Hello everyone,
I'm glad to be here, and I am reading through the Millionaire Fastlane .
So, why have you just got to read my intro? Keep reading to find out, but first, I've got to say, my journey on to the fast lane comes late, but that will not deter me in the least. If I see the money at the back-end of my life, that's better than not at all, and it'll be a great cushion of wealth for my son.
I'm 53 now, and I've always been 'interested' in coding, but now realise that interest should have been commitment. From when I was young, I was reading computer magazines, typing in the rows upon rows of BASIC commands into my old Atari 400 computer, from the glossy pages with the wafting scent of printed ink. Debugging, well, more like "What they hell?" moments, sifting through the haystack of data statements to find the thin needle of the typo of a digit or a comma instead of a dot proved to be challenging. When the program worked, I felt great. With that in mind, it goes without saying that computing, as it was in the mid 80s, was my favourite class in secondary school, but that changed when the bullying started, not daily, but enough for me to not relish the next double period of things being flicked at me from behind. I was shy before then, and was certainly more so after that experience.
So, at 16, I went from school into the required job, never being taught anything different from the education system. The school even had a bounded stack of paper given to each pupil that matched jobs and industries to groups of school subjects and grades. That 'slow lane' job was actively encouraged. The job search didn't take long. On my second interview, I got a job as a telephone engineer at staggering £1 GBP per hour. I did enjoy that work as I had to travel around a lot and got to play with wires.
I was at that place for a decade and never really got anywhere despite doing a great job. While I was there, I did come up with an idea for a new way of using calling cards with audio technology, which I presented to the chairman of the company. I had tested my idea with a Dictaphone pen, and repurposed that to call phone numbers. A short time after that, I was told that the company would start making them. I went to the chairman's office and asked him to put my name on the patent. "Good idea", he said as he opened the door. "Why are you showing me the door?", I asked him. He told me that never had any employee in the history of the company put their name on a patent. I told him that it was MY idea and that I am not in the R&D department, where people get paid a lot more than I do. In hindsight, I should have taken my idea to another telecommunications company.
Let's skip the few other jobs and MLM I did, and on to why you had to read my introduction. I managed to miss the fast lane twice! I had a couple of ideas, which were related to my interest in computing. This was at a time when the 'information superhighway', as it was called in the UK, was a blistering 56Kps, and you could hear the internet every time you hopped onto the phone line to dial up. There were no smart phones back then, and web 2.0 was something for the future.
IDEA 1
With the limited knowledge I had of HTML, I started building a website where local restaurants would pay a fee to have their menus posted. Visitors would be able to click select boxes to chose the items from the menus, and when they submitted the form, it would send the order as an email to the restaurant. The restaurant would then confirm the order. I was told that it was a bad idea, and I also didn't know how to integrate payments. As well as the technical aspects, those bullies at school made me nervous and shy about telling business people about my idea. So my 'headwinds' were other people, my own lack of knowledge and thanks to those in computer class, a malformed personality, or is that just blame? My on-ramp to the fast lane was in front of me, but I took a detour. Of course, that business concept became massive. That was on-ramp 1, and the slowlane doesn't allow U-turns.
IDEA 2
Being someone who went out clubbing on those two evenings of freedom, one evening I thought about why we (my friends and I) were waiting for cabs, sticking our hands out, only for most of them to drive by full of warm, dry passengers. And what about those waiting alone, exposed to the elements and perhaps some unsavoury characters? My second idea was very similar to idea 1m and at around the same time, but for pre-booking taxis. As with idea 1, firms would register to the site, and pay a fee or a percentage of each booking. People would fill out a form, with the pick-up time and location, and the email system would confirm the booking. But people told me that it was no good; they call to pre-book taxis. My own experience showed me that the cabs didn't always turn up, and there was no record of my request. So, as before, the next fast lane on-ramp was there, but I carried on going straight ahead because I listened to others and lacked knowledge of payment systems. Well, that ideas turned out to be great for Uber and DiDi in another massive industry.
Today, on a hard drive, I still have those beginnings of websites that should have been, and had I completed them and showed them to the world, my introduction today would have been about how I made it big on the fast lane, and how I own two companies in among the largest industries going, but instead it's about how I managed to avoid the fast lane on-ramps by not swishing off my headwinds, and continued life on the slow lane of ignorant bliss.
THE NEXT ON-RAMP IS GETTING CLOSER
All is not lost. Thanks to M.J. and reading the Millionaire Fastlane , I am rejuvenated, coding a new idea. I’m learning PHP coding language and SQL for the database, and so far, I’ve got parts of the system securely working. It may not be the prettiest code, but it works, and that’s the main thing. I can refactor it when the money starts coming in. This time I WILL learn about payment systems. I am looking forward to when I can post about my fast lane success.
