Cigarette smoke filled the internet café. Old Pentium machines sat on the desks. AltaVista was the starting page.
Pakistan, February 2000. The first time I used an internet-connected computer.
Twenty-six years later, I still remember where it started.
A lot has changed since then. Technology became my work. Curiosity acquired responsibilities: systems to keep running, people to support, decisions with consequences. You learn that something can be technically impressive and still be a terrible idea.
But I still like getting my hands on something I don’t understand yet.
These days, that often means running an AI model locally, breaking something, figuring out why, and trying again. Some experiments turn into something useful. Others mostly explain why I should have gone to bed earlier.
There is a practical reason for it. In this field, experience matters, but it doesn’t do your learning for you. Knowing how the last thing worked is a starting point, not a permanent qualification.
The less professional explanation is that I still enjoy it.
I don’t remember what I searched for on AltaVista that day. I wish I did. Looking back, it would be convenient if it had been something profound.
Probably wasn’t.
What stayed with me was the willingness to sit down in front of something unfamiliar and start figuring it out.
That has been useful far longer than anything I could have found in that first search.