DISCLAIMER!!
This page reflects my opinions, and they are intended to be taken as just that: opinions. For the most part I don't think I will say anything offensive, and if I do it is entirely by accident. In fact, I doubt I will even say anything relevent or interesting, so you may want to skip this altogether. I would recommend that unless you are interested in programming, either windoze or Linux, HTML, computers, Linux, games, dry humour, and/or sarcasm, that you should NOT be reading this. The text to follow may contain any or all of the aforementioned, for lack of a better word, things. Now, on with the show!
Just who is this Fiferboy anyways?
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I am just a humble, modest, ordinary kind of guy who happens to be incredibly good looking, intelligent, and 6 foot 4. Well, maybe incredibly good looking is a bit of a stretch, but I am in no way a troll either. Well, you can see the picture, judge for yourself. I live in Canada, but the Southern portion of it that does not have snow all year round. In fact, it is surprisingly close to a Northern American climate, being less than an hour from the border. I am 21 years old currently, though that may change in the future. That is enough to cover the basics. There are sections in the remaining text to fill you in on all the detials you never wanted to know, yet never thought not to ask, about Fiferboy.
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Fiferboy's Formal and not-so-formal Education
To put it very breifly, I have experienced all different levels of education, and have now found one to suit me. I am still a student, so I live the easy student's life of stress, assignments, texts, exams, homework, and playing computer games that every person in school enjoys. I don't remember much of my schooling in the early grades, but I remember that I never did particularly well (or badly) in anything. I was the sort of average student, but I did not grasp things very quickly. I spent the majority of the time in a light haze of confusion, with the occassional ray of understanding peircing through.
Grades 7 and 8 in the part of Canada where I live are a seperate school. It is supposed to be a transition to ease you into high school, so you don't have the shock of being dropped from grade school to high school. For most people, however, it doesn't work that way. It is more like they drop you from grade school into your own personal slice of Hell, and then take you from there to high school, which is much better in comparison. Around that time I had glasses and braces (the big cliche glasses and braces) was incredibly shy, and very akward. I went into the school being shorter than many of the guys there, and came out being taller than most. It was the two worst years of my life, and I maintain to this day the fact that I never learned a single thing in all my time there, except for how to dread going to school. What fun.
High school was a fiarly good experience, especially in contrast to 7 and 8. Grade 9 went smoothly, with me even making a couple of friends. I nearly got an honours average (my 79.4% was not good enough to meet the 80% cut off). People were still immature, but I was getting mature enough to not care what they thought. Grade 10 went even better, with my average increasing to the honours level, and my friendship level increasing as well. My current best friend and I met in Grade 10, and are still close friends. Funny story about him, we'll call him Drummerboy for the purposes of this website, that I will hopefully get around to sometime. Someone remind me if I forget. Through 11 and 12 may marks increased, and I was accepted by most people. By OAC's my marks slid a little (still honours), and I was ready to get out of that school.
Upon graduating from high school, I was accepted into McMaster University in their Engineering program. After a first semester which was, in my opinion, easier than OAC's, we moved in to second semester. We also kicked it into super-high gear. We are talking ludicris speed here. Our calculus course became extremely convoluted and increasingly unrelated to our field. I took that course three times, and never passed. I never even came close to understanding what we were suppose to understand for that course. The rest of the courses I passed, but I did considerably worse than first semester. I loved the school, and the experience, but the work was starting to get a bit obscure.
I got accepted into the Software Engineering program for second year, so I decided to continue with that school and try to pick up the credit I needed. The courses you would expect to be included in a software program, such as -- oh, off the top of my head I can think of -- PROGRAMMING!!! were not present in the content of the course. There were courses that sounded like programming, like digital logic and algorithms, but these turned out to be fancy names for math. So after doing a whole lot of math, and even passing some of it, and very little programming, I decided I didn't want that program any more.
I switched schools to Mohawk College and got accepted into the Software Engineering program there. Now there must be something wrong with this program, because it seems to consentrate on PROGRAMMING!! They must not have talked to McMaster about what kind of courses to include, becuase there is very little math with a whole lot of programming. Now I am doing really well in school for the first time, and I know what I am doing, and I socialize with a large group of friends. Fianlly, school how it was meant to be. It is almost like that $12,000 that I threw away into McMaster wasn't wasted afterall. Don't you love a happy ending? Well, technically it is not the end yet because, well, I haven't finished school yet. But don't you like it when the good guy (me) wins?
Work Experience, or lack thereof
I never got an allowance when I was a kid, and I didn't have a job until I was in grade10, and it only lasted about a year. I cleaned up a pharmacy for an hour a week. Eventually that got bumped up to two hours a week (double my pay per week!), but it wasn't a spectacular money earner. But here comes my friend Drummerboy to the rescue! Remember him from grade 10? Well, in grade 12 he introduced me to the wonderful world of historical re-enacting. And thus the legend of "Fiferboy" was born.
Drummerboy had been working at a historic fort in Toronto for several summers, and approached me with the idea to apply. Seeing as it was getting close to graduation, I really neede to start earning some money. So he taught me how to play the fife during lunch during the spring of grade 12. When I first started learning, just before March break, we sat in a stair well in the school and I tried to get a tone out of the cursed instrument. After about 45 minutes of nothing, I finally managed to get a sound, and thus the legend of "Fiferboy" was born.
After practicing my scales during the March break, Drummerboy started teaching me to play tunes out in a field across the street from the school. You could not imagine such a cool pair as us. Just picture in your minds two big guys in a field playing the fife, and practicing marching. Oh, were we ever cool in those days. Eventually I got so I could play three or four songs, and thus the legend of "Fiferboy" was born.
After apllying at the fort (Fort York, for the record) I got an appointment to do an interview. After taking the bus into Toronto by myself (I had seldom been to Toronto before that) I found the fort, through some divine intervention, I would like to think, and got to my interview plenty early. Now, I can never be quite sure of what happened in the interview, but I am pretty sure I bombed it. I had virtually no work experience before then, I never did and extra-ciricular activities, or played any sports. The only thing I had going for me was that I could play a few songs (rather badly) on the fife, and knew some basic foot drill. By yet another miracle, I got hired, and thus the legend of "Fiferboy" was born.