I'm glad to be here, and I am reading through the Millionaire Fastlane .
So, why have you just got to read my intro? Keep reading to find out, but first, I've got to say, my journey on to the fast lane comes late, but that will not deter me in the least. If I see the money at the back-end of my life, that's better than not at all, and it'll be a great cushion of wealth for my son.
I'm 53 now, and I've always been 'interested' in coding, but now realise that interest should have been commitment. From when I was young, I was reading computer magazines, typing in the rows upon rows of BASIC commands into my old Atari 400 computer, from the glossy pages with the wafting scent of printed ink. Debugging, well, more like "What they hell?" moments, sifting through the haystack of data statements to find the thin needle of the typo of a digit or a comma instead of a dot proved to be challenging. When the program worked, I felt great. With that in mind, it goes without saying that computing, as it was in the mid 80s, was my favourite class in secondary school, but that changed when the bullying started, not daily, but enough for me to not relish the next double period of things being flicked at me from behind. I was shy before then, and was certainly more so after that experience.
So, at 16, I went from school into the required job, never being taught anything different from the education system. The school even had a bounded stack of paper given to each pupil that matched jobs and industries to groups of school subjects and grades. That 'slow lane' job was actively encouraged. The job search didn't take long. On my second interview, I got a job as a telephone engineer at staggering £1 GBP per hour. I did enjoy that work as I had to travel around a lot and got to play with wires.
I was at that place for a decade and never really got anywhere despite doing a great job. While I was there, I did come up with an idea for a new way of using calling cards with audio technology, which I presented to the chairman of the company. I had tested my idea with a Dictaphone pen, and repurposed that to call phone numbers. A short time after that, I was told that the company would start making them. I went to the chairman's office and asked him to put my name on the patent. "Good idea", he said as he opened the door. "Why are you showing me the door?", I asked him. He told me that never had any employee in the history of the company put their name on a patent. I told him that it was MY idea and that I am not in the R&D department, where people get paid a lot more than I do. In hindsight, I should have taken my idea to another telecommunications company.
Let's skip the few other jobs and MLM I did, and on to why you had to read my introduction. I managed to miss the fast lane twice! I had a couple of ideas, which were related to my interest in computing. This was at a time when the 'information superhighway', as it was called in the UK, was a blistering 56Kps, and you could hear the internet every time you hopped onto the phone line to dial up. There were no smart phones back then, and web 2.0 was something for the future.
IDEA 1
With the limited knowledge I had of HTML, I started building a website where local restaurants would pay a fee to have their menus posted. Visitors would be able to click select boxes to chose the items from the menus, and when they submitted the form, it would send the order as an email to the restaurant. The restaurant would then confirm the order. I was told that it was a bad idea, and I also didn't know how to integrate payments. As well as the technical aspects, those bullies at school made me nervous and shy about telling business people about my idea. So my 'headwinds' were other people, my own lack of knowledge and thanks to those in computer class, a malformed personality, or is that just blame? My on-ramp to the fast lane was in front of me, but I took a detour. Of course, that business concept became massive. That was on-ramp 1, and the slowlane doesn't allow U-turns.
IDEA 2
Being someone who went out clubbing on those two evenings of freedom, one evening I thought about why we (my friends and I) were waiting for cabs, sticking our hands out, only for most of them to drive by full of warm, dry passengers. And what about those waiting alone, exposed to the elements and perhaps some unsavoury characters? My second idea was very similar to idea 1m and at around the same time, but for pre-booking taxis. As with idea 1, firms would register to the site, and pay a fee or a percentage of each booking. People would fill out a form, with the pick-up time and location, and the email system would confirm the booking. But people told me that it was no good; they call to pre-book taxis. My own experience showed me that the cabs didn't always turn up, and there was no record of my request. So, as before, the next fast lane on-ramp was there, but I carried on going straight ahead because I listened to others and lacked knowledge of payment systems. Well, that ideas turned out to be great for Uber and DiDi in another massive industry.
Today, on a hard drive, I still have those beginnings of websites that should have been, and had I completed them and showed them to the world, my introduction today would have been about how I made it big on the fast lane, and how I own two companies in among the largest industries going, but instead it's about how I managed to avoid the fast lane on-ramps by not swishing off my headwinds, and continued life on the slow lane of ignorant bliss.
THE NEXT ON-RAMP IS GETTING CLOSER
All is not lost. Thanks to M.J. and reading the Millionaire Fastlane , I am rejuvenated, coding a new idea. I’m learning PHP coding language and SQL for the database, and so far, I’ve got parts of the system securely working. It may not be the prettiest code, but it works, and that’s the main thing. I can refactor it when the money starts coming in. This time I WILL learn about payment systems. I am looking forward to when I can post about my fast lane success.
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I'd rather be a dummy on the shore than be on boat with the crowd all moving to one side of it.
