#introduceyourself Scott - old school geek in Nicaragua

Hello everyone, Scott here. It's very nice to meet you all.

I am still very new here but I have been really impressed with the quality of what is unfolding. The quality of the people, content and overall spirit.

So a little about me and what I hope to get from my steemit.com experience...

With introductions it's always good to start at the beginning. I was born and raised in the south eastern U.S. to hard working and patriotic parents. During the mid 70s our family bought a farm and moved to the outskirts of Tallahassee. While we lived in a pretty remote setting my parents were always great about making sure we had the resources we needed to learn. Not least among these resources was my first computer. A beautiful TRS-80 Color Computer with 4k of RAM. When I got that for Christmas in 1982 I knew immediately that I would be a computer geek for life. The next summer I made enough picking butterbeans to get an upgrade to 16k! I found out young the cost of being an early adopter.

Fast forward to age 20 and I have decided to join the Marines. I said goodbye to the family and off I went to Parris Island. I was about the last person you would expect to join the Corps as I was never much of an athlete, prefering to study tech of all flavors. Growing up on a farm though did go a long way in preparing me both physically and mentally to be a Marine so off I went in 1990. I managed to secure what was known as a 'guaranteed contract' into the only MOS I was interested in. At that time a COBOL programmer (MOS 4063)was the official description of the position. I hoped it entailed more than that. It turned out to be the catch all computer job for the Corps and I quickly learned about LAN/WAN tech while building out what would become known as the Marine Corps Data Network. The Gulf War took me to South West Asia where I spent over 9 months providing data services on a live battlefield.

Several very eventful years later my enlistment ended and I left my time in the Corps behind. I had no problem finding a job in the IT game after the experience I gained in the Marines. After what I would consider a really good run in the corporate IT biz I decided it wasn't for me. This decision didn't just happen out of nowhere. It was a process of what is now a sort of cliche way at looking at cubicle life. A routine that gradually wears you down in a way that starts to feel like a bad episode of Mr. Robot.

I decided to punch out and get back to a more natural lifestyle. The dot-com boom had been good enough to me that I thought I could make a change. So, I left corporate America and started a small farm back home in Florida. The day after completing the move I spoke with a friend on the phone who asked me how I felt about my decision. I told him that as I was leaving the area (DC, northern Virginia) I was afraid to look in the rear view mirror out of fear of turning into a pillar of salt. I had a pronounced sense of urgency about the move.

Then the next day 9/11 happened. I knew the world was going to be changing in a big hurry but tried to just keep my head down and focus on my new sustainable living thing. It didn't take me long to realize that I was missing an essential freedom, the freedom to be left alone. Pretty much everything I wanted to do in terms of the sustainable living required permits, permissions and all sorts of other scrutiny now that was an ever increasing blanket of surveillance. It was sad for me to see this happening to the country I loved. So, I decided to just do some traveling.

I found the rest of my life in Nicaragua. I moved here over ten years ago now and it has been the best decision I ever made. It may not be for everyone but it's like a missing puzzle piece that I found after looking everywhere. I have never felt as much at home as I do here.

L to R Roderick, Kelieth, Vladimir

I moved here with very little but had a solid determination to give it a go. Within the first days of being here I discovered that there was a huge backlog of IT work to be done because there just weren't many techs around. It didn't take me long to figure out that a small computer shop/cyber cafe was a good opportunity. Thus Nica Geeks was born. It would allow me to make a living and also introduce tech jobs to the local market. There was one challenge though which was the power went off frequently here back then. So, I built the office to run on 100% solar power and that became a marketing angle all on it's own. The biz was a success for about 5 years and then rapid growth and too many cooks in the kitchen caused it to falter. I decided we had to do a clean shutdown and an important era in my life came to an end.

radio installation on a mountain top

As I was wondering what I would do with my time after Nica Geeks closed the doors along comes bitcoin. I was in like Flynn from the start. Like so many others I completely immersed myself in the tech and have been on the crypto bandwagon ever since. Having such a passion for solar power I of course have spent considerable time in the fine art of solar powered mining. Over a period of several years and many design iterations I have finally managed to come up with a cost effective solar mining solution that I am considering trying to bring to market. Here's a tweet from the streamium team of the solar miner in action. I used their streaming tech to showcase it in operation and got a nice response;

solarminer on streamium live feed
Being active in crypto for a while I was intrigued about the idea of steem when it came along. It sounded promising in concept but I would need to see how it translated to reality. Well, here I am today posting on steemit.com and what has grown here is amazing.

While I still have an interest in sustainable living in general and solar energy in particular the reason I came to steemit was to become a better writer. I have for years wanted to get more into creative writing but never had the time or platform come together at the same time. Now I have both of these elements and intend to dedicate myself to writing compelling content that shows a steady path of improvement. I also look forward to getting to know more of the interesting folks that make the site what it is.

I've been getting my feet wet with a few posts already and have been humbled by the reception from the community. I've never seen such a great platform for creative content. I have already been telling friends about it and will be here to help them if they decide to jump in. With a little luck I will be able to get a group meet going. It could be a great way to bring new job opportunity.

I want to thank everyone here that have helped me to get started. The help you have offered so generously has been crucial in helping me to understand how valuable steemit.com is;
@mariannewest for the awesome freewrite challenge
@pennsif and sponsors for the cool Day in the life of 2040 writing contest
@jayna for giving me early feedback
@flashfiction @blaynesukut @deaconlee for letting me know what you liked about The Flintknappers series
@curie @originalworks @minnowpond for being so essential to new users
@guiltyparties @shadow3scalpel for supporting the vets. Also the entire group of vets that are supporting each other. Bravo Zulu.

I will be learning and adapting my writing style to hopefully create the kind of content steemit likes to see. I would be honored if you decide to take the time to check out my work.

The notorious "Nica Geeks Solar Powered Ox Cart Tour"