When I was a toddler I got introduced to the NES. I could only play when the weather was lousy and I couldn't play outside so playing it always felt fun. Eventually I got the Sega Genesis and things worked similarly during my kid years. There was English in the game but I didn't understand it. In Legend of Zelda there were cryptic clues by old men in caves and I would get my dad to translate. I got motivated to learn how to read it on my own and I started to learn English in elementary school.

I got good enough to apply for the immersion program that was in its infancy at the time. Had half a school year purely in English, both vocally and in writing.

At around the same time, my best friend (also neighbor) got a computer since his dad was working in IT. He was playing Duke Nukem 3D and it was fun to play and I wanted a computer too. We got a computer eventually and some time later we got Internet which was expensive at the time. My parents then struck a deal with my neighbor and they dug a pipe between the houses in which a network cable was placed inside to share the Internet between the two of us and we would split the bill.

I played a lot of pirated games then. I got more and more interested on how computers worked. A friend of the family was working for the city of Montreal and he was the one that fixed our computer issues. I was looking over his shoulder a lot.

During my late teenage years I managed to learn how to build a computer, although I was bad at it because I didn't use standoffs so the motherboard did not fit properly (but the computer still worked). I got into a vocational degree in tech support and I learned to do it properly there. At the time I was pretty clueless as to what tech support meant.

I got out of school feeling pretty down because of the unexpected customer support part of the task. I have bad social skills and I don't really like people. I had trouble finding employment despite doing pretty well in school. My best friend's dad eventually heard I got a degree in IT and called me for an interview. I was handed a questionnaire and did pretty poorly since it covered a lot of subjects I had little experience in, such as networking theory (binary/subnets). Despite that he still hired me and I worked at the place for nearly 6 years. It was a fairly typical tech support position in a very-laid back environment. Mostly everyone was nice and I learned a lot. I touched Microsoft Office, Blackberries, Android, iOS, Windows, even some networking. I was managing the print server solution.

Then Americans arrived into the picture at the company, started managing IT more and more in the company and a change of management ensued. My boss was let go, then a few years later it was me.

Now I work for a point-of-sale company, in a lesser role in the help desk. I will stick long enough that it doesn't look back on my resume and then I will try to find something else.