, and try to make things as less appealing as possible to thieves... I've never had anything broken into before, sure, things have come up missing, but nothing major.. Well.. they got away with my tablet (yea, the brand new one worth the $650 I put into Crypto) and my laptop bags... The tablet was pattern protected and laptop had a bios password, and ran LinuxMint with a encrypted HD.. I'm confident my data is protected, but the property loss is... rough. The one thing that i DID lose that can never be replaced are the letters from my deceased mother I had in my Drawing Journal, intending to read them for inspiration to draw, I carried them with me. I've never felt anything like this violation of my space.. its been rough the last 5 days debating how to rebuild myself, but i'll get there, I realize bad things happen, but at the end of the day.. I'm alive.
Currently my portfolio I have access too is my Steem account, and a few hundred left in my Poloniex.. I still have 2 broken windows, down a laptop and a tablet, and a $500 fee to get the windows fixed by my car insurance.. the tablet and laptop.. I'm on my own.. I have no idea how i'll even start to rebuild, but I'm starting with this post, and just going to move forward with Steem. I'll be set back some time by this unfortunate turn of events,.. but again.. at the end of the day, I'm alive.
