Alright, so this whole ‘jerrythekid21’ business. It wasn’t some grand plan I cooked up. Not at all. It actually started way back, felt like a lifetime ago. I was just messing around, you know, trying to get a feel for things online. I picked that name, ‘jerrythekid21’, on a whim, really. Didn’t think much of it.
I remember I decided I was gonna build this little thing. Just a small project, something to call my own. Poured hours into it. Days, weeks. Reading up on stuff, trying things out, failing a lot. A whole lot. My setup was basic, an old clunker of a machine, software that probably belongs in a museum now. But I was hooked. I’d be up till silly hours in the morning, hammering away at the keyboard, convinced I was onto something amazing. Classic rookie enthusiasm, right?
I got it to a point where it sort of, kind of, worked. Ish. Did a little happy dance. Showed it to a couple of mates. Then, you know, life happens. Got busy with other stuff. New projects, actual work, all that jazz. And ‘jerrythekid21’, the project and the name, just got buried under layers of new experiences. Forgot all about it, to be honest.
Fast forward a good few years. I was clearing out some old hard drives, digital spring cleaning, you could say. And there it was. A folder. Named something cryptic, but I had a hunch. Opened it up, and boom, ‘jerrythekid21’ stared back at me. All those old files. My first thought was, “No way this thing still runs.” My second thought was, “I gotta try.”
So, I started digging in. And let me tell you, it was an experience. First off, trying to get the old tools to work on my current setup? Nightmare. Compatibility issues galore. Had to hunt down ancient versions of software, mess with settings I hadn’t touched in ages. Felt like an archaeologist trying to decipher some lost language. And the code, or whatever you want to call what I’d written back then… Oh boy. It was a mess. No comments, weird logic, stuff that made absolutely no sense to present-day me.
I spent a good chunk of time just trying to understand what younger me was thinking. There were moments I wanted to just delete the whole folder and pretend I never found it. So frustrating. But, I’m a stubborn sort. I kept at it. Bit by bit, I started to piece things together. It was like solving a puzzle I’d made for myself and then completely forgotten the solution to.
- Figured out some of the old data formats.
- Managed to get parts of it to compile, after a lot of tweaking.
- Even got a glimpse of what I was trying to achieve back then.
In the end, did I get it working perfectly like it was some long-lost masterpiece? Nah, not really. It was still clunky. Still a bit broken. But that wasn’t the point anymore. The whole process of digging through it, wrestling with it, that was the real takeaway. It was a stark reminder of how far I’d come. How much I’d learned, often the hard way. And honestly, how much I still didn’t know.
It’s funny, that ‘jerrythekid21’ thing. It’s not something I show off. It’s not on any resume. But it’s there. A baseline. A reminder of where I started, all raw enthusiasm and zero polish. And every now and then, when I’m stuck on something complex now, I think back to that kid, ‘jerrythekid21’, just bashing away at the keyboard, trying to make something, anything, work. And it sort of grounds me, you know? Just gotta keep bashing away.
