In my entire decade... this is just pretty much sums it up.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2_SQZKe4yo...usbusiness.jpg

Really. Everything else just pretty MINOR in comparison. Lots of bullshit from life in general and the only major thing outside of... well... internets would be moving several states away from home. But still, it WAS thanks to the INTERNETS that I had met someone decent enough to offer me a place to stay and etc etc etc.

However trivial the internet may seem, it was an important decade of my life. Prior to owning a computer or a modem, I had had lived in a very tiny world in an aging town. I had virtually bare minimum experiences of knowing people outside of deaf culture and abroad. But thanks to the internet, I had met SO many people in that decade and just meeting these awesome people and so much reading online had not only taught me so much about myself but how everyone had lived from that refreshing perceptive. GFF do make up a part of it, but really, its people everywhere. Friends of friends or a random chatroom or boards like this one had contributed so much on top of all sorts of things I had read online. I couldn't take this decade back if I tried, and it's very well worth it for the education I've never gotten, at least in such a profound way.

I done fucked up. Well... maybe not completely. I did get a CS/Math degree, and made it to grad school. Unfortunately, I realized by the end of my first quarter in grad school that I'd probably be way happier as a poor archaeologist/history writer. But now there's the $80,000 in loans to pay back... gotta have a real job for that.

Totally did not end up being the person I thought I would back in '00. I thought being educated and experienced would make me happy. Fail.....

In 2000, I was fresh out of high school and trying to find my direction in life. Now I’m 5 years out of tech school and still trying to find my direction in life.

In 2000, an MP3 player could hold about 5 songs and not many people owned one. Now they can hold close to 50,000 songs and everybody has one.

In 2000, cell phones were bricks with monochrome screens and they didn’t do much more than make/take phone calls. Now they’re practically full-fledged computers.

In 2000, some people used flatbed scanners to get their photos onto their computers. Now everybody has a digicam or cell phone with a camera, and some of us don’t even need to go near our computer to share our pics.

In 2000, terrorism was a middling global threat that wasn’t taken all that seriously. Now it’s a middling global threat that’s constantly used as justification for violation of constitutional rights.

In 2000, some people would grumble about gas costing $1.60/gal.

In 2000, we were really impressed when the characters in our PSX games didn’t look like they were made of cardboard or when our N64 games had – *gasp* – speech!

In 2000, MTV was still about the music and TLC was still about learning.

I'm not so sure about that one.

This is more correct.

Not that most of the music was GOOD, but.