It is amazing that I am not even 26 and I am constantly feeling “old.” Being one who works in and cares about technology, it is easy to feel this way. Take this web site for example. Earlier this morning I discovered a problem with the publishing system that produces the blog area of Sevensquared (which is the web site you are currently on silly). I couldn’t resolve it on my own so I went to the product’s web site in hopes of solving my problem. After perusing the support forums for over an hour, all I learned is that my knowledge about coding is miniscule when compared to the many others who have posted to the site. Now, I already know this but it is still annoying to have it pointed out to you. I knew in the back of my mind that my coding skills were just okay. Now I am under the impression that they may be downgraded to so-so. I read posts from users who customized their code in ways I never thought of, like adding server-side includes and customizing certain modules. Once reading their documentation I get it what they did. The reason I feel old is because fairly (or unfairly) I have decided that the people who made these alterations are between the ages of 14 and 18. When I was their age I was playing Dungeons and Dragons in Ed’s basement, ordering Bigfoot pizzas from Dominos, not altering, modifying and developing PHP code. It’s like kids these days, at least kids who are interested in IT, have a 10 year start on people my age or older. God help me when they graduate from college.

To continue on my rant about those a decade younger than myself, last night I went to an all-night LAN-o-thon at Web2Zone in Cooper Square and got my ass kicked by, yes, you guess it, 14 – 18 year olds. I was playing Counter Strike with two other 25 year olds. We put up a valiant effort and in some cases, Erik and I (we were playing on the Terrorist side together most of the time) did quite well. On average however we got killed, both literally and figuratively. The reflexes and hand eye coordination these kids had is incredible. While I grew up on videogames, they weren’t like these. I would safe to say that Atari and Nintendo were just a tad different from Quake, Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike.

While playing, Erik and I were joking around, he saying that the Bush Administration wouldn’t be too happy to know that there were terrorists running around in NYC, I saying that he was “a terrorist’s terrorist, a terrorist among terrorists, the model terrorist, etc.” This is a test of the electronic monitoring system. This is only a test. Let’s see if an NSA supercomputer comes across these zeros and ones. I really wonder is the NSA is sophisticated enough to flag this entry. My guess is that they are. I’m already waiting for my doorbell to ring…