Wow. I almost stopped reading this thread when it turned into a back and forth amongst the admins and "Gurus". But I'll though my two cents in here.


My name is Dragon (yes, that is my real name). I currently live in Houston, TX USA (that's in America, xld). I served 13 years in what I refer to as "The Navy" but is more properly called the "US Navy". They forced me into using computers when I taught myself how to use MS Word ('98) to recreate a form we were using white-out on so we could make blank copies. Apparently being able to do that was all it took to be the IT. So I was forced to use computers, primarily Windows systems running Office. However, once I started I was hooked and have been trying to learn anything I could about them ever since.


After getting out of "The Navy" I started working in the Oil Industry (after a year of driving busses). It wasn't until working in this industry that I actually started using Excel for anything. I was always a big...stickler that if you weren't doing Math, then you were wasting the power of Excel. So I used Access for data and Word for documents, and since I was an instructor in the Navy for a while too, I got into using PowerPoint as well.


I tried going to college to learn more about computers. I've taken three separate degree programs (game and graphic design; Software Engineering; Software Development) at three different Universities (DeVry; Kaplan; University of Phoenix) and if I could combine all my credits I'm about 6 months from a Masters in something computer related.


But I can honestly say I have learned more about computers and programming (Java; Visual Basic; VBA) by just "playing" with them and either creating my own little projects (just to see if I could do it) or by having them assigned to me when my manager discovers I can do more than enter data in the little cells in Excel. Actually, I make sure they know so they will assign me little projects, I find the challenge to be fun.


As I said before, I currently live in Texas, but I have lived in 28 of the 50 US States and have been to all of them (including Hawaii and Alaska). I have also been to Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guam, Palau, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Dubai, Germany, Romania, all around the "Continent" of South America (sorry xld, my favorite country down there was Columbia, Chile was nice though, went skiing in the Andes), Australia (I loved "Queenland" too). Currently I'm in Nigeria working on a project.


Sorry for sharing my Biography here, but I wanted to express that I have been around enough to know that places like this board are proof that the world is small and we all are neighbors and no matter where you're from or where you're going, you can come to a place like there where everyone speaks the same language...code.